MEMO

TO: Erin Earnest, Multimedia Coordinator and Director

FROM: Austin Gick, Marketing and Communications Intern
DATE: April 16, 2019
SUBJECT: College of Communication Social Media Content Recommendations

This memo recommends Instagram activity that the College of Communication could take in order to
improve engagement among current CCOM students, CCOM faculty and staff, and admitted/prospective
CCOM students. I suggest that the Instagram account post three times a week with each post focusing
on the specific theme of I Am CCOM with different focuses to acclimate interest from many viewpoints.

One post would focus on faculty and give a brief recognition of what they do (Appendix A). This could
run on a nomination system to honor faculty that have truly made an impact, thus inspiring current
faculty to possibly work even harder to be recognized. The second post would be more personable
focusing on a student within the program. This student would be asked to provide a fun, yet appropriate,
photograph and give a brief summary about themselves and what they plan to do with their degree in
communication (Appendix B). I suggest we chose students actively engaging with campaign content,
therefore incentivizing continued interaction. The last post would focus on our outstanding alumni.
This post would select alumni representing different careers to show all the places a degree from the
College of Communication can take you. Offering some personality from the alumni to shine through a
description written by the selected alumni may humanize the person while inspiring new students
(Appendix C). These rough examples show the suggested format, description, and content. If you select
this idea, a more professional post and format may be implemented.

Supporting Research
Christy Ashley and Tracy Tuten’s research article “Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An
Exploratory study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement,” support this form of posting.
The article details strategies used by top brands to entice consumer engagement on posts with a focus of
maintaining a social presence.

The authors argued the importance of frequent updates as well as incentives for participation. This
emphasized having a common theme between different types of posts. This humanizes an organization,
allowing a message to be appealing to many different audiences and show the diversity an organization
may have.

Execution
Each post would follow a common “I am CCOM” format presenting the idea of a unified theme with
diversity and versatility. The hashtag #iamccom would also relate the idea of having a unified theme
and allow easy access to all previous “I am CCOM” posts for those wishing to see more. Another
hashtag titled #dawgsbark could relate every post with a focus on communication at Butler in a fun way,
under the inspiration of how canines “communicate.”

In summary, following this plan of posting three times a week with a focus on engaged students,
appreciating outstanding faculty, and showing where CCOM degrees can take you will promote interest
from a large audience as well as stimulate engagement from said audience. If you are interested in this
idea, I would be more than happy to discuss it more in person.
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C