A BYU Speeches Facebook fan page was recently approved for BYU Speeches. We are slowly building our fan base and taking steps to increase awareness of speeches.byu.edu and the products it offers through social media marketing efforts.The purpose of the fan page is to drive traffic to speeches.byu.edu and to make it easier for people who like to keep up on Speeches to know when transcripts for new speeches have been made available.
You will play a key role in operating and creating content for the page. Your perspective as a student (which happens to be our target audience with the page) will be invaluable—your insights and input are more than welcome.
Taking a strong role in BYU Speeches' social media efforts will be a great experience to add to your resume. More and more employers are looking for individuals who have those skills, and having
In order to contribute, please:
- Read through the blog we created while trying to determine how to best represent Speeches on Facebook.
- Check in on the Facebook fan pages of BYU entities, universities, companies, and groups, both local and national, to see what strategies they are using for reaching their customers.
- Ask your supervisor to make you an administrator of the page.
Announcing the posting of new talks to the Speeches Web site
This is the most important function of the fan page; we want the Facebook fan page to be first-to-know access for Speeches fans who want to be able to know as soon as a talk is available so they don't have to keep checking the Speeches Web site over and over hoping the talk has been posted. Natalie Miles will be the best go-to source for information on whether or not a recent speech has been posted; make sure to check in with her frequently so you can link a new talk on the Facebook fan page soon after it hits the Speeches Web site. Another option is to follow the Speeches RSS feed that announces when various formats of talks have been posted. (If you use that, though, be aware that older speeches that have been added to the Speeches archive show up there, too—it's fine to share those on the Facebook fan page, but the wall posts should probably be predominately announcing the addition of new speeches.)
Coming up with creative ways to plug recent and classic talks
See the Facebook page for examples of short, snappy posts that hopefully encourage fans to click through to read the talk. Try to make them timely and applicable. For example, when school starts you could plug a speech that talks about how to have a successful school year. Or if a prominent figure passes away, you could link people to one or two of their landmark talks.
Following are steps to link a talk on the Facebook page:
- On the wall next to "Attach", click "Link":
- Paste in the URL of the talk's page on speeches.byu.edu (again, remember to link to the page that offers all the formats the speech is available in and not the HTML page):
- Click "Attach"; replace the header with the actual title of the talk:
- Replace the description with the speaker's bio (found at the top of the HTML version); make sure to remove any hard returns in the middle of sentences:
- Add a snappy wall post:
- Click "Share":
(Note that the URL simplifies itself.)
Facebook does not allow you to use HTML coding in wall messages, so if you want to put more than one link on a wall post, or try to link something in the wall post text itself, you need to use a URL shortener like bit.ly or fb.me (Facebook's own URL shortener):
Creating timely posts reminding fans of Speeches products
This will take some ingenuity and advance thinking on your part; for example, a couple months before commencement, you could put up a post letting people know what a great graduation gift a custom compilation of speeches given at the university during the graduate's tenure would make. Or a few weeks before Valentine's Day, you could plug the How Do I Love Thee? custom book. The possibilities are endless!
Pulling "Quotes of the Week" from past speeches to post on the page's sidebar
The "Quote of the Week" widget is on the left panel of the Facebook fan page. It includes a quote, an attribution, and a link to the talk it comes from on the Speeches site. The purpose of the widget is the same as that for the fan page: to drive traffic to the Web site and introduce people to speeches that might be a benefit to them. Let those two proposes drive your quote choices!
In choosing quotes, remember to keep them relatively short and not complicated or difficult to digest. Feel free to mix things up: do a famous quote one week, a very cool but not-so-famous one the next week; one from a recent talk one week, one from an older talk the next week; a one-liner one week, a longer one the next week.
Try to pull quotes that are timely; for example, a patriotic one during a presidential election or a Christmas-y one during the holidays. Don't feel like you always have to do this, but every once in a while could be nice.
See below for exact formatting instructions:
- Click on "Edit Page" beneath the profile pic
- Scroll down to "Speeches Quote of the Week - FBML" and click "Edit"
- Delete the the highlighted portion and paste in the new quote text (don't worry about the attribution and link yet)
- Do the same for the attribution:
- And then for the link—first the URL to the BYU speech it somes from. Link to the page that offers all the formats the speech is available in (see an example here), and not the HTML page (see an example here), which is linked from the page that shows all formats:
- . . . and then the name of the talk:
The long-term goal for Quote of the Week is to turn it into an application people can add to their pages (ala Daily Bible Verse, Daily Chuck Norris Facts, Pieces of Flair, etc.) If you would like to tackle this project, consult with Peter.
Monitoring page activity
Log in at least once a day to keep an eye on what's going on on the page. Make sure to notify Peter if anything unusual happens or anything inappropriate is posted by a Facebook user.
Maintaining the events page that lists upcoming devotionals by posting photos and bios of upcoming speakers.
For security reasons, we do not release the names of upcoming General Authority speakers until one week before the date of their speech. Professor speakers and forums can be announced the semester they will be speaking.
To post an upcoming devotional or forum as an event:
- Click the events tab at the top of the page, and click "Create Event":
- Select the date and time:
- Fill in the rest of the info (see previous events for wording specifics):
- As for the "More info?" field and attaching a photo (see left sidebar, not pictured), consult with Natalie Miles. She coordinates the production of these announcements in the Daily Universe and may be able to provide you with the content to post as part of the event announcement:
Check in on the Speeches site's Google Analytics page
Google Analytics is a free online tool that can be used to gather and analyze data. It offers a variety of tools that can show how, when, and from where readers are finding (or not finding) what they need. Other questions it can answer include what pages visitor most frequently land on, what pages they exit on, how far (and how) they drilldown through the site’s content, what keywords they search to find the site, and much more:
The tech students have the login and password to the Google Analytics page for speeches.byu.edu. If you feel inclined to learn some things about the Speeches site audience so you can better understand who it is we're reaching, trying to reach, and not reaching, ask them to give you access and feel free to poke around and get some insights.
Research what it takes to make a Facebook ad for the BYU Speeches fan page
Peter would like to see a Facebook ad for our fan page that shows up on the pages of people who are in the demographics we wish to target; not much research has gone into this, though, and if you have an interest in this area, you are welcome to read up on what options there are, including the costs and parameters, and then propose what you feel are the best options to Peter.
