BYU found some important pieces of data in its campus climate survey: 1. Survivors of sexual assault first turn to friends and roommates. 2. Friends and roommates felt ill equipped to help. 3. Friends and roommates wanted to help. So we created an Instagram story directed to the entire student body, coaching them on what to say, how to help and what specific resources to point their friends and roommates to, if they come to them for support after an assault.
#HEWEB18 - Using an Instagram Story to Help Sexual Assault Survivors
1. USING AN INSTAGRAM
STORY TO HELP
SEXUAL ASSAULT
SURVIVORS
JON MCBRIDE
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
DON’T SHY AWAY FROM TOUGH TOPICS ON SOCIAL
9. USING AN INSTAGRAM
STORY TO HELP
SEXUAL ASSAULT
SURVIVORS
JON MCBRIDE, JOE HADFIELD & SUMMER HERLEVI
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
DON’T SHY AWAY FROM TOUGH TOPICS ON SOCIAL
10. TODAY WE’LL LOOK AT …
• Sexual assault on college campuses today … an important issue
that all of us are, or should, be addressing
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
11. TODAY WE’LL LOOK AT …
• Sexual assault on college campuses today … an important issue
that all of us are, or should, be addressing
• How social media can help
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
12. TODAY WE’LL LOOK AT …
• Sexual assault on college campuses today … an important issue
that all of us are, or should, be addressing
• How social media can help
• An Instagram story at BYU that had significant results
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
13. TODAY WE’LL LOOK AT …
• Sexual assault on college campuses today … an important issue
that all of us are, or should, be addressing
• How social media can help
• An Instagram story at BYU that had significant results
• Lessons learned the the planning and execution of that story
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
14. TODAY WE’LL LOOK AT …
• Sexual assault on college campuses today … an important issue
that all of us are, or should, be addressing
• How social media can help
• An Instagram story at BYU that had significant results
• Lessons learned the the planning and execution of that story
• How you could produce something similar
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
27. “Students at BYU are eager for more
education on how to prevent sexual violence.
These findings suggest that university efforts
to strengthen sexual violence prevention
efforts will be well received by the student
community.”
— Dr. Lindsay Orchowski, Brown University
42. REACTION
• 24,000+ story views
• 100+ DMs
• DMs from those personally in crisis: 11
• DMs from those with friends in crisis: 6
• DMs with clarifying questions: 23
• DMs simply thanking us for doing this: 51
• DMs with concerns we helped resolve: 2
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
43. REACTION
• Both the Title IX Office and the Survivor Advocate saw an
influx of reports made and appointments scheduled the day
of the story and throughout the following week.
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
46. TAKEAWAYS
1. Using the right voice(s)
2. Addressing the right audience
3. Utilizing experts
4. Taking time to get the script, filming and editing right
5. Promoting with purpose
6. Working with university leaders
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
79. FINAL TAKEAWAYS
• Find a way to effectively approach tough issues on social
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
80. FINAL TAKEAWAYS
• Find a way to effectively approach tough issues on social
• Utilize the data you have to tell the story
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
81. FINAL TAKEAWAYS
• Find a way to effectively approach tough issues on social
• Utilize the data you have to tell the story
• Social has a huge impact on your campus’s culture
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
82. FINAL TAKEAWAYS
• Find a way to effectively approach tough issues on social
• Utilize the data you have to tell the story
• Social has a huge impact on your campus’s culture
• Instagram stories could be your best tool to directly
communicate with your student audience on social
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
83. FINAL TAKEAWAYS
• Find a way to effectively approach tough issues on social
• Utilize the data you have to tell the story
• Social has a huge impact on your campus’s culture
• Instagram stories could be your best tool to directly
communicate with your student audience on social
• Consider who you’re talking to and be deliberate with voice
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
84. FINAL TAKEAWAYS
• Find a way to effectively approach tough issues on social
• Utilize the data you have to tell the story
• Social has a huge impact on your campus’s culture
• Instagram stories could be your best tool to directly
communicate with your student audience on social
• Consider who you’re talking to and be deliberate with voice
• Utilize your experts
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
85. FINAL TAKEAWAYS
• Find a way to effectively approach tough issues on social
• Utilize the data you have to tell the story
• Social has a huge impact on your campus’s culture
• Instagram stories could be your best tool to directly
communicate with your student audience on social
• Consider who you’re talking to and be deliberate with voice
• Utilize your experts
• Take the time necessary to get this right
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
86. FINAL TAKEAWAYS
• Find a way to effectively approach tough issues on social
• Utilize the data you have to tell the story
• Social has a huge impact on your campus’s culture
• Instagram stories could be your best tool to directly
communicate with your student audience on social
• Consider who you’re talking to and be deliberate with voice
• Utilize your experts
• Take the time necessary to get this right
• Promote it like crazy
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
87. FINAL TAKEAWAYS
• Find a way to effectively approach tough issues on social
• Utilize the data you have to tell the story
• Social has a huge impact on your campus’s culture
• Instagram stories could be your best tool to directly
communicate with your student audience on social
• Consider who you’re talking to and be deliberate with voice
• Utilize your experts
• Take the time necessary to get this right
• Promote it like crazy
• Listen, listen, listen
@JMCBEE84 #HEWEB18
Welcome to this session on not shying away from tough topics on social media
Today we’re going to be sharing some lessons learned from a very important Instagram story aimed at helping victims of sexual assault
This is where the three of us get to go to work every day
We love working at BYU
Provo, Utah
Base of the Wasatch Mountains
30,000 students
Amazingly beautiful campus
No. 2 yield rate in the nation behind Harvard … that translates to having a very engaged, excited follower base
“To introduce ourselves …
This is Summer, a student employee who has worked for us for the past year and played a huge role in this project. We’re lucky to have her here today, and she’ll be sharing some of her perspective on this project.
- Another conversation about how we utilize students in our office
We'll monitor throughout the session
Especially share your thoughts while we show you our story
Working with this type of content, we’ve learned the importance about being sensitive to audiences who have experienced sexual assault
We want to just be clear that we will be discussing sexual assault today, including some DMs that reference specific points that could be triggering
WE ALSO LEARNED ABOUT USING THE TERM SURVIVOR
And we’re going to start where last year’s eduWeb ended
In the 2017 eduWeb closing keynote, Nikki Sunstrum talked about using our social influence for good and not shying away from tough topics on social
We really took that to heart and used a lot of what she was talking about to help us along in our project we’ll be talking about today
With that, let’s get right into this
Here’s what we’re going to look at today.
Here’s what we’re going to look at today.
Here’s what we’re going to look at today.
Here’s what we’re going to look at today.
Here’s what we’re going to look at today.
It’s obviously no secret that sexual assault is a problem on college campuses. As we saw with the #MeToo movement, sexual assault is a problem everywhere.
If you think your campus DOESN’T have this problem, you’re probably wrong.
There are headlines everywhere. Some are very negative about specific things are students have done.
Some are about brave and courageous students who are trying to make their voices heard.
Some have to do with often-complex legal issues.
(BTW … you’ll notice that the schools referenced in this stories, most of which are from major national outlets, are large school and small schools … public schools and private schools. Truly … no one is immune from this issue.)
Hopefully our institutions are making some positive changes. These are things we can and should help promote and get the word out.
At BYU, we had our own issues that led to some pretty major changes on campus.
It took the university two years to fully implement all of the changes. Those were a long two years, but once the changes were announced and the news coverage started to die down a little, with headlines like this, we were kind of left thinking …
It felt like we weren’t done. It felt like we needed to do more. Surely a few changes in policy weren’t going to solve all of the problems that existed previously.
PRESIDENTS CHANGE POLICYIT TAKES A VILLAGE TO CHANGE CULTUREIF SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE TOWN SQUARE, WE CARRY SOME REAL INFLUENCE RE: THAT CULTURE
To give us some insight on what that culture was like, here’s summer to explain her experience as a student
Summer: I was a freshman when controversy arose about sexual assault cases at BYU. Anecdote that notes general awareness that there was an issue but sort of a taboo topic among many students.
Arrived as a FRESHMAN
Knew that there were things happening on campus
The topic of sexual assault felt very taboo
Didn't quite know how to engage with the topic as a student
Summer: I was a freshman when controversy arose about sexual assault cases at BYU. Anecdote that notes general awareness that there was an issue but sort of a taboo topic among many students.
Arrived as a FRESHMAN
Knew that there were things happening on campus
The topic of sexual assault felt very taboo
Didn't quite know how to engage with the topic as a student
Fast forward to when I was a junior and joined the University Communications team. Our office published the results of BYU’s campus climate survey on sexual assault. Many of your schools have done or are planning to do a survey like this. These surveys provide information about incidents of assault, attitudes and awareness, and recommended actions that are specific to your campus culture.
As a student, this really helped me better understand this issue on campus.
Three things stood out from our survey results…
The first two things that stood out were that:
1. VICTIMS TURNED TO FRIENDS/ROOMMATES2. FRIENDS/ROOMMATES DIDN’T KNOW THE BEST WAY TO HELP THEM
The third thing that stood out was that our students really wanted to help
Whad Dr. Lindsay Orchowski from Brown University, an expert in this field, talk our department through the findings of the survey, and this was a major point of emphasis.
At this point our team realized we had an opportunity to help our students understand how they could engage with the topic
They need to help, they want to help, but they don’t know how to help
Let’s teach them how to help
It was a great opportunity to lead out with social, again tying back to Nikki Sunstrum’s guidance
We chose to turn to Instagram, where we've had a lot of success with student takeovers and specifically with students talking to students
This fit the tone we wanted to strike
Instagram is also the place where our students are
This wouldn’t make sense to do primarily as a Facebook video
At this point we want to show you the story
This is about 5 minutes long, in total
You might think 5 minutes is pretty long for a social video, but our analytics showed that the drop off was very minimal and that there was actually less drop off in this video than in our average social videos
Again ... remember to use the hashtag
Share with us your questions or specific elements of this that you want us to address so that we make sure we get to those in the second half of our presentation
Before we get into lessons learned, we want to tell you about the social listening involved here.
- Picked a private meeting room where we won't be disturbed.
- Blocked out schedules for us three plus the Survivor advocate, title ix director.
- Invitations extended to counseling center and a dean on campus who chaired the campus climate survey.
- Craft response together. Identify which team member was responding
People who were in the Response Room
Tried to have a few responses ready beforehand
The messages started coming in
We decided to have Lisa identify herself and use her name
How hard should we push someone to get help? Complex question, spot-on answer.
Social media story sparked this conversation. Through Instagram DMs.
Rethink the potential of your channels.
Credibility
Validating
Men
Now we’re going to take a step back and walk you through the process of creating this and what we learned
Students talking to students
Female and male
Not a cheerleader tone / need realness and authenticity
Screening the voices
Students talking to students
Female and male
Not a cheerleader tone / need realness and authenticity
Screening the voices
Summer we knew, John we didn't
"You're the one with your reputation on the line here"
What about Summer on this one? Contrast the taboo feeling with this vibe
Trying to make this type of content too cute or fun or funny is trivializing the content
Students talking to students
Female and male
Not a cheerleader tone / need realness and authenticity
Screening the voices
Summer we knew, John we didn't
"You're the one with your reputation on the line here"
What about Summer on this one? Contrast the taboo feeling with this vibe
It was an important decision to not only address this to the victims
Focus on the helpers
The helpers are listening
They want to help
It was an important decision to not only address this to the victims
Focus on the helpers
The helpers are listening
They want to help
Not just having them on camera, but having them assist with the script, help answer responses and even using them as influencers in helping share the story
It took us months to get this together
(Summer)
The script for this took a long time to write
We went through draft after draft, and as mentioned, we were running these drafts past our experts to make sure we were getting the details right
We utilized our university videographer
He’s a master at making even a talking head look really, really good
We knew this had to be produced well
This couldn’t be video shot on a phone
The high production value helped it to stand out
MAKE IT LOOK GREAT WITHOUT CALLING ATTENTION TO ITSELF
This is important … we knew this wasn’t our typical, fun, going-to-go-viral-by-itself content … we needed to put as much work as possible into as many people seeing this story as possible
Jon and Summer
This is the spreadsheet we used to compile all of the people and groups of people we wanted to reach out to, to help share the story and point to the story
The list includes media, professors, administrators, students and other influencers
We also helped this spread through some unique influencer media relations
We’re not sure if we invented that term or not
While we were shooting this section of the story with Julie, she asked if we would be contacting media ourselves about this, putting out a press release, etc.
We told her it felt a little self serving for us to pitch this ourselves, saying “look how good we are” about a topic as sensitive as this
Julie said if we weren’t going to say how good we are, she was going to for us
She offered to pitch reporters
That worked out great because of her influence … she was constantly being contacted by reporters about her sexual assault research
Channel 4 was the first to get in touch with us after Julie’s pitch
They actually wanted to do a story right away … we had to explain to them that we didn’t want them sharing the story before we could
That led to us sending them an embargoed Instagram story
Again, we think this might be the first use of the terms “embargoed Instagram story”
We followed a similar model with the Salt Lake Tribune … instead of pitching them ourselves, we asked another faculty member, who was on our sexual assault policy review board and who was recently interviewed by this reporter to send the pitch to her
This is our social media street team
They were essential in helping us reach our student audience
This is the email we sent to the street team, a day before we were going to post the story
We tried to be very clear re: what the project was, why it was important, etc., and that we wanted their help sharing this
We provided some resources including the first 15 seconds of the story that they could share on their own accounts and direct their friends and followers to the full version on our account
We gave them the original file and another file with an overlay as an example of something they could do
Here is some of the reaction to the story for these on the street team who we reached out to
That reaction trickled out to others in the student body
This was from a professor on campus
- this even led to conversations in higher education circles including this tweet from Liz Gross. A prominent social media voice in higher ed.
Of course we used our own social channels to spread the word
Way paid for a bit of a boost to specifically target our own students
Of course very few of our students still use Facebook, so it didn’t get a ton of reach, but it was important reach
Twitter became a very key promotion tool
This is obviously a very twitter-friendly topic that led to some great conversation among important audiences there
We also pinned the story to our saved stories
We had a lot of people asked where they could see this again after the story expires
This was our spreadsheet specifically outlining all of the different places we were promoting this and importantly, when we would be posting, exactly
We have full control of what gets posted on BYU social media accounts.
But for this topic, we wanted to give a final preview to university leadership before it went public. Pres, Student life, Gen Counsel.
Important tip: Get the project done and done well before you show it and before you present it to the prez.
Local permission. Our boss.
Easier to get behind something that looks finished. Limits the opportunities for micromanaging.
In some last-minute editing, we ended needing to replace a couple on-camera sections with text-only sections to clarify some policy details … but that was pretty much it
President and Mike anecdote
Finally …
THIS IS MY FRIEND ISAAC
Share story
This experience showed me that the work we were doing was important for this one friend of mine and also were on the right track to help our campus community as as whole
IF MY FRIEND WAS COMING TO ME FOR HELP, OTHERS ON OUR CAMPUS WOULD BE DOING THE SAME
This project overall was incredible to be a part of
Thank you for letting us share this with you today
(PHOTO WITH SUMMER AND FRIEND?)