Pinterest Management:

Q&A with Colorado State University’s Pinterest Coordinator, Ashley Manweiler

Ashley Manweiler is a Colorado State University graduate, now working with the Office of External Relations as the Pinterest Coordinator with the Social Media team. Like most incoming college students, Manweiler wanted to be a forensic psychologist when she first came to CSU. She said the “best decision” she made during her college career was taking the Front Range Community College career test, which made her realize creativity and writing were both her strengths and her passion. “I had no idea I would end up working in social, but I couldn’t be happier,” Manweiler said.

Manweiler started her journey as an intern with Colab, the Lory Student Center marketing shop at CSU, where she had the opportunity to be the social media coordinator for the student center. She spoke to the challenges that she faced in that position, creating content that people really want to engage with. “It’s hard to be genuinely funny and cool on social media — especially when your target audience is college students — while still maintaining the integrity and professionalism for the university,” she explained.

Manweiler used this quote in her pre-interview, showing her passion for the uniqueness of her chosen platform: “People use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as who they are. People use Pinterest as who they want to become.”

I (Gillispie) had the pleasure of sitting down with Ashley (Manweiler) this week to discuss her work in social media:

Gillispie: Can you elaborate on your experience as social media coordinator for the Lory Student Center? What were you getting yourself into?

Manweiler: When I first applied for that internship, I thought, you know, I’m on social media but I’ve never helped an organization develop a brand on social media. And so, it was really a weird learning curve for me because in some ways it is very different to do social media as a brand and really capture the brand’s voice and also engage with people who want to be engaged with so they don’t think that you’re boring.

Gillispie: In your pre-interview, you talked about maintaining balance of professional image and engaging content; what did you find worked best?

Manweiler: So, if you think about what I do in terms of journalism, my beat is the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, so I help with Pinterest and I help with a few initiatives. I think from that, you really have to think about who your audience is, and analytics are so great on social media because we know most of our Vet Med audience is older than say CSU’s Facebook page. And it’s interesting because our generation isn’t engaging as much with brands, especially on Facebook, and so our alumni are really the ones that we engage with. So, when we create content we really craft it for the platform, so in this case Facebook, on move-in day we might ask, “What dorm did you live in?” And then on Instagram where there’s a younger population, then we’ll gear it more toward our current students.

It’s all about figuring out what your audience wants to hear from you, so on Pinterest we see what our followers are pinning and what happens when you type in ‘Colorado State University’ and see what people are already saying about us to see what kind of content we can provide them. And then also, we look at what the most popular pins on Pinterest are in general to see if there is a need or wish for content that isn’t necessarily there or that we can add to.

Gillispie: So, with that, what is CSU’s Pinterest strategy?

Manweiler: So kind of our Pinterest strategy is two things; we try and get that brand loyalty and that ram pride with current students you know with our “Green and Gold” boards, and then we try to reach out to other audiences who might not know about Colorado State, that’s the main thing that we’re doing. And so, my favorite part is the research that we do and giving people pins that they can use.

And so, in cooperation with campus partners, we have a social media committee where we have representatives from all eight colleges, and I think we have half of the colleges in Pinterest with a board right now. The College of Health and Human Sciences specifically has things like lifestyle, fitness tips, health and exercise boards, it’s phenomenal. With the Vet Hospital we do pet pins (a lot of repins because there are a lot of cute animals on there). There’s a lot of research on how people really want that and they want to know about Colorado State.

And actually a lot of our audience isn’t from Colorado, but from really populated areas like New York, Seattle, L.A., and I think Denver is like 4th or 5th on the list, but we’re really reaching larger audiences which is totally what we want to do.

And we also make sure that we are consistent with other platforms; it’s about engaging, it’s not about just pushing your content out there, so we definitely have an 80–20 rule, where we will repin about 80 percent of our content and then we use about 20 percent of our own so that we don’t seem 100 percent self-promotional. We try to repin some of what our followers are pinning and it’s great — they love that. We’re also partnered with the Denver Broncos and everything so we pin for them. It’s all very strategic and then there’s also days were we just like go find things to pin.

Gillispie: This challenge of balance was something, you say, that pulled you to the profession. What else would you say makes you enjoy this job?

Manweiler: I think I just love it so much in my personal life, because it’s so true even though the aspirations may never happen, it’s so fun to create your own boards and I think that Pinterest is just so unique in that you’re helping people find who they want to become and you’re also engaging with them in a way that you’re establishing yourself not only as a brand but as a friend, as a person.

Gillispie: There are arguments that Pinterest can be more organizational at times than a world of “wish lists.” Would you use the word “aspirational” to describe Pinterest or something else?

Manweiler: I definitely think it’s aspirational, a lot of it is aspirational, and some things might be bucket lists for down the road, and I also think that it is such a great platform because you’re not only using content from organizations but your using stuff from your peers and from your friends. And so, somebody might put out a really cool “Do it Yourself” that is affordable and that can be done, so I think that it’s right in the middle, it’s aspirational goals for your wedding or your future, but you also have those really good tools that you can use right now. It’s just how you use it, mine is definitely more aspirational than like ‘use it right now,’ but I think with CSU’s we try to make it more ‘use it right now’ than it is aspirational. We do have a wedding board, but for the most part, with the health tips or our decoration board it’s more timely. One of our top pins right now is “How to Build a Backyard Chicken Coop,” — it’s one of the craziest pins, and so I think it’s just really important to give information that people can use right now.

Gillispie: We’ve talked a little about your strategy and engaging your audience and trying to focus on the attainable pins, so what would you say is your Pinterest goal, if you had to put it in one sentence what would that be?

Manweiler: I would say that our goal for Pinterest is to create content that both encourages Ram pride as well as reaching a broader audience and to increase awareness about Colorado State and what we do here.

Gillispie: What do you look for within Pinterest’s analytics? How do you know you are being successful?

Manweiler: So Chase Baker handles analytics, and it takes up most of his time, but he’s really great at it. So every month he puts in our information and kind of bases it off of the average amount of users, average monthly users and then average daily impressions. Then he develops a chart and we can see if we’re increasing in all of those numbers. So really we just want to make sure that that people are looking at our content and finding it useful.

Gillispie: The analytics you showed me display a significant increase in Pinterest engagement — what do you think is the hardest part of what you do with a growing Pinterest page?

Manweiler: I think, especially with the university and social media in general, it’s hard to know everything that’s going on around campus, so it’s really important to rely on campus partners, and I think that the partnerships that we have, have just grown and become more successful over the last year and that was super helpful because yes, you know social media and yes you’re a coordinator but you’re never going to know everything. You’re never going to know the details of what’s happening over here and all you can do is help facilitate what they know and put it on Pinterest in a meaningful way. And so really developing those relationships across campus can make things a lot easier.

Gillispie: Great, so do you have any tips for aspiring public relations students?

Manweiler: If you want to go directly into social media, the best thing that I did for myself was figure out what it looked like and really just owned it. Within the College of Veterinary Medicine, our researchers are like, “Eh, no thanks, I don’t need it,” but I really own the expertise.

I don’t know if you heard about Brutus, the dog, he was left out in frozen temperatures and the breeder amputated all of his paws. So he ended up going through foster homes and one of them ended up adopting him and working to develop prosthetics for him and then they started coming up to CSU to get rehab. I found that story, wrote the story, pitched it on social media and owned that expertise, and next thing you know it’s CSU’s number one story of all time.

It can be intimidating to come into a new job and be the youngest one there, just know that you have information that you gained at Colorado State that they didn’t have when they were in college, especially with social media, and so… own it.

Gillispie: What about advice for brand managers trying to engage the Pinterest audience?

Manweiler: I would say, do your research first, figure out what Pinterest is all about, figure out what people are pinning, what would make YOU pin because there is a different voice on Pinterest when you’re using pins, you need to be short, snappy and get people to click.

And then, as you gain followers, see what your followers are engaged with — engage with them so you’re not pushing that content to them, but you’re developing mutual, beneficial relationships as well as, when you find out what they pin, pin stuff they would want to see. Make it broad, don’t think that, “Oh, we’re CSU so we’re only talking to CSU students and alumni,” think about everyone else in the world who could find your content really useful and speak to them as well.

And really organize your boards, I think, because if you have a pin that’s really popular, people are probably going to go back to your boards to see what else you’re pinning on that board. So if you are really organized but you don’t have anything else on that board, you’re going to lose followers.

And, pin regularly, pin every single day. We try to pin seven to ten pins per day, and usually that’s around 4 o’clock.

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So, what did I learn from Ashley Manweiler? Two main things come to mind: own your expertise and research your audience in order to connect with them beyond your brand. As it always is in public relations — we have to build mutually beneficial relationships with our targeted audiences no matter the platform.