I came across the essay in Wired magazine entitled “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004″ through a higher ed blog.  Wired makes the case that blogs were initially effective because amateur writers’ voices were heard, while now posts never make the top page of a Google search.  Now the space is crowded with multimedia and with professionals like Huffington Post.

What I’ve found about blogging (in three short months) is that within your community, your posts and the discussions still matter, clearly due to shared interests. There is a tangible community of bloggers in the higher ed community that still read and debate and learn new things from each other.  Maybe higher ed is a little slow on the draw since many are just now adopting blogs (ahem, Stein). I know I have been a regular Facebook user since 2004 and am just now in 2008 coming around to the blogosphere.  My reaction was confirmed by the comments at the end of Andrew Careaga’s post about the Wired article, all who doubt Wired’s announcement of blogs’ pending expiration date. I got a kick out of the comment that we have to consider the source of this: Wired is a printed magazine found at newsstands and in mailboxes. Remember them?

I started using Twitter a few months ago as a self-imposed research assignment, to try to get a handle on what someone would really get out of it. When I first heard folks talking about it, it sounded like a great tool if you were out and about a lot, trying to meet up with friends, letting friends know where you are and where you’re planning to go. But for those of us who don’t have many evening outings anymore (bar-hopping is quite a thing of the past for me, with 10 month old twins now the focus of my nights), it didn’t seem like something useful.

I confess, my view of Twitter was rather short sighted. Since joining, I’ve discovered that Twitter IS another way to remain connected, but not necessarily with just your friends and people you already know. Your list of who you are following and who’s following you seems to grow organically, as it does with other social media. But if it’s a dialogue, it’s a different kind of dialogue. It’s really an information exchange – real-time postings from an event you’re attending, news items, humorous observations, or just how you happen to be feeling at that moment or what mundane task you might be engaged in. It’s a wonderful mix of all of these things, and as you “follow” someone on Twitter, an image of them begins to take shape, pieced together from the many comments they’ve made and information they’ve shared. It’s pretty cool.

Now that I’ve become more familiar with how Twitter works, I’ve started reading up on how it applies to secondary and higher ed. In August, the blog .eduGuru offered up a smart take on how the higher education community should approach using Twitter. In her post, Karlyn Morissette, Web Producer for Dartmouth, suggested that rather than looking at how other schools might be using Twitter, instead look at how other industries are using it to communicate with their audiences. She references organizations running the gamut from Home Depot to NASA to the American Cancer Society. After you study how other varied industries are using Twitter, it’s pretty easy to begin seeing how it might be utilized by secondary and higher ed.  Athletics updates. Campus visit events. Application deadlines. Performance announcements. Alumni events. Links to audio or video of important lectures. Links to news items featuring your institution (think media momentum as mentioned in my last post). Appropriate audiences? Current students, prospective students, parents, alumni… anyone with a vested interest in learning about what’s going on at your institution.

With the number of Twitter apps exploding, and the number of individuals and organizations participating in the Twitter-verse growing by the minute, it looks like Twitter is here to stay, at least for a while. If you haven’t jumped in already, it’s time. If you already tweet, add Stein to your list.

To piggyback on Kathryn’s post about the social media session at NACAC, I wanted to mention a blog called Servant of Chaos by a fella in Australia named Gavin Heaton. Gavin describes his blog as an “interactive diary capturing my thinking on branding, digital strategy and the art of storytelling.”

Gavin’s post from September 3rd is focused on best practices in social media. He shares a list of best practices compiled from a variety of sources and adds a new one of his own: Tell a story.

Those of us working in higher education marketing embrace storytelling in the publications we create, the web sites we manage, and the blogs we write…. and this now carries forth into the myriad other social media options available. His succinct list of best practices is definitely worth a read as you continue to build your brand online.