how to be an EDU social

{media} butterfly (and why?)

Don Laur - SIUC MCMASouthern Illinois University Carbondale - College of Mass Communication and Media Arts

twitter.com/siucmcma/ facebook.com/siucmcma/ youtube.com/siucmcma flickr.com/siucmcma

mcma.siuc.edu/linkedin Feedburner - http://feeds2.feedburner.com/siucmcmanews

... and managing iTunes U - itunes.siu.edu + Youtube EDU - youtube.com/SIUC

Oh, yeah, we still have a website at mcma.siuc.edu ;)

WTF is Social Media?

• Sorry, not being crude. This is the title of one of the best presentations available for social media. That presentation and its One Year Later followup are some of the most viewed presentations on slideshare. Shareshare itself in a social media site where people share presentations and comment on them.

• http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-the-fk-social-media

• http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-the-fk-is-social-media-one-year-later

What what is it about?• Social Media is about engaging in

meaningful conversions with an audience.

• The era of conversation.

• People want to talk to people, not PR guys.

• Be authentic, credible, and identifiable.

Building Relationships, will build CommunitiesIt will keep people connected ... and coming back.

if they lose interest?

... and engaged.

isn’t social media just another marketing channel?

• Social Media is Public Relations.

• Customer Service

• Loyalty-building

• Collaboration

• Networking

• Thought-leadership

• and a way to gain and reach new students

NO!

Listen

What are others saying?

When they talk to you, are you listening?

How to Engage?Participate

Are you working together?Did you answer what they asked for?

Relationships

“Concentrate on Relationships,Not Technologies”.

- groundswell, winning in a world transformedby social technologies

What is the groundswell?

• A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from institutions like corporations.

Social media is people driven, not corporate driven

• Go where the people are.So, where are they? Talking to each other.

• If facebook were a country, it would be the 8th most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russa, and Nigeria. Mark Zuckerburg - Jan. 7th, 2009. As facebook passed 150 Million active facebook Users.

• 175 Million - Feb. 13th, 2009.

• 200 Million - April 8th, 2009.

• 250 Million - July 15th, 2009.

• It took six months for facebook to grow 100 Million users! WOW!

is facebook an evil plot to take over the world?

The facebook nation

• People’s Republic of China - 1.3B

• India - 1.67B

• United States - 307M

• Facebook Nation - 300M by Nov 09?

• Indonesia - 229M

Countries by Population numbers updated on August 7th, 2009Via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

facebook numbers are estimated... but they are growing by 750K users a day.

OK, but who is using it regularly?• More than 120M users log on to Facebook at least once each day

• 30M users update their statuses at least once each day (13 million did per month at the beginning of the year)

• More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)

• 8M users become fans of Pages each day (up from 2.5 million per day at the

beginning of the year). 35M active groups exist on the site (up from 19 million)

• More than 1 billion photos are uploaded to the site each month

• 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each week (up from 15 million per month)

• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

• 30M users access Facebook each month through a mobile device

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

What about Colleges and Universities?

IllinoisBradley - 2,766

Eastern IL - 3,019Illinois State - 3,479

Northern - 4,326Northwestern - 7,017

Western - 4,508Southern Carbondale - 3,073Southern Edwardsville - 1,996

Univ of Illinois - 12,132

The Most FansTexas A&M - 65,945

LSU - 63,226U of Oklahoma - 52,211

Mizzou - 50,042Kansas - 48, 177

facebook pages @ SIUCSIUC - 3,121 fans

SIUC MCMA - 873 fansSIUC Writing Center - 170 fans

SIU Basketball - 57 fansSIUC School of Journalism - 91 fans

SIUC Department of Technology - 38 fansSIU Alumni Assoc - 37 fans

SIUC Marketing Dept - 19 fansSIUC Student Center - 3 fans

SIUC School of Accountancy - 2 fansCollege of Business at SIUC - 28 fans

SIUC College of Applied Sciences and Arts - 23 fansSIUCSHC - 29 fans

WSIU Public Radio - 251 fansWSIU Public Television - 74 fans

Why a facebook page and a normal user account?

Normal user accounts are for real people and facebook can and will remove users who are not

real people.Reggie the Redbird - ISU Mascot

Over 3,200 friends

Pulled from facebook Nov 2008.

Lost access to all friends, photos, and comments.Pulled profile resulted in people asking why

Reggie just de-friended me.

No way to contact people and let them know.

Benefits of using facebook pages instead of groups.

Insights!

Favorite Pages

shortened username

actions show up on fans homepage

pages can be held together with smaller associated groups

Page Insights - Can measure ROI

TwitterTwitter Basics: 140 Char

You can choice to follow someone and receive updates, and they can follow

you.

Conversations via @username

Trends are followed with a #hashtag

Search is a good way to find out what others are saying about you.

Ability to quickly alert followers to events, news, or updates. Cell phone might send txt message

update. Can send new tweet in via txt.

Relationships can be created, users might retweet your message and extend your reach.

Audiences might include students, future students,alumni groups, the media, peer institutions, or

anyone who is interested.

The restricted length and work to your benefit.

Start with a personal account and get a feel of the community first.

The Twitterverse

• of course, twitter.com

• via txt message. Simply txt to 40404.

• Tweets can be sent automatically from a blog or RSS service using twitterfeed.com

• Third-party software like tweetdeck.

Where can you “tweet” from?

Who are people following? (just for fun, not EDU)

• Ashton - 3,110,984

• Ellen - 2,707,951

• Brittany - 2,676,087

• CNN - 2,527,571

• Oprah - 1,967,387

• Barack - 1,929,792

• Shaq - 1,901,244

as of Aug 9, 2009

OLD ROI - Return on Investment

NEW ROI - Recurring Online Interaction

Who interact with your org and how often?

How to improve your ROI.

• Contact your fans directly. After someone adds themselves as a fan, send them a message. Start the interaction. You are building a connection with a fan.

• Very possible that they tell their friends, who might be other students or friends in their alumni circle.

People talk to people. People trust people.

Add your name or personal comments, when possible.

People prefer to know who they are communicating with and without identification, it

seems impersonal. They could be talking to anyone.

Be Personal

who are you?

Automatically pull from other social media applications or RSS feeds.

WARNING: This has be be balanced. Too much PR (too frequently) or only news stories (ratio of automatic posts to personalized entries) can turn off people and even get you negative response.

Automatic feeds allow for one entry to be posted everywhere.

You want to engage, not annoy!

Set up Automatic Tasks

Don’t be afraid of comments or feedback. Websites exist to rate everything out there.

Allow people to comment directly to you. If needed, respond appropriately.

By interacting, you are showing that you care what someone thinks. People respect

that.

Don’t be afraid of feedback

Ask open questions that solicit a response.

This encourages interaction. What projects are you currently working on?

An open question like this can get a response from alumni or students.

Updates that receive a lot of interaction are often are highlighted (such as the facebook

homepage sidebar).

?

Don’t solely post updates of your content. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who only talked about themselves? Was it

fun?

Did you run away the next time you saw them?

Post and share links, video, Retweet on Twitter, facebook

Page favorites.

If you see something interesting and relevant, let others know.

Most features on the social web, focusing on sharing.

Retweet

Share

Use MultimediaShare and tag videos, photos, notes, updates, etc.

Multimedia often generates the most response from fans. If possible, try to post multimedia from events such as

ceremonies, gatherings, and meetings.

Put them in as many places as you can.

This is often appreciated by people who can not be at an event or those would just want to be kept in the loop as to

what is goin’ on.

youtube EDU

facebook

flickr

Have a student contest. Provide guidelines and if possible provide stock photos or videos and the message that you want conveyed. Offer a prize

reward.

Have public judging that allows for feedback and comments.

Something can be as simple as a video contest that people have to upload the video to Youtube and include “Why I like Southern IL University”. From

there people will comment, view, and rate. The videos can be used as promotional materials and as a means to direct people to your social media

websites.

CrowdSource with a student contest

youtube contests

facebook has social media ads that that target audiences and demographics, say students ages 14-17 in the Chicago area who are interested in Radio, Television,

Journalism, or Photography.

You can pay per click or per impression. SIUC MCMA used facebook advertising to target students in Chicago for our

recent MCMA Chicago Expo.

Google’s advertising system also works well. Compare that method to say billboards or newspaper ads in an area.

Pay for promotion.

Add facebook Events to Pages

Each event can have its own wall, discussion board,

photos/video, or conversation. Even if you are not able to

add multimedia for an event, another user might.

Ask others for content. Parents, friends, and other family take hundreds of photos and video of events like graduation. Ask on your social media

networks for this media.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS

This seems common sense but many highered colleges or departments have areas on social media networks but do not have a link on the main .edu website. They don’t send emails

letting people know about it. No flyers in the hallway.

Usually the thinking here is that lets start a big user

base then tell others about it. Let them know, build it,

then go from there.

Be Social Together• Universities should have a Social Media Working Group that

meets regularly.

• This group can create social media best practices using templates from others.

• They can also create social media policies.

• Help out new departments or groups that know that they need to do this, but are not sure what to do, or how to do it.

• Working together helps to make sure that the voice and message is consistent.

• When changes and shifts in social media come, working together helps to let everyone know about new technologies and functionalities.