Taking the Web 2.0 Plunge: Diving into Social Media 2010 AASCU Communications Conference for Senior Public Relations & Marketing Professionals March 8-9, Washington, DC Valerie Lopez Director of Media Research,
What We’ll Cover ► Diving into Social Media ► What is Social Media? ► Social Media’s impact on PR & the media ► Listening ► Tools for social media monitoring ► Locating communities through social metrics ► Engaging ► Personality 2.0 ► The Rule of Thirds ► Creating ► To Blog or Not to Blog? ► Higher Ed in Social Media ► Case Studies ► Lynn University ► DePaul University
Diving into Social Media
What is Social Media? “Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism, one-to-many, to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers.” - Brian Solis, PR 2.0 blogger and principal of FutureWorks
Types of Social Media Social Networking Sites ► Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn Lifestreaming/Microblogging ► Facebook Status, Twitter, FriendFeed & others Social News Sharing Sites ► Digg, Delicious, Reddit & more: important places to participate Blogs & Podcasts ► Citizen media with huge influence, especially on niche topic Social Photo/Video Sharing ► YouTube, Flickr, Picasa
Social media’s impact on PR & the media ► Focus on the social capital of the journalist, not the outlet ► News is consumed differently – and on the go ► Niche sites available to everyone ► More direct-to-consumer ► Communities, not audiences
The Conversation Shift PR The Media The Public Us Traditional Media Model Social Media Model
► What is my goal? ► Who is my target community? ► How do I engage? ► How will I measure my success? Questions to Ask…
Listening
Monitor. Find out what’s being said about you online Engage. Respond quickly to establish that you’re listening Tools ► Google Alerts ( ► Twitter: ► LinkedIn: Advanced Answers Search ► Technorati.com ► Google Blog Search ( ► Paid Monitoring Services
Locating Communities Through Social Metrics Find patterns across multiple measures of influence
Engaging
Personality 2.0 ► Go in with a plan ► Be yourself, but remember that you represent your brand ► Social media gives others a snapshot of you: What does your picture look like? ► Listen to the tone of each site before engaging ► Creating a mix of content: ⅓ about you, ⅓ sharing articles/ideas, ⅓ conversation ► Regularly clean up your profiles ► Stay for the marathon, not the sprint, to build relationships
To blog or not to blog? ► What is the goal of my blog? ► What can I offer that is unique to my blog and can’t be found elsewhere? ► Who will my blogger(s) be? (They must want to blog or it won’t work.) ► Can I stick with the blog for the long haul? Will I be able to post regularly?
Developing Video/ Audio Content ► Identify a goal for utilizing multimedia content ► You can make your content viral and fun ► For SEO purposes, be sure to include some text with your video/audio ► Accessing to multimedia tools is easier (and cheaper!) than ever ► Multimedia content is social: If you share it, they will come.
University of Phoenix Online Channel: youtube.com/user/UniversityofPhoenix Type of videos: Webisodes/Testimonial/Mini- documentary YouTube marketing voice: Everyman Inspiration *Source - Catherine Geil Reinhard & Mashable.com
► Know how you will measure your success before you engage ► Always keep your target community in mind ► Be patient – building a community, campaign or brand on the social web takes time A quick note on measurement
Ways Higher Ed is Using Social Media ► Sharing/Creating Content ► Engaging with their community ► Promoting Student and Faculty Work ► Broadcasting Events ► Establishing Connections ► Emergency Notification System *Source- Mashable.com
Stanford University on Facebook
YouTube EDU - UC Berkeley ► 36, 486 Subscribers ► 4,820,174 views ► Online lectures
University of Virginia
Case Studies
Case Study Challenge ► Communicating with the year-old demographic ► Lack of name recognition Goal Target Community ► Prospective students between the ages of that are interested in a private, liberal arts education at a four-year university ► To engage with the group candidly and clearly, and often, without an institutional filter Objective ► Provide smart, stylish and authentic content via Lynn.edu, student blogs, Facebook pages, YouTube
Results ► Each student blog averages 1,000+ unique visitors ► Facebook page has 500+ members ► Media placements ► Opened up conversations between past, present and potential students
Case Study Challenge ► Create sustainable word-of- mouth for DePaul among parents Target Audience ► Parents of Prospective Students GoalSolution ► Establish stronger relationships through a customer service and information-sharing ► Created DePaul Quad ( an online community to foster dialog among parents and the universitywww.depaulquad.com *Case Study by womma
Results ► 1,693 members of the community, approximately 30% of the parents who have been invited to join ► An average of 1,700+ unique visits per month ► Total of 200+ participants across the live sessions, an average of 30 per session. *Case Study by womma
Taking the Web 2.0 Plunge: Diving into Social Media QUESTIONS? Valerie Lopez Director of Media Research,