themselves , surrounded by their anxious families , and opening those allimportant emails announcing whether they had been accepted to UC Davis … and the families erupt in joy . “ We ’ re looking at our community and selecting the tear-jerking stories and amplifying that ,” says Poggi .
The university uses Instagram Live to give upbeat virtual tours , celebrates admissions by creating custom Twitter banners with reaction GIFs , and responds individually to each person online . Their Ask an Aggie campaign , where students take over the Instagram account , won another national CASE award . One prospective transfer student had been direct messaging with UC Davis for two years , and when he was finally accepted , the team sent him a custom GIF of congratulations , and a reaction to that tweet racked up 14,900 likes . The university ’ s Twitter enthusiasm earned a shout-out from San Francisco Giants broadcaster ( and UC Davis alumna ) Amy Gutierrez , and the post even briefly trended nationally . iv . Track , test , measure
“ We ’ re always focused on the ROI ,” says Lopez . “ How are you going to measure that this is a positive investment ?” The back-end systems can measure not just likes but also clicks , conversions , inquiries , downloads and any incremental boosts over the baseline . Then there ’ s the AB testing — comparing the performance of version A and version B — to gauge which messages , images or content is most effective . “ This takes somebody going in and looking at the analytics ,” says Lopez . “ You can ’ t just spend five minutes on YouTube and then put an ad up .”
How does all of this translate to the bottom line ? That ’ s tricky . It ’ s good to set realistic expectations , as even the home runs , like Howard Hatch ’ s printing press phenomenon , don ’ t necessarily lead to monetization . Mello says the museum is making “ not a whole lot ” of direct revenue from TikTok livestreaming events — roughly $ 200 to $ 1,000 a month . And this is from a TikTok account with 1.6 million followers .
But then there are the intangibles . Mello has seen an uptick in virtual events for the museum , and during a recent TikTok livestreamed event , 40,000 people tuned in from all around the world . “ People were saying , ‘ Hey , from the Philippines ; hi , from Brazil ; hi , from the U . K .,’” says Mello . “ It ’ s exciting to see that , to have our little museum recognized by someone from another country .” More importantly , she says , “ Certainly , it ’ s solved the problem of ‘ let ’ s not be forgotten .’”
Jeff Wilser is the author of seven books , most recently “ Becoming a Firefighter ,” from Simon & Schuster ’ s Masters at Work series . On Twitter @ jeffwilser .
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