This document summarizes plans for expanding social media use at the University of Southampton. It discusses trends like increased mobile usage and video content. It outlines current social media activities like blogging, digital champions programs, and live event hashtags. Future plans include creating MOOCs to showcase research and teaching, exploring mobile annotations and tests, and collaborating with Winchester College on digital topics. The overall goal is to leverage social media to promote the university and inspire curriculum innovation.

1. Making the most of social media
Graeme Earl, Lisa Harris, Flo Broderick
Presentation to USRG Chairs’ Meeting
4th July 2013

2. Plan
• Trends overview
• What we’ve been doing
– Blogs
– Curriculum Innovation
• Hangout – Graeme
• What we plan to do
– MOOCs

3. TRENDS

4. Source: Internet Trends 2013 by Mary Meeker

5. Digital Trends 2013 by Smart Insights
• Complete the poll and view the results
– Mobile (think smartphones and tablets)
– Content (engagement through SMM drives SEO)

6. Source: Internet Trends 2013 by Mary Meeker

7. The power of video
• According to Ofcom we each now watch an average of 1.5
hours of video per month
• Online video audience grew by 8% per year in the UK last
year
• 64% of UK users have a smart phone (82% of all phone
purchases in Dec 2012 were “smart”)
• 73% of 16/24 year olds are active on social networks
• 1/3 of UK page views are from mobiles/tablets (Comscore,
April 2013)
• #sotonmooc conference
• #digichamps “draw my life”
• #digichamps “Stargazing” event

8. Source: Internet Trends 2013 by Mary Meeker

9. What does Google like?
• Social media interaction with a blogpost is the
*biggest influence* on its search visibility:
1. Facebook shares
2. Facebook comments
3. Facebook likes
4. Tweets
http://www.socialmediastrategist.co.uk/blog/
1-news/175-social-media-seo

10. WHAT WE’VE BEEN DOING

11. Our Projects
• Blog.soton.ac.uk
• Student Digital Champions
• Curriculum Innovation
• Social Media in Live Events Project (SMiLE)
– #SXSC2
– #MDRweek (great work by Alison Simmance)
– #PortusMOOC #websciMOOC

12. Blogs: pulling it all together
• Use the blog framework as a central point pulling in your other
social media content: Digital Economy Blog or to aggregate a series
of blogs as per Multidisciplinary Research
• Tweets – Flickr – LinkedIn – Vimeo - Slideshare – Pinterest -
Soundcloud - YouTube
• You can also embed other social media within individual blog posts
• Video is increasingly important, especially authentic user
generated content
• Provide sharing buttons so that your readers can share your content
on their own networks
• These activities provide a regular supply of googlejuice to the blog

13. “Quick Wins”
• Put community at the heart of what we do:
– Create register of university twitter accounts with a feed to aggregate
all posts and display it on uni home page
– Create register of university blogs with a feed to aggregate all posts
and display it on home page
– See for example http://www.emc.com/social-emc/index.htm
• Share buttons on everything!!! – the latest versions allow ‘share to
a specific group’
• Here is a useful twitter list of university groups compiled by
Digichamp Nicole Beale
• Publicise www.blog.soton.ac.uk (free ‘branded’ blogs for staff and
students on a Wordpress template)
• Social media support for university “rockstars” to get started
• Formalise the Digichamps programme across Faculties/SU/WSA

14. Student Digital Champions:
Flo Broderick
• Met at SXSC2 last October
• Took Digital Marketing and CI modules, learned
interviewing skills and video editing
• Helped out in a big way at Digital Media Europe
• Masterminded student contribution to Digital
Literacies Conference
• Provided student perspective on our research into
online learning MOOCs
• Just back from MOOC filming in Portus
• Soon off to Madrid to work for Telefonica Digital

15. Living and Working on the Web
This module focuses on the development of online identities and networks to
enhance employability in the digital age.
Specifically, it investigates how the digital world is influencing how we:
• collect, manage and evaluate online information – ideal preparation for
dissertations
• build an effective online identity for personal or career development
• create and curate content via blogging and video production
• interact with others for networking, team-building and project management
purposes
• deal with online privacy, safety and security issues
• participate remotely in live events
Working in small groups, students engaged in real time with a ‘real’ and
‘virtual’ audience at the University Digital Literacies Conference in May 2013.
For more information check out the module webpage and video and the
students’ feedback video

16. The reflective summary allows you to think about where you’ve
come from and where you are now and how useful it might be for
you in the future - this is something you don’t get on other modules
My opinions have often been changed by what other people
have put forward on the discussion board
One of the big benefits of studying online is the flexibility to
fit my academic life around my professional life which has
been really useful
No idea is lost - we can continue to share information and
ideas online beyond the duration of a specific seminar

17. WHAT WE’VE GOT PLANNED

18. Eating the dog food
• The Portus MOOC (and the Portus Field School it builds on)
is a direct consequence of each of these University areas of
strength and investment:
• Digital literacy
• Student co-creation and employability
• Curriculum innovation
• Multidisciplinary research and teaching
• Student-centred
• Disability and accessibility
• Research data
• Openness

19. MOOCs
• Showcase the university’s teaching and
research and student contributions to
encourage additional enrolments on campus
courses and inspire innovation there
• Critical to this is the sharing of participants’
intentions/experiences via social media -
these interactions carry an authenticity that
traditional promotional materials lack.
• Mobile/tablet access to features is crucial

20. Changing the learning landscape
• Mobile:
• lectures and slides
• annotations (video, text, image, like,
tag, map)
• posts and comments
• shares e.g. twitter
• curation e.g. Storify, Scoop.it,
3wdoc.com, soometa
• Tests
• Offline e.g. kindle (BookPress)
• collaboration
Learner generated content

21. Collaboration with Winchester College
• Talk on Digital Identity @ College on 16th
October
• Pupils attending DE lunch on 21st October –
Witold Mielniczek’s Flying Car funded by
Kickstarter
• Recruit keen pupils as trainee digital
champions
• Widening the participation agenda…errr
maybe not, but an interesting link nonetheless