Finalsite has been designing social media mash-up pages since social media was a "thing" for schools, appearing on school websites as early as 2010. Social media was still in its early stages for schools then, with some early adopters getting ahead of trends. But by 2015, at least 50% of the websites we launched had some sort of social media component, with many schools opting for a custom mash-up.

As social media has increased in popularity, so did its need to be a part of school websites, as it offers the opportunity to provide authentic, up-to-date content with minimal effort from your school's website team. It's why by the end of 2016, almost every single website we launched had a social media component thanks to the release of a new product, Finalsite Feeds.

Finalsite Feeds is a module that allows clients to build custom social media mash-ups from more than 15 social media networks, monitor and moderate posts, and analyze their success. While most schools use the product to simply tie their most recent social media posts into their school's website, some schools are pushing the new product to new heights.

One of those schools is Choate Rosemary Hall. Sarah Gordon, the school's Assistant Director of Communications for Web and Social Media, joined us at FinalsiteU in June to share just how influential Finalsite Feeds has been for their marketing, changing the way they share social content on their website.

The first main component of Choate's website social strategy is the custom look of their feed.

The Live@Choate feed is a custom design by our Senior Web Designer Brittany Murray. Brittany says she found inspiration from their original mash-up page, the "Sounder Board." However, she decided that it was time to give their feed a more bright and vibrant feel. "Rather than using all of their colors, I chose to keep it minimal, yet still bold, with their main blues and yellow," said Brittany.

The new design can be found on their homepage, as well as their "Live @ Choate" social media mash-up page. However, these are not the only locations where Choate uses Finalsite Feeds; they have an entire social strategy dedicated to the module's robust functionality.

Finalsite Feeds and Social Media Strategy

Prior to Sarah, there wasn't a dedicated social media manager at the school, which meant there wasn't a social media strategy. Now, things are much different.

A big piece of using Finalsite Feeds is actually creating different streams of content, whether they be hashtags or social accounts — so part of Sarah's job is taking into account what her audiences want to engage with.

So, they take the time to know their audiences. Through continuous planning and researching these audiences, they've become experts in knowing what kind of social media posts they need to create to target the audience and show them what they want to see.

They rely on programs like Sprout Social and Canva to create and share their content, but then use Finalsite Feeds and Composer to display social content throughout their website. The Feeds element lets schools create different mash-ups for different site pages, and Choate capitalizes on this with custom site sections for departments and activities.

For example, they have their school photographer upload pictures of some of the athletic teams into a specific flickr album, which is pulled in as a source in their Feed on this page. They setup the Feeds element so it only shows that one source, and display any new photos in the feed once the school photographer adds them to the album in Flickr.

They also use it for more time-limited events, including these fun highlights from their last reunion.

By having Finalsite Feeds incorporated into their school's website, Choate also has the ability to track analytics , such as the number of page views, how many clicks went back to social media posts from the feed and the number of followers the school's social accounts are gaining over time. This allows Sarah to further fine-tune the content and sources she uses on Choate's website based on which posts are the most successful.

The Value of Hashtags for Internal and External Campaigns

With Feeds, you can use a hashtag as a source — meaning you can pull in social posts from everyone in your community, not just your school. This is an example of authentic content: posts that individuals from your community share on their own on social media about your school. The value of this is not only is it free, but additional content can be shared on your social platforms without you having to do any work; it allows your feed to have a nice variety of content with different viewpoints (and if you're like me, people will love seeing their post featured on your feed).