For a small private school of 1,400 students, Hillsdale College has a major presence in the digital world. The Hillsdale College Online Courses Facebook page has more than 76,000 likes, for example.
After years of impactful yet scattered Facebook and Twitter activity, the college, like many other organizations and companies in America, is now trying to unify their social media presence.
Hillsdale has hired Kraig McNutt as associate vice president of digital and new initiatives, and Kokko Tso `13 as his full-time assistant.
Their goal is to have a coherent social media strategy by Jan. 1.
“The most important thing is with websites and social media properties and channels, we have to have a unified brand, not like propaganda channels, but we need to be intentional about using them,” McNutt said.
McNutt has been involved with digital marketing since the Internet’s inception.
“I started my own agency and the first thing I tried to do was get companies to consider having a web page,” McNutt said. “I used to joke that in ‘95, people could not spell ‘WWW.’ It was rough going; hard to get a business back then to design a web page or consider digital marketing.”
McNutt and Tso explained that when Facebook and Twitter pages first became popular a couple of years ago, many different campus organizations started accounts of their own. Over time, many of them have gone dormant because their operators graduated or their purpose dissolved or changed.
McNutt is hoping to move the school out of that disorganization and into a more narrow focus. Tso stressed that their team’s focus is on “coming alongside” different organizations to aid them in a field that is increasingly more time-consuming and important.
“The whole idea is that in order to build awareness and encourage people to invest in the brand—there has to be a consistent brand, because a brand done properly creates emotion in consumer and with that is trust between us and the customer,” McNutt said. “That trust, if properly nurtured, can engage people … to invest time, resources, and even dollars in the mission.”
Last week, McNutt met with Brad Monastiere, sports information director. Monastiere and his team of student workers manage the athletic department’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, which Monastiere said is used for game pictures and quick updates, respectively.
Monastiere said he and McNutt talked about the importance of recognizing the unique identities of club and varsity sports, while keeping a consistent brand between the two. He also talked about McNutt’s help in the area of the website.
McNutt said Tso is in the process of hiring 20-40 student workers to do specific tasks ranging from content editing to video footage. Tso said he is always open to student feedback on the website.