June 29, 2009

Are you ready for social media?

Jun. 29, 2009 at 11:44 AM | By David Toth | Comment Count

The following guest post was written by David Toth of Worksmart Integrated Marketing.

Don’t feel like you are the only one asking this question. With major headlines covering the growth in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more, it’s becoming more critical for colleges to develop a strategy in this area.

When was the last time you searched for your institution or organization on Facebook or YouTube or search.twitter.com? The amount of public profiles or groups already created, whether by the school administration or others, is growing exponentially. Students know how to utilize these features and it’s important that the administration not fall too far behind.

With over 85 percent of 18-24 year-olds already on Facebook, it is time for colleges to develop a strategy for getting involved. WorkSmart and Contract Training Edge put together a survey that was sent to 220 community colleges across the country to learn more about their interactions with Facebook, how it was being used within their institution and what were some of the fears that these individuals had about engaging in Facebook. The top three roadblocks to social media adaptation were:

Resources and Time
Control and Exposure
Lack of ROI/unknown benefits

Addressing Resources and Time allocation at your institution

All three of these answers point to the importance of creating a Facebook strategy. When building a strategy for social media, a good place to begin is with the Groundswell strategy of P.O.S.T. – People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. You can’t always start with technology. Focus on the people and profiles you want to reach and your objective when you do reach them. Once you are able to determine the main reasons and objectives for engaging in Facebook, determining roles and responsibilities within your institution becomes critical in developing relationships online.

Time should not be a factor any more, when over 85 percent of your market is engaged in an area that you are not. The question is how do you make time and make sure the individual responsible (yes, an individual. No one wants to talk to some “school” but rather an individual at that school) is allocating at least 30 minutes a day to get involved.

A strategy for Control and Exposure of content and conversations

Control and exposure is an impactful talking point in any large organization, but I go back to the beginning of this article and ask, “Are you listening?” People are talking, especially in higher education.If you are not in the conversation, then how can you participate or attempt to control that relationship. When a strategy is created with a social media policy, the roles and responsibilities allocated to that department or individual should develop a response plan on how to react. This doesn’t mean shutting down your page, or deleting a comment, but rather an opportunity to show prospects and students that someone is listening and ready to engage with them over social media.

You can’t measure New Media with Old Metrics

There are many conversations going on throughout the web that look at trying to measure social media marketing. Recently, I wrote a blog post about not being able to measure new media with old metrics.When starting a new project, I focus a lot of time on Return on Engagement, or ROE. Are people actually engaging and contributing to what your objectives are for the various profiles you have created?

Defining engagement within your strategy is important, to be able to measure the impact and results. It is good to see when the conversation starts having people answer “yes” or “no” or posting a link, but it is important to focus on developing conversations with sentences, paragraphs and people engaging with new questions or further information on that specific topic.

Today, being in higher education and not having a profile on Facebook, or not thinking about the social media strategy within your organization is ignoring the paradigm shift that has already occurred. Investing thousands into a new logo or T-shirt campaign may look good, but where is the interaction or ROI? With Facebook, you can measure interactions and engage prospects and students in a manner, which they use daily and are comfortable with.

What is preventing you and/or your institution from engaging in Facebook? What about social media?