Alma Mater Society of Queen’s University: Social Media use and Branding
This report assesses the social media and branding effectiveness of the Alma Mater Society (AMS) of Queens University. It analyzes the AMS’ current social media practices, and prescribes changes aimed at improving the total reach and engagement for the organization’s online promotions and communications.
The AMS’ social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and their website, myams.org. was reviewed and evaluated. These four outlets are the way that AMS primarily distributes information to their target audience, however, they also use monthly email newsletters to get out key information. Assessing their use of these four primary communication channels and providing opportunities for growth and improvement, while maintaining a consistent brand will lead to improved reach and engagement. Each channel will be examined separately, pointing to strengths and weaknesses, as well as an overall analysis of the AMS brand.
The AMS has a consistent brand across all social media channels, with the AMS logo, consistent font use, and even consistent colour pallets being used for different categories of posts / pages across all platforms. The AMS has a Brand Manager which clearly has a great impact on visual identity standards being upheld.
· Ample cross-links. Cross links in posts from AMS to other sources was used effectively in most cases.
· Professional page layout. Each media site has a casual business feeling to its appropriate layout (e.g. Facebook page is setup for an organization with a contact messenger.)
· Dissemination of a vast variety of information; social, educational, resources, etc..
· Posts are inconsistently timed. The frequency of posts is sporadic; inconsistent among media platforms.
· Post content is text heavy. Users engaging with AMS on social media are seeking quick updates and basic information.
· Lacking platform engagement. Many posts do not receive many likes, comments or shares.
· Overuse of Logo and similar post formats may be causing brand dilution, which will damage recognition overtime (Finkle, 2018)
Platform Specific Comments
· Many posts with heavy text
· A battery of posts followed by no posts
· Mostly shared Facebook posts
· Underutilized potential for tags and cross-links
· Good spacing between posts
· Effective information communication
· Good use of cross-links
· Inconsistency with fonts and formatting between web pages
We find that while the AMS is doing many things right, there is some potential for improvement. While Twitter is underutilized, the target audience does not actually use Twitter (Kats, 2018), and is more likely to use Instagram, followed by Facebook, making these two channels far more important.
Through more regularly scheduled posts, with minimal textual information, and a more informal style, the AMS could increase its post engagement.
AMS has a very strong, consistent identity among its media platforms. The use of the logo, recognizable graphics, and layout across platforms is visually appealing, but lacks total consistency. Having a visually appealing presence will attract the user’s attention, (Smith, 2017) and being consistent over platforms will build trust with the audience.
The AMS is most lacking in post content. Their posts need to be lighter with less text and information on their Instagram, Facebook and Twitter platforms. These three specifically should have engagement-first thinking when posts are being made. The voice of the posts needs to be more oriented towards asking the audience things such as content ideas, advice, or even a general question. (Rampton, 2014)
What needs to be done as a result of our findings:
- Posts need to be done daily at the most, weekly at the least.
- Posts should differ across platforms even if the information is the same or similar.
- Post context among “lighter” platforms like Instagram and Twitter should be briefer and contain more images and titles that capture the audience’s attention. For detailed information, the user can be linked back to the main AMS web page.
- AMS needs to orient their posts to generate more user interactions. Posts need to have a different voice.
- Posts that include polls, Instagram/Facebook stories and even giveaways/trivia can be effective to gather more user interaction.
- Use hashtags across all platforms to make content more searchable by users. Employ the use of existing hashtags and create new ones specific to AMS to tie content to other similar and relevant posts and increase appearances in searches.
- Cross link with other organizations within Queen’s University, for example, The Queen’s newspaper
Finkle, C. (2019, January 2). What is Brand Dilution. Retrieved April 2, 2019.
Kats, R. (2018, October 22) Who's Using Instagram. Retrieved April 2, 2019
Rampton, J. (2014, September 22). 7 Free Ways for Boosting Your Social Media Engagement. Retrieved March 30, 2019
Smith, E. (2017, November 17). The Importance of Graphic Design in Social Media. Retrieved March 30, 2019
Bowers, J. (2017, December 6). 5 Steps to Engaging Your Audience on Social Media. Retrieved April 4, 2019
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