Jacob Betzner

Marketing Strategy + Digital Storytelling

#ReadyToVaccinate Social Media Campaign

CHALLENGE

The Dean of the Duquesne University School of Pharmacy and the Head of the Division of Pharmacy Practice wanted to highlight student pharmacists being trained to administer immunizations on campus during the rollout of the initial COVID-19 vaccines in early 2021. In total, School of Pharmacy faculty trained nearly 600 student pharmacists to deliver immunizations. Ultimately, Duquesne University student pharmacists administered thousands of immunizations on campus and at practice sites throughout Pittsburgh and across the country.

STRATEGY

I collaborated with faculty members leading the trainings and student pharmacists to create content, including photography and video. To increase engagement, I developed the #ReadyToVaccinate social media campaign by curating content directly from student pharmacists administering vaccines at practice sites throughout the country. A simple form allowed student pharmacists to submit images along with unique accounts of administering immunization in the community to family members, friends, underserved populations and more. Using the PESO Framework, I leverage a combination of Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned marketing channels to increase reach and engagement on social media and traffic to the School of Pharmacy website.

LANDING PAGE

I created a landing page to house all the #ReadyToVaccinate stories and link to the full articles.

Social Media

EARNED MEDIA

The posts, in part helped showcase the work of the School of Pharmacy to a wide audience, leading to several earned media placement in local and regional news outlets.

RESULTS

The campaign led to earned media with articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, KDKA, WPXI, Next Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Magazine and the Duquesne University Times. Posts on shared media earned a reach of 83,306 and 6,617 engagements for a 7.94 percent engagement rate across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Interestingly, the campaign on Instagram reach included 22.4 percent of new profiles on average. I utilized the School of Pharmacy website–owned media­–to build a landing page housing all the submissions. Finally, the content built assets for future paid campaigns for recruitment. On a personal note, the Duquesne University Director of Social Media to give a short presentation on the campaign at a meeting with all social media managers and communicators throughout the university.