Social Media in Higher Ed

Social Media in Higher Ed

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.
(Source: Wikipedia)
AKA social web, web 2.0, user-generated media, read/write web

Where to start

• Find where you are comfortable
  • Facebook
  • Myspace
  • Wikipedia
• Learn from others
  • http://mays.tamu.edu/social
  • Search these sites for "college" and "university"
• Stake your claim, at least reserve a name for your college. You might not use it, but someone else might try to represent you.

Problems - Not as many as you might think

• I'm always asked, "Can't someone post something that makes us look bad?"
  • NO, NO, NO - moderation

• Cyber bullies, cyber stalking, etc
  • We don't create or perpetuate this problem
  • This exists but our presence doesn't add to it or make us look bad.
• Privacy
  • Students are not as dumb as people treat them
  • They know their info is out there and they are ok with it
• Time
  • Through RSS you can make posts on one post on have it echoed on all the other sites

Benefits

• New marketing touch points
  • Hit kids where they are actually at
  
  • Access to bigger audience
    • Video on youtube vs your homepage
• Control your brand
  • people are suspect of "corporate voice" especially young people
    • talk to them in their "lingo"
  • Positive PR
• Syndication
  • Powerful - easier to get out the word
    • RSS - really simple syndication
    • Most social media tools have RSS

Have fun with it

• Try new things
• Be adventurous
• Hire a student worker if needed, they are the "target market"

Have a goal

 

QUESTIONS

 

Demo time

On to the good stuff...

 

 

Resources

Glosssary

RSS – really simple syndication - a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts
  
AKA news feeds, feed, web feed, xml feed

 

Podcast - a podcast is a media file which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.

 

Blog - an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page;
AKA Weblog, Web log

 

Wiki- a collaborative website whose content can be edited by anyone who has access to it. An example of a wiki is wikipedia.

 

Web 2.0 - a perceived second generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users

 

Tags - a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (like picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information it is applied to.
AKA tagging

 

Links

Myspace.com – social network
Facebook – social network
Wikipedia – a wiki
Del.icio.us – social bookmarking
Flickr – photo sharing
Youtube – video sharing
LinkedIn – business network
Upcoming.org – social events calendar
Mays Business School Social- Mays social listings
College Web Editor – blog about college web marketing, lots of social media info

Articles

User Generation - Web 2.0 signals a communications shift that can’t be ignored
by Karine Joly - CASE Current March 2007
Facebook, MySpace, and Co. - IHEs ponder whether or not to embrace social networking websites.
By Karine Joly - University Business April 2007
Should higher ed institutions use social networking websites?
College Web Editor - April 2007

 

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