COMM 462

5 Things You Didnt Know About

CSUF
A Youtube Video Campaign

Summary
Our team created a campaign to promote our video, 5 Things You Didnt Know About
CSUF. The primary focus of this campaign was to inform current and potential CSUF
students about campus events, unique benefits and amenities available to Titans.
We used social media as our main form of communication and a way to share
information as well interact with fellow students. We knew that creating platforms
featuring valuable information would lead to a trustworthy reputation and ultimately
more views.
In our week-long campaign, we gained 267 followers on instagram, 69 followers on
Twitter and 58 likes on Facebook. In using these platforms as well as reaching out to
different schools and organizations through more traditional means. CSUF PRSSA, CSUF
Veteran Center, CSUF Housing, Comm CSUF and Santiago Canyon College all shared our
video on their social media platforms.
Through our efforts, we were able to reach 4,000 YouTube views, exceeding our initial
goal by over 600%.

Goal
The goal of the 5 Things you Didnt Know about CSUF campaign was to inform students
about some of the important yet little-known facts of California State University,
Fullerton. Because CSUF is mainly a commuter school, some of the benefits and unique
resources available are lost on the students. As a career counselor once told us, You pay
for it, you might as well use it.
A secondary goal was to create a campaign that would better inform students of
opportunities on campus. We wanted to give them a place that would keep them up to
date on events as well as become a resource for potential incoming students from local
community colleges and high schools.
We aimed to accumulate 600 views on YouTube within one week.

Research
According to the Pew Research Center, 79% of online adults are on Facebook, 88% of
which are college-aged (18-29 years old). 32% of online adults use Instagram, and 24%
use Twitter. This is how we decided to use these three outlets as our main form of
communication with our target audiences. Additionally, we discovered that 93% of
Twitter users and 95% of Instagram users also use Facebook, so by having a presence on
all three, we would increase our chances of being recognized and get more views.
We also knew that our video would be coming out at the end of the semester when
everyones minds--and social media posts--would be locked on finals. According to the
Harvard school of Public Health, 54% of adults over the age of 18 drink coffee daily. This
rate goes up under times of stress and decreased sleep, common during finals week. This
helped us decide to launch a social media contest that would both drive YouTube views
and engage our audience by offering something valuable to them, a Starbucks gift cards
which can be used on campus or off.
An infographic by Entrepreneur.com showed that the optimal times to post to social
media were as follows:
Facebook - 1-4pm

Twitter - 1-3pm

Instagram - 5-6pm

This helped us inform when to strategically schedule our posts for each platform.

Target Audience
We chose to target mainly the general student body at CSUF, as well as potential future
CSUF students who are currently attending local community colleges and high schools.
These include Fullerton College, Santa Ana, Orange Coast, Cypress and more. This is
because we wanted to provide helpful, up-to-date information to current students that
would enable them to get the most out of their experience here at CSUF. We chose to
target future students as a secondary audience because according to a 2016 US News
College Ranking website, the rate of new student transfers is 97% from community
colleges, the top five being Fullerton College, OCC, Santa Ana, Saddleback and Santiago
Canyon College. We chose to target community colleges, specifically their transfer
centers, because we wanted a wider range of potential audience members and the
possibility that these schools would share our video on their social media platforms.

Audience Personas
#1 CSUF Student - Maria is a 22-year-old communications student at CSUF. She

commutes from Anaheim where she lives with her family. She works part time at
Disneyland to pay for her college tuition and help with bills at home. She receives
financial aid and is always looking for ways to save money. She typically brings her laptop
to class and will periodically browse Facebook and use Twitter. In between classes, she
tends to pick up a coffee at Starbucks and finds a spot to relax or study in the TSU or
other student hangouts. When shes on the go, she uses her Smartphone to catch up on
her social media feeds to stay connected.
#2 Community College Transfer - Stephanie is a student at Fullerton College that is

going to transfer to a four-year university next Fall. She is currently debating between
attending CSUF, CSULB and UCI. She lives with her parents in Santa Ana and wants to
pursue a BA in Business Administration, like her dad. She keeps up to date with the
transfer center at FJC to stay informed and follows them on social media. Shes excited
about the prospect of attending a large university with restaurants on campus and other
student amenities. Shes constantly comparing schools to try to find somewhere she will
fit in best and feel most at home.

Strategy
For our campaign, we didnt want to focus exclusively on YouTube views at first. We
decided it would be beneficial to build a trustworthy and credible brand for our group.
This is how we came up with Titan Tidbits, which started as a Facebook page. We also
created a Twitter and Instagram. These pages were focused on the theme of informing
current and future Titans about CSUF in general, benefits that come along with being a
Titan and opportunities on campus.
We searched popular hashtags that were relevant to CSUF and found users by location
(near campus) to find the best people to follow and who were likely to follow us back.
We aimed to create an interactive relationship with our followers through our social
media pages where everyone could contribute and provide helpful information for fellow
learners. We allowed submissions on Instagram and used student photos for our
#PhotoOfTheDay efforts.
To maximize our reach, we partnered with third parties both on and off campus including
student run groups and official college organizations that may promote us/share our
video.

Tactics
Throughout this campaign we implemented several different tactics to reach our overall
goal.
Firstly, we created social media pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to begin
building a brand-like presence among the community. We chose the name Titan Tidbits
because its short, easy to remember and relevant to our main goal of sharing helpful
information to Titans--present and future.
We began using Hootsuite to monitor relevant communities including student run
organizations and clubs on campus as well as local community colleges, namely their
transfer centers social media pages to begin engaging with them and building
relationships.
We began to follow on-campus clubs and student organizations on social media, which
allowed us to get insight on who their followers are and begin to follow them. That
helped build our own following. We tried to stay engaged with our followers by
commenting, liking and creating posts that encouraged interaction. For example, we
hosted a contest to win Starbucks gift cards (two $5 cards, one $10 and one $20 card).
The rules were that people would have to tag two friends on any of our contest-related
posts as well as comment on our actual YouTube video with their name. This resulted in
19 complete entries and several more partial entries (following one but not both of the
rules). We also began a #PhotoOfTheDay where we would use pictures taken at/near
CSUF either taken by us or by other students. We commented on the pictures, asked for
permission to repost them, and then featured the student on our accounts. This resulted
in quite a bit of engagement and gained us several followers.
We also used more traditional methods such as emailing student organizations and
schools explaining who we were and promoting our video. We contacted six community
colleges to encourage sharing our video with their students. We personally went to speak
with Fullerton College EOPS and Transfer Center to ask them if they would share their
students. We as well contacted on-campus organizations like ASI, Ad club, PRSSA, the
CSUF Comm department and more.

Lastly, we approached students on campus to reach them on an informal level in an

everyday student environment. We printed several flyers featuring a QR code that lead
directly to our YouTube video as well as a funny caption to draw audiences in (see
appendix). We posted these flyers outside classrooms, on bulletin boards, on bathroom
stalls and personally handed them out to groups of individuals. These efforts resulted in
at least 200 views on the day that we were handing out flyers alone.

Tools
Tools we used to help meet our goal include:

Hootsuite

Pitch emails

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

Flyers

YouTube

QR code generator

Twitonomy

Networking pages (Disney Alumni Association)

Example Photo: The Disney Alumni Association has almost 20,000 college members from
all over the world who have successfully completed a Disney Internship. Many of these
students are looking for ways for pursue their Disney career and are on the lookout for
colleges that they could transfer to.

Appendix
Contest Images
This graphic was made for and posted on the CSUF
PRSSA social media accounts before the video was
live.

This was our first post

announcing the contest. We
also created graphics to post
throughout the week to
announce a new winner
each day, which you will find
below.

Instagram
Our Instagram was created to
promote creativity and inform
students of on campus
opportunities. We used both content
from students and clubs. Each post
was informative and taught them
something they didnt know.

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Twitter
Due to the nature of Twitter, we
were able to post more frequent. We
retweeted information that was
useful to students. Luckily, we were
able to incorporate the photo of the
day and found little known
information around campus to
share. We achieved credibility to the
point where students started to
come to us for campus questions.

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Pages Who Shared Our Video

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Results

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References
1. Atkinson, D. (2014, March 01). Post Smarter: The Best Times to Use Social
Platforms. Retrieved December 07, 2016, from
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232645
2. Coffee by the Numbers. (2014). Retrieved December 07, 2016, from
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/multimedia-article/facts/
3. Greenwood, S., Perrin, A., & Duggan, M. (2016). Social Media Update 2016.
Retrieved December 06, 2016, from
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/
4. How Does Cal State Fullerton Rank Among America's Best Colleges? (2015). Retrieved
December 06, 2016, from
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/cal-state-fullerton-1137

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