Social Media Project Roundup, Fall 2016

Every semester, my UNI Digital Advertising students work very hard on a massive project: To develop a professional brand based on their personal interests 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 little under three months.  By measuring our activity and engagement on social media, we can quickly evaluate our performance with quantitative metrics.

From mid-January through April 18, 2016, my 48 #unidigadv students accomplished the following:

• Posted a total of 5,656 tweets on Twitter
• Gained a total of 5,262 followers on Twitter
• Earned an average score of 40 on Klout
• Added 3,570 connections on LinkedIn
• Published 400 blog posts on Blogger or WordPress blogs
• Earned 41,711 pageviews from 15,829 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 (I only counted original tweets for this - retweets did not count!):

1. Rob Bremner @BlockParty1520 - 527 Tweets
2. Melissa Curtis @SnapsMacsBooks - 270 Tweets
3. Katelyn Kozak @k_dcreative - 179 Tweets
4. Jeffery Johnson @VirtualRundown - 160 Tweets
5. Jimmy Terronez @techwebfun - 154 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. Scott Burak @AdFlies - added 352 followers
2. Parker Harrington @pv_only - added 331 followers
3. Jeffery Johnson @VirtualRundown - added 320 followers
4. Carson Zhou @zhouzhecheng - added 287 followers
5. Travis Miller @securegadgets - added 316 followers
    

LINKEDIN

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

1. Jeffery Johnson +851 connections
2. Trenton Schulte +359 connections
3. Natalie Siems +239 connections
4. Mary Kluesner +148 connections
5. Olivia Ballhagen +142 connections

Most Overall Connections
Some students already had a huge network of professional contacts on Linkedin. Here are the most well-connected class members overall:

1. Jeffery Johnson - 911 connections
2. Jamal White - 728 connections
3. Trenton Schulte - 647 connections
4. Carson Zhou - 536 connections
5. Alyssa Meeker - 533 connections

Highest Quality Profiles

A high quality Linkedin profile can help you stand out to potential employers. The following students had outstanding profiles:

• Carson Zhou
• Jamal White
• Abbie Takes
• Jimmy Terronez
• Parker Harrington

Most Recommended

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

• Carson Zhou (6 recommendations)
• Lydia Anderson (3 recommendations)
• Melissa Curtis (3 recommendations)
• Ali Henkle (3 recommendations)
• Abbie Takes (3 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 

We had SIX students who earned over 1,500 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. Natalie Siems - Textbook Chic - 6,261 pageviews
2. MC Pham - Vietnamese Cuisine - 2,198 pageviews
3. Adisa Skrebo - Adisa Glam - 2,081 pageviews
4. Josh Berendes - Berendes Media - 1,884 pageviews
5. Lindsay Moore - Moore to Grow - 1,829 pageviews
6. Teresa Connelly - Run Like A Millennial - 1,539 pageviews

Special Honors

Fashion Blogger of the Year

Natalie Siems - Textbook Chic

Natalie proved once and for all that fashion blogs rule. Her ambitious fashion blog is the #3 most visited #unidigadv blog of all time!

Best Advertising Blog

Carson Zhou - Social China 101

Carson did an excellent job explaining how Chinese social media marketing works - learning about Weibo and WeChat was definitely fascinating.

Thespian's Award (TIE)Abbie Takes - Engaging Theatre

Abbie did an excellent job looking at some of the top theatres in the country and how they are successfully using social media to promote the theatrical arts.

Zach Champlain - The Modern Backstage
Zach is really into theatre lighting technology - and he clearly knows a lot about it. His blog seemed very helpful and relevant.

Most Literate (TIE)

Melissa Curtis - Snaps, Macs, and Actual Books

A fun, readable blog that was authentically passionate about marketing college libraries.

Ali Henkle - Book 'Em Blog

If you like reading books - you'll enjoy Ali's blog. It is always good to have a student who gets my Harry Potter jokes.

Most Tech Savvy

Lydia Anderson - Histortech

Lydia revealed a whole new world of connections between archeology, history, and technology that were fascinating and very well-written.

Funnest Read

Jimmy Terronez - Tech Web Fun

I don't know why I liked reading Jimmy's blog - but I really did. Maybe it was the Spongebob animated GIFs. Maybe it was his YouTube video of Jimmy's celebrity impressions. But the fun always made the content more interesting and readable.

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!