Blog by: Cody Olsen, OrgSync Campus Liaison, Dixie State College Just like many others, I am fully aware of the recent uprising of the mega-internet platforms now known as social media. Their increase in popularity has brought a new level of communication and interaction to all groups and ages, especially on college and university campuses. As a full time student I know that social media has become just as effective as e-mail, text messaging, and phone calls because of the instant communication capability. Many times on campus I witness arguments between friends because someone failed to receive an invite to the latest social event. It’s clear that these students have already jumped on the social media train, but what about the rest of the campus population: the faculty and administration?

Untapped Resource for the Classroom Many educators tend to adhere to the tried and true teaching methods of the past. Unfortunately, students are changing, and those once effective teaching methods are becoming stale. Faculty, and campus administrators, can utilize social media as a tool for creating new ways to engage students by posting relevant articles, research and websites to these social media sites that students are frequenting on a very regular basis; hence, encouraging outside the classroom learning. Extend Learning Beyond the Classroom Using these social media tools educators are able to reach students through new communication mediums and provide students with exposure and experience to valuable tools.  Providing their students with the experience of blogging, developing podcasts and building professional networks, equips students with skills they will likely need after college due to the multiple mediums that all outlets are reaching out to with these social media tools. Allowing students to hone these skills inside the classroom, giving appropriate and constructive feedback, plays both into the traditional mode of teaching/learning as well as the know-how of the future tools. Teach People, Not Lectures Many of the postings and updates on social media sites are fully searchable and identifiable to a particular user or author. With the proper skills, educators can track and follow the indications of the comprehension and understanding of specific lectures, lessons, writings and assignments of their students over the duration of the class. Using social media posts, along with student interaction in the classroom, educators may now base their teaching on custom plans centered not only on the needs of their students, but the overall student participation level over these various social medium platforms. This bridge is easy to cross for the faculty member by indicating in the course syllabus the specific social media sites that they will be monitoring/tracking/participating in along with their students and then granting a certain percentage-point amount for participation, frequency, cogency, and relevance to the course materials. These perks are only a small taste of the fresh new style that social media can bring into the world of higher education. In addition, we will see the potential for higher productivity, better student accountability, and increased participation because when faculty members are reaching out to students where they currently are, the internet, it establishes credibility of both the student and the faculty member. With new technology breeds innovation, and with the best and brightest minds utilizing this new medium, the possibilities for overall effectiveness are near infinite. It’s clear that the use of social media can have a great effect on the lives of students and educators alike. It’s time to throw away the stale, and to embrace and create a fresh new environment where education can thrive.

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The OrgSync Conference Team just returned from 2009 ACUI Conference in Anaheim, CA.  I have attended many conferences in my 11 years in higher education, but this was the first time I was able to attend ACUI.   It is always excitNow people know the name OrgSync and we have a large amount of clients stopping by the booth to say hi and get a little in-person consulting and training. OrgSync Booth at ACUI We could quickly see how close the ACUI community is and thoroughly enjoyed the conversations we had with attendees from around the world and gave me a great chance to connect with colleagues I had not seen in a while. We were also excited about the live twittering and blogging that was happing throughout the conference.  They had 5 blogs from all levels of experience (Sr. Management, Mid-Level Management, New Professional, Graduate Student [from my friend Liz], and a Undergraduate Student).  There were also several members Tweeting about the conference including the official ACUI twitter feed. We are excited ACUI are using technologies we use and support. We had a great time in Cali, and look forward to seeing you in NYC next year.

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This week’s guest post by Kyle Flaherty who writes a blog using insight, lessons learned and horror stories from his nearly 12 years in high-tech public relations, communications and marketing. He is currently Director of Marketing and Social Media at BreakingPoint Systems and of course you can find him on Twitter.

What’s the first rule of social marketing? Listen! What’s the second rule of social marketing? Listen! I first started thinking deeply about the concept of listening when I came across the term “lurker” at an event featuring Jackie Huba of “Church of the Customer Blog” and Society for Word of Mouth. The conversation came up in relation to stats that say 90% of folks involved in your social media activity are lurkers and 10% are active participants. Immediately the idea of lurkers turned into ‘listeners’ for me; people who are reading a blog, quietly joining a LinkedIn Group, reading Twitter and much more. Listeners are often your most dedicated readers and for your company they often become the most educated about your product and service and when they are ready to participate it is most likely as a qualified business lead.The best comparison is the person who walks into the auto dealership with a ream of printed materials from automotive websites, collected over a few weeks of ‘listening’, versus the person who walks in and just wants to talk with someone about their cars. The former is already in negotiating mode, the latter needs to go through the research stage in real-time, with a sales person who just wants to close. Which situation would you rather have, not only for selling, but for the customer experience? Well, what if the auto company was listening at the same time and had the new features and financing options that people had said they wanted on all of those sites. We just may have a match! Listening is important and will set you up for success in your social marketing, if you are in any type of marketing role you must become a good listener because: 1. Listening is inspiring. Listening to your prospective community base will be the inspiration for the social media tools you use. Listening to our community on their blogs and microblogs led us to learn Ning and Facebook was of no value, for them, but rather LinkedIn was the key and we know spend a lot of time in that social network. 2. Listen before you jump. You must always listen to people first, for an extended period of time, before you jump into the conversation. For example; I have hundreds of searches within Twitter sent to me through RSS every morning, based on the pain points of our potential customers. I end up listening to these people on a daily basis, but often time take no action immediately. 3. Often silence makes the loudest noise. A great personal example is a person I listen to through his blog and his LinkedIn updates. Over the past two months I’ve learned about his pain points at work, his background, his skill set and more. He recently joined our LinkedIn group for network engineers and I could now easily reach out to him, set up a time to connect and listen some more. 4. Listening makes you a better communicator. I learned this one when I was actually in PR when my manager would tell me first to listen to how a reporter answered the phone. Was the reporter’s greeting a “hello” vs “yeah” or was the tone “speedy” vs “thought out”? I would then adjust my introduction accordingly.

The more you listen, in terms of quality of listening and quantity, the more you learn about your potential community and the better you will communicate with them in your efforts. However the question becomes how can you sort through all of the noise that is currently online. It is simply staggering to even sort through the noise on one medium like Twitter, however it is this medium that can provide you with some of the most important and impactful insights. I’m not going to write about ‘what’ you should be listening to, that obviously depends on your overall goals for Twitter, whether personal or business. Instead I’m going to go through three ways to better listen to Twitter conversations in order to get more out of your experience, consider it your Twitter Miracle Ear. 1) It’s All About the App: One of the great aspects of Twitter is the open API and the ability to use different applications when Tweeting (yes, the API restrictions are also horribly annoying, but that is another post). Originally I was on Snitter, moved to Tweetr, switched to Twhirl and now am devoted to TweetDeck…for now. I didn’t make changes for the sake of changes, in each case I need features and functionality that made listening to conversations on Twitter easier. The reason I’m now on TweetDeck is very simple; the ability to create personalized lists of conversations based on people or search terms. Using an app like Tweetdeck you can create a list of local people, sports-chat, social marketers or colleagues.  All of a sudden you have created a filter on top of the firehose that is Twitter and can really catch up quickly on conversations. I’m hoping that TweetDeck, or someone, adds some features to allow for easier reading of conversation threads, but the point is to use a variety of applications and find the one that can help open up your Twitter ears. 2) RSS Is Your Friend: Each morning part of my routine, as a social marketer, is reviewing thousands of RSS feeds, most based on Twitter search terms. It all starts over at Twitter Search, where you can put in any term that you want and generate an RSS feed to track in your reader. For any business this is a critical tool in tracking the conversation about your own company, your competitors, partners and more. One recommendation when setting up these searches is to use the same keywords you have gathered for SEO purposes or the terms people are using to find your website. You will end up refining this over time for sure, but getting these set up now will help you get in on the conversation as soon as possible. 3) Routine is Your Friend: Like working out or parenting, listening on Twitter is all about setting up a routine.  You’ve set up your application properly and your RSS feeds are feeding, now you have to schedule time each day in order to catch up on all of this data. Some folks might argue that “Twitter is too organic, man…you have to let it wash over you like a moonlight swim”, I’m not exactly sure who those people are, but trust me they are all over the web, avoid. But you need to set up a routine for yourself that will allow you to keep up with the often insurmountable amount of data that will be coming your way. I’ve found that my best listening is done in the morning, so I make sure to review all my RSS feeds during the first hour in the office. Then I use my Twitter application about once an hour for five minutes to review the conversations. All in all it helps me find the right conversations and listen to what folks are saying.

Each morning and throughout the day you are going to find people that are important to your business in some way or another, now it is up to you to engage. And that of course will be in my second column!

The world of PR is in a state of turmoil. As advertising dollars shrink, print pubs have all but disappeared and online media sites are strapped for resources. Only the biggest stories seem to get picked up these days. So, how do you get the press to pay attention? Try social media. At BreakingPoint, I’ve seen a huge impact from social media activity on media coverage–primarily blogs and Twitter. In fact, I guestimate that a full 30% or more of my company’s Twitter followers are media or analysts. Recently one of our security experts posted an in-depth look at a clickjacking vulnerability on our blog, we posted on Twitter and a writer from Ziff Davis (one of our followers) picked up the story. This coverage has been one of our top sources of web traffic for over a week now. Amazing! Here are a few very easy ways you can get started using social media to get to big media:

Monitor and get involved in the conversation. Set up your RSS feeds, Google Alerts, and Tweetscans in iGoogle and start watching the market. Identify issues and trends. Spot conversations and jump into the conversation. If someone posts to a forum about a need, offer advice. If someone mentions your company or product, by all means, reach out to them. HubSpot provides this excellent piece of advice in their post on the topic:”Monitor your company / brand on Twitter. A while back we noticed that Guy Kawasaki mentioned Website Grader on Twitter.  Well, of course we had to let him know a bit more about Website Grader and maybe ask if he would also blog about it?  The result was this blog article on Website Grader which drove a good amount of traffic and leads.”  (See below for a cool tip on how to easily monitor people talking about your company on Twitter.)

Build a circle of influence with journalists and analysts. BreakingPoint’s Director of Marketing Kyle Flaherty provides a detailed three part case study in how we used these tools for PR and crisis communications. He shares these details about getting started:“With our goals outland a limited amount of knowledge concerning our community we set about reworking the way in which we communicated with the outside world.  Blogging and Twitter dominated our activities the past three months, but we’ve also been sure to be interactive with Vimeo (after realizing YouTube simply provides poorer quality), Flickr and to gather information at places like FriendFeed, Facebook, Squidoo and Ning.”

Sign up for Help a Reporter Out (HARO) Think of it as a free version Profnet.How does it work and why is it so popular? Journalists go online fill out a form and their request gets added to the three time daily email distribution to members. If you see a story that you could contribute to, your simply reply directly to the query. I’ve used it myself and have connected with several journalists. East Coast PR pro Peter Shankman started HARO out on Facebook where the service grew rapidly and needed a home off Facebook to manage the size. You can also follow Shankman on Twitter.I’m sure there are many more techniques you can use to get noticed in the media these days. Feel free to share in the Comments section.