Social Media Fails: Five Mistakes and the Lessons Learned

June 3, 2011 6 Comments

This post is cross-posted on the CASE Social Media Blog.

I’ve come to enjoy the Fail Blog, an online repository for all things ridiculous, outlandish, and frankly, immature. While its content is far from intel “win,” I see many schools and organizations trying to win at social media, but falling short when it comes to a few simple things—and ultimately, earning a “fail.”

Here are a few of those “#Fails”, and more importantly, what you can learn from them.

#Fail 1: The False Start
An organization sets up a Facebook Page, a Twitter feed and a blog. It posts loads of content and Tweets like mad for about a month. Then…nothing. The presences fall silent, never to be revived.

  • The Lesson: Be prepared to “feed the beast” once you set your mind to creating a new social media presence. Ask yourself if you have the content and the staffing to sustain a new presence long term. It’s better to have never started using a tool than to start and abandon it mid-way through.

#Fail 2: The Auto Follow
Setting up your Twitter client to automatically follow anyone who follows you or anyone who mentions your name.

  • The Lesson: It’s great to engage with new people, but be selective and deliberate about who you follow back. Develop a policy around the users you follow and why (alumni, parents, students, news agencies, etc). Then, stick to it. Auto-following will just tie you in with spammers and other undesirables and could come back to haunt you.

#Fail 3: The QR Code to Nowhere
QR codes have a prominent place in your printed materials and link back to your website.

  • The Lesson: The whole point of a QR code is that it makes it easier for your users to access content on the go. A QR code should, at minimum, link to a mobile-optimized site or other content that is designed specifically for the small screen. Directing traffic to a “regular” website doesn’t do justice to the power of QR codes. And, more to the point, “you are actually showing people that you don’t understand why QR codes exist,” said Andy Shaindlin of Alumni Futures, in a recent email thread, “thereby alienating or disappointing the very audience most interested in your success with mobile.”

#Fail 4: The Twitter “Set It and Forget It”
Scheduling outgoing tweets all at once and not logging in again until the following week…when it’s time to schedule the next round of tweets.

  • The Lesson: This ignores a fundamental benefit of using Twitter: interactivity. Using Twitter (and really, any social technology) as a broadcast tool defeats the entire purpose. Schedule tweets, but also use @replies, RTs and other engagement strategies to make full use of the tool’s potential. Twitter and other social tools are about listening more than disseminating.

#Fail 5: The “Carpet Bomb” Update
Posting the exact same update to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

  • The Lesson: Each social technology has its own personality, language and nuance. Posting all of your Twitter updates to LinkedIn just clutters your connections’ timelines—if they want to get your Twitter updates, they already follow you there. And Facebook is built to handle way more than 140 characters…so use them! And why not add a photo for good measure? You can post similar messages on all of your social media presences, just be true to the language and the capacity of the channels themselves.

What are some of your examples of social media fails or wins? Leave a comment!

Filed under General Posts

Student Generated Content: Part Three

May 25, 2011 Leave a comment

This is the third post in a series on integrating student-generated content into communications, particularly in social platforms.

So you’ve identified your student content creators…now what?

It’s time to give your team the tools and the guidance and  they need to work efficiently. Here are a few things to remember:

Provide Tools and Technology

You wouldn’t expect a professional staffer to provide their own computers and office supplies to get the job done; treat student workers the same way. Give them access to office cameras, software, hardware, and anything else they may need to create and edit content.

Provide Admin Logins and Access

Trust students with the keys to the castle, but do so with caution. If possible, give students medium-level access to your social media and administrative tools. For example, some blogging platforms will allow you to provide the ability to upload content without the permissions to make it “live” to the public. This cuts down on overhead for you, and helps students learn the tools.

Lighten Your Workload

Create a workflow that is as simple as possible, clearly defining who does what, when. The key is to cut down on re-posting, copy/pasting, and reformatting. The more work you can have the student take care of on the front end, the better. Give them their own login (as described above) and you’ll save time. Instead of taking a blog post sent to you via email, pasting it into your blogging software, re-doing the formatting and adding tags, you can just review and approve the post.

Coming up in future posts: managing students, choosing appropriate tasks and responsibilities, and compensation.

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Student Generated Content: Part Two

May 4, 2011 Leave a comment

This is the second post in a series on integrating student-generated content into communications, particularly in social platforms.

Identifying Student Content Generators: Where to Find Them, and What to Look For

One of the most important elements of student generated content is identifying the great students who will create it. The first step isn’t hitting the quad with a fist full of fliers to find help, but rather to identify your stakeholders and audiences. Who are you trying to reach (alumni, prospective students, parents, community members)? How will your content be relevant to them? What types of content will have the greatest impact? What are your goals for this project? The answers to these questions will differ from campus to campus, and maybe from department to department. But the answers will provide valuable insight into the types of content – and therefore, students – you should be looking for once you begin your search.

Finding Students: Where to Look and Who to Ask

Now that you’re ready to seek out student talent, make use of your colleagues and partners on campus for recommendations and leads. Speak with faculty members whom you trust to identify talented students. Talk with admissions, athletics, and student affairs. These groups work directly with students every day, and are your in-house experts. And don’t forget to engage with students themselves: talk to those active in clubs, campus activities, student newspapers and student government.

What to Look For

Interviewing students for this role is important. Take it as seriously as you would if hiring a professional. First, the basics: make sure the student has the skills and the talent to create content. Ask for samples of their work, dependent on the role you’re filling. Blogger? Ask for a writing sample (make it a quick test in-person, and consider doing it without computer-aided grammar and spelling checks). Photographer? Ask for a few of the shots they are most proud of. Videographer? Get a few samples of their work for reference.

Also important: their personality. Get a sense of who they are as a person, including their interests, experience, their professional, educational and personal goals. Also consider what I call “interestingness,” – background, where they’re from, and those characteristics that make them unique. World traveler? Sailing enthusiast? Accomplished pianist? Find out.

Finally, remember that one of the goals of working with students is creating and fostering a relationship with your audiences. The student workers you select should be personable – not only online, but in person. Find students who would be great to take to an event for alumni, donors or admissions.

Cautions

Set expectations for the students and for your staff. Make sure that everyone understands their roles and responsibilities by avoiding confusion about what the students are there to do, and how they contribute to the team.

Do your homework: check the “digital footprint” of your potential student staffer. Take a look at their profiles on social sites, read their personal blogs, check out their online photo galleries. Make sure you have some sense of their online reputation up front. This accomplishes two things: 1) you get a better sense of who they are and 2) you are aware and prepared for issues that could crop up later (inappropriate photos, comments, etc). Depending on what you find, you may not want to hire the student in the first place.

And finally, Independent School folks working with kids or high school students: get parent permission. Even if your students aren’t minors, make sure you consult your legal team to make sure everything is on the up and up.

What other advice and insight do you have? Post a comment.

Next post: training!

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Student Generated Content: Part One

April 27, 2011 5 Comments

This is the first post in a series on integrating student-generated content into communications, particularly in social platforms.

What is Student Generated Content?

Student Generated Content is photos, videos, podcasts, tweets, blog posts and more supplied by current students that are intended to enhance and augment your communications. You can implement student content in a variety of ways. The key is to integrate student-generated content into your overall communications strategy – not tack it on to a pre-existing approach.

In the coming weeks in this space, you’ll see a series of blog posts on working with students. I’ll cover topics including identifying, training, compensating and managing student content creators, examples of projects you should and should not assign to students, and provide some examples of institutions and organizations with great student content.

To kick things off, here’s a brief look at some of the pros and cons of working with students to create content for your social platforms.

Pros:

  • Students are a low cost workforce. You can employ a team of student content creators for less money than professionals.
  • Students can speak first hand about life on campus – they know your culture and community better than anyone.
  • Alumni, prospectives and parents love to hear from students; give your audiences a window into the student experience.

Cons:

  • Students are students first! They have midterms, labs, projects, papers and more at any given time. Your content deadline may not be the highest thing on their priority list.
  • Students are on an academic calendar. Summer, spring break and winter break mean time off for them and a content drought for you.
  • They require a significant amount of up-front direction and management. Ultimately, though, this leads to a working relationship built on trust and a strong fundamental understanding of your institutional voice, strategy and goals.

Ready to take the plunge? Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

Filed under General Posts, Student Generated Content Tagged with , , , ,

Social Media Staffing

March 31, 2011 3 Comments

Where do social media staff belong on the org chart?

Social media is still relatively new, and many organizations are trying to manage the inherent tasks and responsibilities. Job titles like “Community Manager” and “Social Media Strategist” are popping up all over the place, but there doesn’t seem to be consensus on where these roles fit in preexisting org charts and structures.

Some schools consider social media and communications to be a “tech” job – it involves computers, and therefore goes under Information Technology. However, with the rise of social technologies, any average non-IT person with an Internet connection can create a blog in seconds (grab your mobile device right now and try it for yourself). Social tech has also given the masses an opportunity to engage with brands, celebrities, alma mater and more by simply posting a comment or writing a tweet.

What does that mean for the “social media experts” on your staff? They may not be programmers or hardware experts. But they do know a lot about building relationships and engaging in conversations – those conversations just happen to take place online. They have strong, high-level understanding of your organization’s mission, values and goals. They are trusted and valued members of your team.

So, where do social media staff belong on the org chart? Short answer: everywhere.

In a large, university setting, content managers should be peppered throughout your organization, communicating and collaborating amongst one another across departments and silos. Working laterally across campus means that the community managers in admissions, public relations, athletics, alumni relations and more work together to promote cohesive branding and messaging. Community managers wear many hats; give them the tools and resources they need to fulfill all of their roles. By working together, community managers across campus can form an effective, collaborative team ready to engage audiences on a variety of topics.

Managers and executives higher up in your organization need fewer details. Knowing how social tools fit in with their overall mission and goals (e.g. increasing event attendance, receiving more applications for admissions, etc) is vital. They don’t need to know how many times you tweet in a week, but they do need to know the impact and outcomes of those tweets.

Embed social media staff throughout your organization, and encourage them to collaborate across departments. Community managers are in place to build relationships and engage your constituents. Collaboration and communication are significant aspects of their skill sets. Use them!

This post is also featured on the CASE Social Media blog.

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