BACKGROUND
Please describe your organization.
Our organization is Salem State University, a public four-year university in Massachusetts.
What is your role and responsibilities?
I'm a staff associate in the institutional advancement office. I am in charge of website updates and social media strategies for the alumni association.
OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE
What was the business challenge your company was facing that incited the need for a social media marketing platform?
We were looking for a way to visualize our social media activity and engagement during our events. We had been using a different company and weren't satisfied. We wanted to have some visuals up on a screen during commencement for parents, family, and friends who would come into our sport arenas and wait for a couple hours before the events started.
SOLUTION
Did your company have a formal selection process for deciding on a social media management platform?
I did some research on popular social media management platforms. We looked into many different platforms and implemented a few of them through their free trial periods. We found Zoomph, and it was exactly what we needed.
What is your annual spend on the platform?
We are currently on Zoomph's Premium pricing plan. We're most likely going to downgrade to the free when we don't have events and then upgrade back to Premium when we do have large events. We have to be careful with our spending, so we plan on a month-to-month basis, not yearly.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results of your content marketing campaign since initial implementation of the platform?
On our first online giving campaign, we asked people to be ambassadors and spread the word about it. This is the first time we've been able to get analytics on the reach we had. We were able to see that more than 200,000 people that were not aware of our campaign became aware of it because of our implementation of Zoomph. Zoomph allowed us to reach more people than we thought possible. We are very happy with the results.
FEATURES
What impressed you the most about Zoomph?
We're very happy with the visuals that Zoomph makes for us. They are very flexible, and we can use them for events.
Can you talk about the collaboration options available, such as multiple users and comments?
We have two users on the account. We like that more than one person can go in and use it. It's not completely reliant on one person. We're happy with it.
What about the automation tools available?
We have not really looked into the automation tools. We've mostly been posting on social media manually.
Which distribution and integration options, such as the available social media channels, have you used?
We've mainly been using Zoomph with Twitter and Instagram. We did a "Giveaway Challenge" and we integrated Facebook onto that as well. I like that we can use it with Instagram. A lot of social media management platforms leave Instagram out. Including pictures from Instagram gives us a lot more content to work with.
Can you speak to the tracking and analytics tools available, such as lead nurturing and conversion rates?
The analytics have been very valuable to us. This month we did an online giveaway challenge, and we were able to measure how many people we reached and how many people engaged with the campaign. We can measure just about any part of our campaign with Zoomph.
Have you found it necessary to use any of the company's available tutorials or support resources? Was the support useful and accessible?
I haven't had to use them. I felt like everything was intuitive. I may have had to ask a question, and their response was immediate. I was thrilled with their customer service.
Are there any areas of the platform that you feel are not intuitive or that you feel could be improved upon?
I think that they could improve their Facebook integration. I would like to be able to pull in public posts from people who talk about us onto our campaigns. Right now, we can only pull in posts if people comment on our Facebook page. I understand that there are privacy issues, but if the posts are public, I would love to be able to use them for our campaigns.
OVERVIEW
We ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the platform for ease of use and implementation?
Five.
What would you give the platform's features for desired functionality?
Four. It's great, but I think that the Facebook integration could be better.
For support, as in responsiveness and resources available?
Five. The day of commencement, we were having a lot of technical issues on our end. So, I sent emails to their support team, and their response was so quick and helpful. They could not be better.
For overall usability and satisfaction with the platform?
Four and a half.
How likely are you to recommend the platform to a similar business?
Five. We've been happy with it.