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The following is a guest post by Paul Prewitt the Electronic Communications Coordinator at the University of Arkansas Alumni Association.  Paul was kind enough to share the inside scoop on their Social Marketing efforts. You can contact Paul online at (www.draftmotif.org) or connect through twitter.

By now most people have come to agree that Social Media is here to stay and that if you can endeavor down the social road map then you’d best start running as there is no “last place” prize. The “Are You Social? We Are!” campaign is the University of Arkansas Alumni Associations road map for the race.

Alumni Relations = Social Marketing

In the case of an alumni relation’s office we looked at Social Marketing and said “why not” after all we are in the business of “building relationships and connections”. This is where we get the second part of our campaign “get connected with fellow alumni and friends today and stay up to date” along with the name “www.arkalum.org/besocial”.

Although we do have bigger plans than just connecting people with each other and the University that is where we have decided to start (you must pace yourself to win the 5k).

Why all six Social Mediums?

The truth is that several of our social mediums were actually started by our alumni and friends so all we had to do was add them in and keep running. The nice part about this is that we’ll be able to track and see which of the social mediums is the most popular for our audiences along with the most effective for our goals.

What’s next? Be Social!

For now our primary goal is going to be “growth” along with “being social”. We cannot forget that the whole reason behind these is to “Be Social” so we must strive to make sure that we are actually keeping up with them as much as they are keeping up with us. That means that we’ll have to be actively replying to posts or comments made and following up with them.

Our stats before launching any marketing or promotions

I look forward to sharing our results with everyone in the future; make sure to check out www.draftmotif.org to see how we finish in the different parts of this race.

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alumni associations, alumni relation, alumni relations, arkansas alumni association, audiences, building relationships, communications coordinator, electronic communications, fellow alumni, marketing efforts, paul prewitt, road map, social marketing, university of arkansas, university of arkansas alumni association

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This post was written by:

Kyle James - who has written 197 posts on .eduGuru.

Kyle is an Inbound Marketing Consultant at HubSpot and  formerly the webmaster at Wofford College. Kyle is an active contributor in the social media spectrum. Although his background is technical, he claims to know a thing or two about marketing, but mostly that revolves around SEO, analytics, blogging, and social media. He has spoken at multiple conferences on topics ranging from e-mail marketing to social media and Web analytics. He's definitely a fairly nice guy.

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