Social Media in Higher Education

Lisa Fisher, Manager, Marketing Communications

International Student Initiative, UBC

•Social media – what, how, and why

•The basics:• Social networks• Video & photo sharing• Blogs and microblogs

•Beyond the basics:• International social media• Engagement campaigns/microsites

•Doing it well

•Measuring success

•More inspiration

•Your questions

Agenda

What is social media?

Media, including text, photos, videos, and music, based on

conversation and interaction between people online

Barefoot & Scoble Starfish

Solis & Thoms Conversation Prism

How is it different?

Traditional Marketing Web 2.0

Few to Many Many to Many

Organization-generated content

User-generated content

Short shelf-life Lingering effect

Spin Authenticity

•Increasingly, your brand isn’t what you say about yourself,

it’s what your students say about you.

•Facebook and YouTube now a significant source of traffic to

most sites, right behind Google

•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Why does it matter?

•Pull content about you others create to share it:• Kwantlen Digital Cafe• UBC connections for life social media dashboard

•Push content out to your audience using social media tools

Pull, Push, or both?

Kwantlen Digital Cafe

UBC International Student Initiative

Facebook – Bishop’s

Facebook – UBC Prospective Undergrads

University-specific Social Network

YouTube - Stanford

Stanford YouTube Channel

University-specific Video Site

Viral Video

Twitter Feed - McGill

Twitter Feed - Tufts

University-specific Twitter Site

Other Social Networks

•LinkedIN – helpful for alumni engagement; hiring, etc.

•Orkut, Friendster, BEBO – may matter if you recruit outside

North America

Social Networks Around the World

Engagement Campaigns

•UVic – the anything project

•SFU Solutions

•UBC Place of Mind Community Site

•McGill – six words

•OSU – PoweredbyOrange

UVic The Anything Project

McGill

Doing it WellBe authentic:

Talk like a real person. People have personalities.Don’t delete/edit posts you see as negative – engage instead.

Be committed:Post useful content oftenPost a mix of media – links, photos, videosCan’t really stop once you’ve started – so be sure you have ongoing resources to support it.

Measuring Success

•Most tools include some basic analytics

•Site traffic pre and post launch

•# of new fans/followers/subscribers

•Likes, comments, wall posts, RTs, social shares

•How often was your #hashtag used? Listed?

•Howsociable ranking before and after

•Technorati search for blog mentions

•Listening platforms like Cymfony, BuzzMetrics, Radian6

•Sentiment matters as much (or more) than hard numbers

More InspirationBlogs to RSS:

http://highered.prblogs.org/http://www.bobjohnsonblog.com/http://dannybrown.me/

Tweets to follow

@andrewcareaga@dbarefoot@HighEdMarketing

Groups to join

LinkedIn: Web 2.0 for Higher EdCollege Surfing Web 2.0 Olympics:

http://www.collegesurfing.com/content/web-20-colleges/

Lisa Fisherlisa.fisher@ubc.ca@plfisherhttp://ca.linkedin.com/in/lisagfisher

www.connectionsforlife.ubc.ca

Questions?