Reach is Officially Live - Check Out Our Launch!

Good afternoon everyone!

Today is officially the day. Reach is coming out of closed beta and open to everyone!

For those of you who have been following along for a while now, this is long overdue.

It has been over nine months since we first asked the question. What if there could be a better system for higher ed social media managers? So thank you, everyone. Many of you have followed along, provided us with your insight and expertise, and tried out what we believe will be the future of social media in higher education.

I'm so excited I couldn't sleep last night. While we may be live, we know there's still lots of work to be done. Today, we will cover not only our launch, but the future we see and what's next for this newsletter.

Let's dive in!

WHAT WE’RE LAUNCHING WITH

Our Launch Video is Officially Live!

I just posted our launch video on my LinkedIn — a short walkthrough of the problem and what makes Reach unique. Launch videos aren't very common in higher ed, so this is the first one we've gotten to post, which makes it especially exciting. Give it a watch! I'd greatly appreciate a like as we capitalize on the momentum.

WHAT’S STILL BEING BUILT

We didn't want to wait any longer, so not everything is fully ready yet. We intend to be collaborators and to listen to help form our roadmap. With that, we are coming at this with full transparency about what's ready and what's not. If there's something we don't have that you can't live without, not only do we want to know that, but the last thing we want is to provide you an experience that is anything short of exceptional.

Consider this not just a personal promise but a commitment to you, to build for this industry and to solve the challenges facing higher education and the role social media is playing.

Platforms Not Ready

We are launching with full compatibility for Meta platforms (Instagram, Facebook, & Threads). While all infrastructure is in place to support all platforms, we are still waiting on approvals from the following social networks, along with estimates on when we expect to hear back from our first round of review. This hopefully won't require another submission, so that once approved, we can go live. You can still plan out posts to these platforms and post natively, but direct publishing and insights will not be available.

• X (expected in 1 to 2 weeks)

• TikTok (expected in 1 to 2 weeks)

• LinkedIn Company Pages (expected in 2 to 3 weeks)

• YouTube (expected in 4 to 6 weeks)

Other Platforms on Our Radar, Not Yet Implemented

• Bluesky

• Pinterest

If there are any others you hope to see, please let us know.

Monitoring Comments & Mentions

We do not have a method to pull in comments on posts or times you get mentioned across social media, enabling you to manage and respond when appropriate. While we have basic infrastructure to support this in our development servers, this is a separate permission which will require approval from all social networks, so we expect this to be 1 to 2 months away. However, as we shape this feature, we are taking into account the uniqueness of higher education, especially public institutions and their ability to delete comments and the process around it. Something we are focusing on.

Social Media Takeovers

Despite it being mentioned on Reach, our specific software to enable takeovers is not ready. As important as it is to be secure and correct, at the moment it's not at the standard we'd want to roll out. For now, our native forms can be used to support takeovers somewhat seamlessly, but the more robust takeover feature we expect to be ready in 1.5 to 2.5 months, which will line up with the start of fall semester.

Social Listening

We do not have any form of social listening based on keywords, hashtags, etc. for broader higher education. While you can monitor hashtags or keywords being mentioned across higher ed, you cannot do so for accounts outside higher ed. Therefore, this is not standard social listening. This is a much bigger initiative, but for the record, our official position on social listening is that what's currently out there doesn't serve higher education. Given how unique higher ed is with acronyms and other specifics, social listening doesn't pick up the conversations you actually care about. It's more about being in the spaces your community is in, rather than how standard companies may need to use social listening. This is a much larger initiative we want shaped by community feedback, so we have no estimate at the moment. Depending on how priorities shake out, this could be 3 to 12 months.

WHAT’S NEXT

The Reach Report: Weekly Insights on Higher Ed Social

This newsletter has actually grown to be quite sizable in terms of subscribers. While, as of late, the frequency has gone down as we've focused more on polish versus rapid iteration, it would be such a shame not to evolve this newsletter to serve all of the marketers following along. Going forward, my goal is to be weekly and cover the following topics.

• What’s New In Social Media

  • This may be new features being introduced by platforms, trends emerging, or other updates worth knowing.

• What’s New Across Higher Ed

  • Any news in higher ed we think may be relevant to social media in higher ed.

• Industry Snapshot

  • High level engagement trends we're seeing across higher ed, a mix between our Reach Report and industry benchmarks. Expect trending hashtags, baseline engagement rate, and growth metrics.

• Blake’s Bookmarks

  • Since being chronically online is part of the job, between showing off Reach's research capabilities and my own scrolling, I will highlight posts each week I believe are standouts and ones I would save.

• What’s New in Reach

  • If there is anything new in Reach, I will briefly mention it to keep you in the loop as new things become available in the platform.

I am very open to feedback! Since we are building exclusively for higher education, if different or new sections make sense, I'd love to include them. Anything from job postings in higher ed social, to a spot to plug webinars and resources. I'm sure as this newsletter goes on, it will grow and evolve to be as valuable a resource as it can be.

WHAT’S NEW IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Google Now Allows You To Connect Social Accounts to Search to See Which Social Posts Are Being Searched

While today won't be a full issue of the Higher Ed Digest, I did want to give a granule of the type of information I hope to cover going forward.

In case you missed my LinkedIn post, a few weeks ago Google announced the ability to connect social accounts to Google Search Console. This confirms the continued trend of social media becoming a bigger and bigger part of SEO and AI visibility, as you can see which social posts gained traffic from Google and for which queries. I've now been able to try it out myself and have spent many hours looking through what is driving traffic.

WHAT’S NEW IN REACH

Switch to Reach: Get Up To 6 Months Free*

As part of our launch offer, we know how budgets and procurement work in higher education. If you try the free trial and are excited to switch but are stuck in a current contract, this offer is here to help. You can get up to six months of Reach, enough to carry you through the end of your contract so you don't lose access during procurement. Check out the offer!

That’s it for this week! Again, we’re grateful for everyoen who’s followed along. We wouldn’t be here without you.

For the first time ever, try out signing up for Reach with a free 30 day trial.

Let us know what you thought of this newslettter, the direction we’re heading, and if you try out Reach of course feedback! We’re excited to continue growng this with you all.

Until next time!

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