A few weeks ago, I guess it was, we twittered about Peter Kim’s list of companies that represent some of the best practices in utilizing social networking. Well, he’s now pulled all of that information into a wiki, making it easy to see who’s doing what, how they’re doing it, and what it’s doing for them.
My colleague, Leigh Anne, recently brought the Digital Youth Project to my attention. It is the largest and most comprehensive study of kids’ internet use ever to be undertaken.
The three general objectives of the project were to:
The project lasted three years and its results can be found in a 55-age white paper, a two-page brief, and a full-length book entitled , “Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.” It included the work of 28 researchers and research collaborators and was funded by the MacArthur Foundation. It’s a fascinating read and worthwhile for anyone who works in education or youth marketing or just wants to stay abreast of how the youth of today experience and approach internet use.
David Armano of Logic + Emotion lays out a conceptual framework for online community building in an article in AdAge. Everyone wants engagement with their brand. The problem is that most companies believe that viral strategies are the only (or at least the best) way to do this. Armano makes the case that community building offers a more achievable goal:
[U]nlike viral, community requires a different set of objectives, strategy and tactics around measurement. Yet, intuitively, brands realize there is value to them. That’s because if we take our bright and shiny marketing hats off for a moment, we realize that it’s likely we are part of them. … People who use social networks also feel like they’re part of a larger community of people they relate to.
Regardless of whether you’re considering starting an online community, Armano provides a concise framework for any online presence—and for any brand initiative for that matter:
Content
When considering community initiatives, there are three questions to ask: Where will the content come from? Does it provide indisputable value? Can a regular flow of quality content be maintained?Context
Context means understanding how to meet people where they are and serving them the right experience at the right time. Well-designed applications and functionality have great opportunities to deliver on context.Connectivity
… It’s not about mass communications but more about the micro-interactions …. Designing experiences that support thousands of micro-interactions means you are making a commitment vs. trying to produce a one-hit wonder. …Continuity
Communities … need to be flexible to evolve while still providing a valuable and consistent user experience which can be sustained.
Read the full article here.
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.
The Global Language Monitor has ranked colleges and universities based on their appearance on the internet, the blogosphere, global print and electronic media. I read about it for the first time in a recent broadcast email from my alma mater’s Alumni Affairs office. They mentioned it because Vanderbilt topped the list in ‘media momentum’, meaning they demonstrated the largest positive change in number of citations across all media studied.
In the general university rankings, Harvard, not surprisingly, ranked the highest in the overall number of citations, rounding out the top five with Columbia, University of Michigan, University of California – Berkley, and Stanford. As for the college rankings, Colorado College scored the highest, with Williams, University of Richmond, Middlebury and Wellesley making the top five list.
As for universities with ‘media momentum’, after Vanderbilt, the top five included University of Virginia, Emory, Rice and University of Texas – Austin. The college top five included Hamilton, Pomona, Skidmore, Bard and Gettysburg. Our neighbors, University of the South – Sewanee and Furman, followed closely at #6 and #7. Interesting stuff.
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.
