Name: Cara
Bio: Manages social media for the Office of News and Communications and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, and leads social media strategy for the university.
Posts by Cara:
- Women are five times more than men to use Pinterest
- City dwellers are significantly more likely to use Twitter than rural residents
- Black people and hispanics are more likely to use Instagram than white people
- The 18-29 year-old demographic is more likely to use Instagram than Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr
[UPDATE] Facebook’s Cover Image Area
May 3rd, 2013Facebook recently changed their cover photo rules. Facebook now allows brands to list contact information, calls to action, and product details in their cover photos. Read more about it here.
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Starting on January 15, 2013, Facebook will regulate the amount of text included in your Page’s cover image and news feed ads to no more than 20 percent of the graphic’s area. The new year and the new policy is a good time for Duke University Facebook Page owners to check if our cover images are compliant with Facebook’s policies.
Facebook’s new policy on cover images reads:
Covers may not include:
Note that a logo with text in the cover image contributes to the 20 percent limit of text in a cover image. Facebook will provide a grid tool for Page managers to use to determine if they are within Facebook’s text restrictions for cover images and news feed ads. Also note that you can still post images with more than 20 percent text if they aren’t promoted posts in the News Feed. And, you can use these post images for ads as long as they are displayed in the marketplace area.
It seems like Facebook is trying to increase the quality of images in profiles and the News Feed. Images remain an important strategy for posting to Facebook and creating custom profiles, but our Duke pages need to use compelling graphics and photography instead of marketing jargon to communicate our messages.
The current cover image for the main Duke University Facebook Page is compliant with the new policies and can be downloaded by right-clicking the image below and selecting “save image as” from the dropdown menu. Please contact us on this blog or at socialmedia@duke.edu if you any comments or questions about these new policies.
Here are some resources to read more about the recent changes:
New Facebook Rules Limit Use of Text in Images, Entrepreneur
Facebook updates cover photo and News Feed ad policy, limits text to 20% of image, Inside Facebook
Higher Education and Google+
April 17th, 2013Have you tried this? Bring up Google+ in a room of marketers and communicators. Just mention the social network and see what happens.
You will hear mixed reactions. Some will sing the praises of search engine optimization and network influence, while others will look at you like you’re a cat speaking Latin on TV.
Our social media team at Duke University is among the Google+ believers.
Duke’s main Google+ Page has grown to over 65,000 followers (as of Aprili 2013) and we’re continuing to see value in our presence on Google+. For one, the more people who follow Duke on Google+, the more we positively influence search results for people in the Duke community. Secondly, we see Hangouts On Air as a huge benefit for student-to-student connectivity and a great tool in our media relations toolkit. Finally, it’s a quirky and fun place where we can share content that is attached to Google trends and a niche science community that is super active on the network.
I’m working on a full blog post on all of the benefits and joys Duke sees in Google+. For now, check out this Hangout On Air I did last week with the Higher Education Google team discussing the power of highered on Google+. Enjoy!
Upcoming Google+ Hangout with Steven Churchill
April 9th, 2013Duke is doing a science-themed Google+ Hangout!
At 2 p.m. ET on Thursday, April 11, Duke University is offering a live Google+ Hangout with paleo-anthropologist Steven Churchill, who led the analysis of the remarkably complete arm of MH1 and participated in most of the other papers as well. Churchill will have casts of several pieces of MH1 and MH2 and can discuss their features.
Please RSVP to the event here. We hope to see you then!
Social Media 2013: Internet users who use social networking tools
March 19th, 2013The folks over at Pew Research Centre recently compiled their annual research on the demographics behind social media users on different platforms.
The infographic below (courtesy of Adweek) takes Pew’s data and displays it in a nice visual, including these key takeaways:
Duke Chats During The State Of The Union
February 13th, 2013The Duke community joined a Twitter chat during President Obama’s “State of the Union” address last night.
Several faculty and students participated in the chat, tweeting their reactions to the president’s speech using the hashtag #DukeChat. The chats provide an opportunity to have a “public classroom” about issues in real time. We had a ton of conversation. In fact, as of noon on Wednesday, Feb. 13, #DukeChat is still trending in Raleigh, NC on Twitter.
We had some fun promoting the chat on Facebook and posted a nifty State of the Union bingo graphic (credits to Jonathan Lee, Office of News and Communications).
And, here are some of our social media team’s favorite tweets from #DukeChat:
Check out the Twitter chat in its entirety here.
Duke’s Office of News and Communications has hosted a few politics-based twitter chats within the past year, including during the January 2012 “State of the Union” address and, last fall, during the presidential debates and both the Republican and Democrat conventions.
Duke’s 2013 Social Media Roundup
January 27th, 2013For our most recent Duke Communicators event, I organized a fun tour of what’s happening across our community in social media.
At our 2013 Social Media Roundup, my colleagues described how they are using social media to promote bloggers, share photos, reach new international audiences and much more. Each person spoke for five minutes, in a format similar to an Ignite session. Hopefully the Duke Communicators group walked away with lots of new ideas to try, as well as with information about colleagues to call for inspiration and advice.
Our presenters were:
Laura Brinn, Global Communications
Debbe Geiger, Duke University Medical Center
Wendy Livingston and J. Caldwell, Nasher Museum of Art
Orla Swift, Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Aaron Welborn, Duke Libraries
Ashley Wolf, Duke Athletics
(Tawnee Milko with the Nicholas School of the Environment was unable to make the presentation and her slides are at the end of the slide deck.)
You can view our entire slide deck from the event here.
What would you like to see at our next Social Media Roundup?
Duke is Chatting in Chinese on Sina Weibo
January 10th, 2013A few Duke graduate students made the world a smaller place today by using Chinese social media tools to connect with prospective students.
Five students from the Pratt School of Engineering Masters of Engineering Management program led a group chat this morning on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. Duke University maintains a public Sina Weibo page where we post content from the university for audiences in China, where access to Facebook and Twitter is generally restricted.
Students and staff lead the group chat on Sina Weibo
Nearly 150 participants joined the group chat, posing more than 80 questions in an hour. Questions and comments focused mainly on the application process and the career opportunities for students who graduate from the program. Our discussion was very rich throughout the chat, as shown in the screenshot of the chat below.
Duke’s presence on Sina Weibo is part of a Chinese social media strategy developed by Laura Brinn, Duke’s director of global communications, and managed in partnership with the social media team I lead. We partnered with Bridget Fletcher, Susan Brown and Erin Degerman of Pratt’s admissions and student services office in order to create this chat supporting their admissions priorities.
Duke also has a presence on Renren, a social network similar to Facebook that is popular with high school and college students. We have several Chinese student interns on our team who help manage and post content to these accounts.
What are you doing to connect online with your Chinese audiences here at Duke or elsewhere?
#PictureDuke on Instagram
January 8th, 2013Duke’s campus is just gorgeous. It’s one of my (many) favorite things about working at this university. Because it’s so photogenic, it’s a natural fit for Duke to have a presence on Instagram.
For those of you who haven’t explored Instagram yet, it’s an online photo-sharing application and social media service which Facebook recently acquired. Instagram is distinctly built for mobile users – images must be shared on the application through a mobile device. Instagram recently created account profiles that are accessible via a desktop computer, but posting and editing in Instagram is still only available via mobile device access.
Duke University’s Instagram account profile on a mobile device
Instagram is a visual medium with a huge, dedicated user base. These are the main reasons we decided to jump in: a way to share images of our beautiful campuses (here in Durham AND in our global locations) and Duke happenings with our community. Instagram is also a place to host good visual fodder to use on other social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
After we decided Instagram was a good fit for Duke’s social media strategy, our social media team kicked off our official account with the first Duke community PhotoWalk in November 2012. The PhotoWalk was a great opportunity to create content on our account and build a quick following. We also launched the hashtag #PictureDuke for the walk and expect to continue using it for community-generated imagery about all things Duke.
The Duke University account hit 1,000 followers this past weekend, and we’re not slowing down. We have tons of photo ideas queued up and a few ideas for more PhotoWalks this spring. Other areas of campus that are also on Instagram include Duke Libraries, Duke Athletics and Duke Blue Planet.
Duke University’s Instagram account profile on a computer
Right now, the team posting to our Duke Instagram account includes myself, Jonathan Lee and our social media intern, Sarah Haas. Want to see something in particular? Post your suggestions in the comments here or tweet your ideas using #PictureDuke and we’ll see what we can do.
A Big Week of Hangouts for Duke
December 21st, 2012Did you know Google has an office in Chapel Hill, North Carolina? It’s located in Southern Village, just a short drive down 15-501 from Duke University.
Because of their proximity, I’ve had the chance to meet with Google Higher Ed reps a number of times over the past year. Some of these conversations resulted in Duke participating in Google’s recent College Admissions Week programming with six other universities.
The goal of College Admissions Week is to allow prospective students around the world to connect with and learn about top universities, regardless of financial or geographic barriers. Over the course of College Admissions Week, Duke and the other participating universities used Google+ Hangouts On Air (HOA), which are multi-person video chats, to present information to prospective students about academics, student life and the admissions process.
Duke participated in the following Hangouts as part of College Admissions Week this past week:
Christoph Guttentag, Duke’s Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, joined the kick-off panel hosted by The Princeton Review.
I hosted two current Duke students, Nadine Goldberg and Connor Cotton, who talked about student life and responded to questions from prospective students.
A Duke admissions officer, Sam Carpenter, held an information session about admissions and responded to applicant questions.
We were able to reach hundreds of prospective students through these video chats in a new and interactive way. Special thanks to Google for inviting us to participate and The Princeton Review for anchoring the program!
As an added Google+ HOA bonus, Duke Lemur Center postdoctoral fellow Erik Patel was featured in an hour-long special on Animal Planet, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012 at 8 p.m. Eastern, talking about his work in Madagascar with the rare and elusive (and gorgeous) silky sifaka lemur. We held two Google+ Hangouts with Erik and Charlie Welch, lemur center conservation coordinator, before and after this BBC-produced documentary aired to learn more about their efforts to prevent illegal logging, to educate Malagasy schoolchildren about conservation and to establish protected areas around the last remaining lemur habitat.
Talking Duke Mobility
December 14th, 2012Responsive design. Mobile apps. Optimized for mobile devices.
Our most recent event of the Duke Communicators Network covered the topic of mobility. There’s a lot to talk about on the subject, and Blyth Morrell with the Office of Marketing and Strategic Communications gave a brief overview of the history of Duke mobile, trends in mobile usage and an update on where Duke is headed with our mobile strategy. Here is a copy of her Prezi from the event.
Next, a few Duke communicators and web developers updated the group on their most recent project. Brett Walters with the Duke Alumni Association covered recent projects with Duke Magazine, alumni and reunions. Sean Aery with Duke Libraries covered some of the most recent work they have done in responsive design and Will McCreery highlighted some recent project done by Duke Web Services including the new Duke Chapel site that is optimized for mobile.
Next up on our agenda of meetings for Duke Communicators is a social at Tylers Taproom in American Tobacco on Tuesday, December 18th starting at 4p.m. We hope to see you there!
