The document discusses best practices for using social media, especially platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr, to engage audiences as an educational institution. It provides tips on building relationships, listening to others, being authentic and identifiable, sharing various types of content, using multimedia, conducting contests, promoting events, and collaborating across departments to maintain a consistent presence and message.

1. how to be an EDU social {media} butterfly (and why?) Don Laur - SIUC MCMA Southern 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 ;)

2. 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

3. 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.

4. Building Relationships, will build Communities It will keep people connected ... and coming back. if they lose interest? ... and engaged.

5. 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!

6. 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?

7. Relationships “ Concentrate on Relationships, Not Technologies”. - groundswell, winning in a world transformed by social technologies

8. 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

10. 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!

11. is facebook an evil plot to take over the world?

12. 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, 2009 Via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population facebook numbers are estimated... but they are growing by 750K users a day.

13. 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

14. What about Colleges and Universities? Illinois Bradley - 2,766 Eastern IL - 3,019 Illinois State - 3,479 Northern - 4,326 Northwestern - 7,017 Western - 4,508 Southern Carbondale - 3,073 Southern Edwardsville - 1,996 Univ of Illinois - 12,132 The Most Fans Texas A&M - 65,945 LSU - 63,226 U of Oklahoma - 52,211 Mizzou - 50,042 Kansas - 48, 177

15. facebook pages @ SIUC SIUC - 3,121 fans SIUC MCMA - 873 fans SIUC Writing Center - 170 fans SIU Basketball - 57 fans SIUC School of Journalism - 91 fans SIUC Department of Technology - 38 fans SIU Alumni Assoc - 37 fans SIUC Marketing Dept - 19 fans SIUC Student Center - 3 fans SIUC School of Accountancy - 2 fans College of Business at SIUC - 28 fans SIUC College of Applied Sciences and Arts - 23 fans SIUCSHC - 29 fans WSIU Public Radio - 251 fans WSIU Public Television - 74 fans

16. 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.

17. 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

18. Page Insights - Can measure ROI

19. Twitter Twitter 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.

20. 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.

21. 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?

22. 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

23. OLD ROI - Return on Investment NEW ROI - Recurring Online Interaction Who interact with your org and how often?

24. 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.

25. 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?

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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). ?

29. 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

30. Use Multimedia Share 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 flick r

31. 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

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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.