Social Media Project Roundup, Fall 2014

Every semester, my UNI Digital Advertising students work very hard on a massive project: To develop a professional brand using social media. 

Let's take a moment to praise their work and note a few special honors.

The Big Picture

It's always astounding to me what my classes can accomplish in three months.  By measuring our activity and engagement on social media, we can quickly evaluate our performance with quantitative metrics.

From August 22 - November 15, 2014, my 41 #unidigadv students accomplished the following:

• Posted a total of 6,731 tweets on Twitter
• Gained a total of 3,223 followers on Twitter
• Earned an average score of 45 on Klout
• Added 2,258 connections on LinkedIn
• Published 371 blog posts on Blogger
• Earned a record-setting 48,543 pageviews from visitors to their blogs

TWITTER

Most Prolific

Tweeting is one of those things that seems very easy at first glance - until you do it every day in support of a professional brand.  That's hard work!  Here are the top five #unidigadv Tweeps by Tweet volume:

1. Marvin Singleton @Marvymarv_12 - 711 Tweets
2. Bennett Becicka @becickaMKTG - 453 Tweets
3. Alyssa Chekas @DameOfTechWear - 420 Tweets
4. Joslyn Aldape @jonyal2 - 384 Tweets
5. Andrew Niedert @AndrewNiedert - 360 Tweets
    

Most Followers Gained

If you want to wield influence on Twitter, you need followers.  Here are the students who added the most followers during the semester.

1. Alyssa Chekas @DameOfTechWear - added 339 followers
2. Andrew Struik @ArtOfDesigns - added 257 followers
3. Annie Forsythe @NonprofPanther - added 231 followers
4. Marvin Singleton @Marvymarv_12 - added 178 followers
5. Sarah Schwendinger @savvy_traveler1 - added 140 followers
    

LINKEDIN

Most Connections Gained
When job hunting, who you know is often as important as who you are.  Here are the top three class members who gained the most connections on LinkedIn during this project:

1. Marvin Singleton - 410 Connections
2. Andrew Niedert - 138 Connections
3. Brady Feldman - 114 Connections

Highest Quality Profiles

Working to build a high quality Linkedin Profile can help you stand out to potential employers.  The following students all had excellent profiles.

• Joslyn Aldape
• Kelly Heth
• Olivia Hottle Mossman
• Jess Petersen
• Evan Seuren

Most Recommended

These two had the greatest number of recommendations by others on LinkedIn:

• Kelly Heth (8 recommendations)
• Olivia Hottle Mossman (7 recommendations)

BLOGS

The real content was being generated on student blogs, where students developed unique and original posts related to their professional brand.  They then attempted to organically attract an audience of readers - a difficult challenge!

Most Visited Blogs

This semester I am happy to report that we had two blogs that SHATTERED the longstanding class record of 4,833 pageviews held by #unidigadv alum Emily Droessler for her Sports and Social Media blog.  Both were fashion blogs for niche audiences and both clearly tapped into a market need for fashion advice and tips.  

Congratulations to Jess Petersen and Evan Seuren for their incredible work this semester! Take a look at their excellent blogs:

 

We had NINE students who earned over 1,000 pageviews to their blog during the course of the semester - they did a fantastic job attracting and engaging their visitors.  Browse through their blogs and see what they came up with:

1. Jess Petersen - Ask a Tomboy - 12,506 pageviews (Record Breaker!)
2. Evan Seuren - Dude, What Should I Wear? - 8,702 pageviews (Record Breaker!)
3. Kelly Heth - Fortitude, Grin & Grow - 3,613 pageviews
4. Scott Evans - Technical Scott - 1,355 pageviews
5. Bethany Carin - Bethany Carin Design + DIY - 1,200 pageviews
6. Collin Cahill - Televisionary - 1,181 pageviews
7. Marvin Singleton - Helping the Community Rebound - 1,158 pageviews
8. Kelsey Lonneman - Flying Design - 1,131 pageviews
9. Annie Forsythe - Social Media Impacts on Nonprofit Fundraising - 1,075 pageviews

Thanks again for a great semester - if you get nostalgic you can always tune into #unidigadv on Twitter and help the newbies out!

Did you have a favorite blog this semester that I didn't mention?  Tell me about it in the comments!