First, at Online Management: Beyond Social Media, a daylong seminar put together by Ellie Lovell of Warwick University (follow along with #caseonline if you can’t be there in person).

And second, as part of the first ever schools programme at the CASE Europe Annual Conference, speaking with Tracy Playle of Pickle Jar Communications.

Please let me know if you’ll be in attendance, and stop by to say hello!

Community and social media managers deal with this conundrum on a regular basis. When managing a social media presence, what constitutes “action-worthy” audience behavior, and when should you just stand by?

The chart below was inspired by Charlene Li’s “social media triage” as blogged here by Andrew Careaga. The idea is to use the chart as a way to determine the “threat level” – from low to high – and assess the amount of action required to manage it.

Most of the issues we deal with on a regular basis fall into the “low” category: combative comments, unofficial groups, spam, etc. These require little to no action to manage, other than consistent monitoring. In fact, reacting too quickly or being defensive could do more harm than good.

“Medium” level issues not only need more attention, but also may require the involvement and input of higher levels of management and other members of your team, including alumni volunteers and other campus departments.

Finally, “high” issues require coordinated action and involve the highest levels of management. While situations that fall into the “high” category are relatively rare, it pays to have a strategy in place for managing these types of situations, similar to a crisis communications plan. Be sure to include strategies for coordinating efforts across campus departments. Also think about how and when to involve Provosts, Vice Presidents, and general counsel. These high-level administrators should know about the situation, and your strategy for managing it.

This chart is meant to help guide your thinking about social media issues, and does not cover every single situation that might come across your desk. It should, however, help you prepare for what lies ahead.

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.

One of the most important aspects of using social media to engage and converse with your audiences is to record the impact of those efforts – not just quantitatively, but qualitatively. And eventually, the powers that be will come a knocking. They’ll be asking you to report to the board of directors or the VP or the president on just what you’ve been doing and why it is valuable. This isn’t the time to shrink in fear – this is the time for you to shine!

In a series of upcoming posts, I’ll outline some of the tools I use to gather data, crunch the numbers, and put together cohesive reports on the various social technologies. I’ll specifically highlight Facebook and Twitter, two of the most popular social tools today. Here are a few things to remember as you gather your findings and put together your report(s):

Summarize: you may have the best facts, figures, graphs and charts on earth. But you are presenting your findings to busy people who may not have the time or the inclination to dig deep and fully absorb all of your hard work. Don’t be insulted, just know your audience. Condense your findings into a brief executive summary and place it at the beginning of your document. Include the nitty gritty details after the summary; those who seek more detail will find it at their fingertips.

Highlight: here’s your chance to show off. Directly quote some of the great things people have said about your institution, something interesting you’ve learned, or a new contact you’ve made thanks to your efforts and include it in your report. Share your anecdotal evidence of success.

Benchmark: how do you stack up? While there might not be a lot of public data for you to compare with your institution’s, you can still do internal comparisons. How have things changed from month to month? In the past year? Work with what you know to demonstrate growth.

Clearly state your goals: talking about how great you’re doing is all well and good, but where do you go from here? Be specific. “Our goal is to double our total twitter followers in the next six months” or “we plan to increase admissions applications by 25% this year using Facebook.”

Stay tuned for more as I highlight some of the great (and sometimes free) tools out there to help you collect your data.