THINK Global School and Social Media

August 23, 2010 Leave a Comment

My role at THINK Global School, previously blogged here, presents me with interesting challenges most every day – and I am loving every minute of it. TGS is brand new (our first class starts in September), which means that we the TGS staff will be learning and adapting right along with our students.

In the coming school year, I’ll share our progress, what we’ve learned, and what we’re working on in a series of blog posts for edSocialMedia, an online resource focused on the role of social media in education, particularly in independent schools and colleges. My first post, Traveling the World with Social Media, is there now – please check it out.

If you’d like to learn more about TGS, you’re in luck: my post at edSocialMedia is coordinated with an article by Andy Shaindlin of Alumni Futures. Click through to Alumni Futures to read Andy’s look at THINK Global School with insight from our Head of School, Aron Solomon.

Stay tuned as TGS students, staff and faculty embark on an amazing, educational journey. First stop: Stockholm!

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Mobile Devices and Your Communications Strategy

June 22, 2010 1 Comment

Heading out the door? You’re probably not going too far without checking for your wallet, keys, and cell phone. According to Jan Chipchase, researcher for Nokia, it’s universal: people all over the world don’t leave home without money, keys, and their mobile telephone.

And now these three things are starting to become one thing: you can buy a cup of coffee, unlock your car, even check in for your flight…all with your phone. Who needs keys or cash when you’ve got your cellie (do people even call it that anymore?)?

Since mobile devices have clearly wormed their way into our daily lives, I pose the following question: how are you integrating mobile technology into your communications strategy?

I don’t bring this up because I expect you to run out, hire a programmer, and build a suite of mobile apps compatible with everything from the Blackberry to the iPad. Instead, I ask that you start to think critically about your audience and your goals. Use those goals as a framework for making smart decisions about mobile technology.

Do you have content that users will need and want to access while away from their computer? Your audience wants to use their phone for something useful, interesting, fun, or maybe even completely useless. The services they want to interact with may not be what you’d expect. Think beyond the content you want to deliver and instead, think of what your audience might actually want.

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Can’t We All Just Get Along: Web & Print Communications

May 31, 2010 5 Comments

I’m delivering two seminars on social media at Castle Press in Pasadena, California. Yes: a printing company has asked me to talk to its clients about web communications and social technology.

This leads me to an important point: computer-based communications have captured a great deal of attention of late. This does not mean that printed communications are useless and irrelevant. Quite the contrary, in fact: I believe that bringing together print and pixels is key to creating a cohesive, comprehensive communications strategy. Don’t let trendy software determine your communications strategy. Instead, think about your goals, audiences, budget and messages. Then, use those as the basis for developing your strategy. Just because “everyone else” is using a particular tool doesn’t mean it’s the right tool for the goals you’re trying to reach.

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Making Print and Pixels Play Nice

May 2, 2010 1 Comment

People often look at electronic communications tools as a great way to save money – get the word out, and save money on ink and paper. Simple, right? But don’t underestimate the opportunity cost of cutting out print communication channels. Social technologies, postcards, web, mobile devices, and publications work well together and make up a cohesive communications strategy. You shouldn’t choose one over the others.

Here are some examples of how ink and paper can work with online media: a few months back, Trident ran a print ad in USA Today featuring tweets about their product, Trident Layers. See Mashable’s writeup here. Esquire magazine ran an augmented reality issue, and piped readers’ tweets into their website. The Detroit Red Wings placed QR codes in their printed programs, and when fans scanned the codes with their mobile devices it launched this YouTube video.

You can do simple things like putting a QR code on your business card, linking to audio and video content online from your print article or ad, using Facebook comments in your annual reports, etc.

qrcode

The key is understanding how all of these tools work, then coming up with creative ways to make them all work together. You should layer your marketing efforts using print and electronic media. And finally, the people who have the most intimate knowledge of these seemingly disparate channels (printers, publishers, social media managers, etc) need to be advocates for their media of choice and be willing to play well with others. The collective knowledge and collaborative spirit will make the best use of the strengths of each platform.

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Social Bookmarks: A Useful Tool You Aren’t Using

February 2, 2010 3 Comments

What is social bookmarking?

According to Wikipedia: a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. In other words: keeping track of stuff you find on the web, and making it easy for others to find. The key to all of this is tagging – assigning keywords to each bookmark to help keep them organized and easy to locate when you need them. Social Bookmarking hasn’t caught on like Twitter or Facebook. But it’s incredibly useful for keeping track of links, resources, blog posts and all sorts of things we come across on the web and think, “I need to remember this” or “I might want to refer to this later.”

Among the most popular sites for social bookmarking are Diigo and Delicious. Delicious allows you to save and tag bookmarks, connect with other users, and subscribe to individual users’ bookmarks with RSS. An example: Mark Greenfield’s bookmarks are an excellent resource (username markgr). Mark makes great use of tags and has more than 2500 bookmarked resources. Want to know more about Twitter? Click the twitter tag in his list and you’re set.

Diigo offers a full suite of tools to help keep tabs on your bookmarks, and share them with others – it’s ideal if you’re engaged in a research project and/or collaborating with others. You can highlight specific sections of a site’s content or leave comments for others to find. Diigo also boasts a group feature, which allows users to self identify and share links with others interested in the same subject. We’re planning to use a Diigo group as a resource for the attendees of the CASE Social Media and Community Conference (thanks to Joel Price, a member of our faculty, for setting it up).  It’s brand new, and we’ll start populating it with content in the weeks to come.

And that’s Social Bookmarking in a nutshell. Give it a shot. It will save you from many  ”now where did I read that?” moments.

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