NUS Business School

Client Story

At A Glance

65%

Increase in follower count

250+

New organic fans added every month

258%

Increase in lifetime post reach

173%

Increase in engagement

Backstory

NUS Business School is the business school of the National University of (NUS). Globally recognized for excellence in education and research, the school offers a rigorous, relevant and rewarding business education to students from across the world.

Established in 1955, it began with a student strength of 21 and has today grown rapidly to become one of the leading business schools worldwide.

Offering a broad portfolio of academic programmes and a transformative learning experience, NUS Business School is committed to preparing students to lead in Asia and beyond.

It is ranked as the 4th best business school in Asia as per the QS Global MBA Rankings 2020.

Challenge

Challenge

NUS Business School recognized the importance of building a strong presence on social media but what it lacked was a unified strategy and a consistent brand voice.

Being a massive business school with various different departments, and programmes, they realized they had multiple social media accounts across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

For instance, the Career Services office was running one account, the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) department had their own pages and so on.

With zero coordination between the accounts and everyone pushing their own agenda, the communication was getting impacted with no real value add.

This was also causing confusion among potential applicants (from undergraduates to executive MBA) as they didn’t know which account they should connect and engage with.

The end result – there was a lot being said but very little being heard.

That’s when NUS Business School’s corporate communications team reached out to us at eVietGlobal LLC – they needed to clean up the ‘mess’ and wanted our help with putting together an effective and unified social media strategy.

Our Approach

The objective given to us was clear – we had to streamline the social media channels and develop a content strategy that would increase brand awareness, generate deeper engagement, build a positive reputation and direct traffic to the website.

We started work in July 2017 by conducting a comprehensive audit of all their existing social media channels. The idea behind the audit was to evaluate what the brand is doing, how they’re interacting with their audience and what their competitors are doing differently.

We uncovered 19 different pages across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

We looked into each one of them and analyzed the back-end data with an aim to understand their target audiences, the kind of content they’re posting, the frequency of posts and the engagement levels.

Parallelly, we also conducted a focus group discussion with the marketing teams of the seven departments to get a sense of each of their objectives behind starting the individual pages.

We then identified five key competitors and analyzed their social media performance. We found that NUS Business School had grossly underperformed across channels and that could be attributed to the following loopholes –

While every team knew what they wanted to achieve from social media, most of them lacked an understanding of social media trends and best practices. They treated social media as an outreach channel as opposed to an interactive, two-way communication platform.

None of the teams maintained a social media calendar which led to inconsistencies in the posting schedules. For them, social media was more of a secondary job function and that was reflected in the low engagement rates, poor reach and low follower count.

NUS Business School did not have a unified brand voice on social media because the teams were working in silos, without any collaboration and shared goals.

For example, on Internal Women’s Day, only the alumni page on Facebook posted a relevant piece of content while the LinkedIn and Twitter accounts carried generic articles surrounding women in leadership.

They never took a moment to measure the effectiveness of their social media strategy and evaluate how their content is being perceived.

Solution

On getting a clearer picture of the scenario, we conducted a SWOT analysis and implemented the following –

1. Established an Integrated Social Media Strategy

NUS Business School’s biggest strength was its strong branding. We wanted that to reflect in their social media presence which is why we defined a clear and distinct voice for the brand, centered around two key themes:

A destination of choice for tertiary education in business
A prime destination for working professionals to advance their careers

This served as a foundation for a strong social media strategy.

2. Consolidated Pages and Deployed a Cohesive Strategy

Clearly, having 19 different pages was not working for the brand.

We decided to consolidate them and develop a cohesive channel strategy based on their unique features, and the audience we aimed to target. We also established clear content guidelines for each of the channels to maintain consistency.

For instance, all the 11 pages on Facebook were merged into one page which targeted the undergraduate community, working professionals who wished to advance their careers and the alumni. We used geo-targeting mechanisms to ensure relevant content reached the desired audiences.

We used the LinkedIn page to target working professionals who want to network, look for jobs and improve their skills. In addition to this, we started a Showcase page (to give insights into the brand) and a School page (for alumni career insights and networking).

The 3 Instagram accounts were merged into one which was used to capture the vibrancy of student life.

We retained the main Twitter handle and used it to post thought leadership and cause-related, trending content pieces.

3. Developed a Content Calendar to Maintain Quality and Consistency of Posts

The ad-hoc and unorganized way of posting on social media was affecting brand perception, follower count and engagement.

We felt the need to deliver a unified brand experience across their channels that led to identifying three key content pillars, aligned to the brand mission and their overall social media strategy.

1. Excellence in education and research

2. Vibrant student life experience

3. Outstanding community achievements

Every piece of content was to be mapped to either of these pillars.

Basis this, we developed a centralized editorial calendar which included the major activities in the school, and significant national/global events.

We ensured that the content was slightly differentiated across platforms, giving followers a reason to follow NUS Business School across all four platforms.

4. Started Social Media Listening and Tracking Performance

We built social media listening capabilities to monitor and join relevant conversations surrounding NUS Business School.

We also set up social media goals and started tracking results against the key performance indicators to measure the effectiveness of our social media efforts.

By the end of the 1-year mark of working with NUS Business School, we aligned the entire school with a training session on how we revamped their social strategy and unified brand experience across channels to meet the objectives we set out to achieve.

Results

NUS Business School’s improved strategy and coordinated presence on social media proved to be hugely beneficial for the brand, leading to an increase in follower count, reach and engagement.

In two years of working with the brand, we achieved the following results –

65% increase in follower count with 250+ new organic fans added every month
258% increase in lifetime post reach
173% increase in engagement

We carried out another competitive benchmarking study to understand where the brand stands after eVietGlobal LLC’s involvement. We were pleased to report the spike in engagement level and performance.

Till today, we work with the NUS Business School to offer a consistent brand experience on social media while helping them expand their community, increase engagement and strengthen their reputation.

With a cohesive social media strategy and streamlined communication, the brand continues to win students from across the world, preparing them to lead from Asia.

NUS Business School’s improved strategy and coordinated presence on social media proved to be hugely beneficial for the brand, leading to an increase in follower count, reach and engagement.

In two years of working with the brand, we achieved the following results –

65% increase in follower count with 250+ new organic fans added every month
258% increase in lifetime post reach
173% increase in engagement

Till today, we work with the NUS Business School to offer a consistent brand experience on social media while helping them expand their community, increase engagement and strengthen their reputation.

With a cohesive social media strategy and streamlined communication, the brand continues to win students from across the world, preparing them to lead from Asia.