Grow social media presence

The challenge

In its social media strattegy, Stanford's Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) prioritizes Twitter and YouTube for its audience and engagment goals.

APARC launched a Twitter channel in 2011 and a YouTube channel in 2013, but both channels garnered a small number of followers and subscribers and their growth rates remained stagnant.

The process

I performed an initial competitor analysis, gaining useful insights from digging into successful social channels of peer higher education organizations, research centers, and think tanks. Having defined APARC’s audience personas and selected metrics of reach and engagement, I then developed a social media plan including the following tactics:

Monitor relevant topics, phrases, and hashtags to discover meaningful conversations;

Engage with relevant influencers in the academic, policy, and press communities;

Establish a social content calendar built around themes, important dates, and topics in the news;

Improve the quality and range of the Center’s shared visual content;

Create ongoing, long-form and short-form videos to promote the Center’s work;

Leverage data and insights to test out social content and adjust communications activities.

The results

Within a year, APARC’s Twitter audience grew by 28% and YouTube audience by 258%.

The next two years, 2020 and 2021, APARC’s Twitter audience grew by 35% year over year, YouTube audience by 709% and 174%. The communications team also continuues to improve on its social media engagement metrics.