1. Social Media Use to Promote
Community of Practice Goals:
Online Survey Results and
Implications
Barbara O’Neill, Andrew Zumwalt,
Carolyn Bird, Fahzy Abdul-Rahman
eXtension Financial Security for All (FSA)
Community of Practice

2. Program Description
• Conducted study of FSA CoP to determine
SM capacity and activity of its members
• Used results to inform two activities:
– Webinar on social media use and impact
evaluation
– National grant-funded social media outreach
project to promote savings

3. Definition of Social Media
Digital networks (blogs, Facebook, Farmville,
Twitter, wikis, YouTube) that enable people to:
– Organize
– Socialize
– Learn
– Play
– Participate in e-Commerce transactions

4. IF FACEBOOK WERE A
COUNTRY, IT WOULD BE THE
THIRD LARGEST. THERE ARE
MORE FACEBOOK USERS THAN
PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES.
THE WORLD’S SECOND MOST
POPULAR SEARCH ENGINE IS
YOUTUBE.
MORE THAN 75 MILLION PEOPLE
WERE ON TWITTER in 2009 (and
over 200 million in December 2010)
AND IT IS GROWING FASTER
THAN ANY OTHER SOCIAL
NETWORKING SITE, ESPECIALLY
AMONG 50-SOMETHINGS

5. Social Media Literacy is a 21st
Century Technical Skill
• How specific social media tools operate
• How to engage users in 2-way information
flows
• How to measure the impact of social
media outreach

6. Survey Topics
• Social media tools used
• Frequency of use
• Description of content posted
• Number of friends/followers
• Social media impact evaluation methods

7. Methodology and Sample
• 14-question Instant Survey questionnaire
• Sent to ≈ 350 FSA CoP members and names
collected at an Extension conference in 12/10
• N =45 respondents (≈ 13%)
• Primarily female and age 50, older, middle
income

8. Use of Social Media
Frequency of Social Media Use by Extension
Family Economics Educators (N =45)
Social Media Site Almost Daily Frequently Sometimes Rarely Never
Facebook 42% 20% 22% 9% 7%
Twitter 7% 14% 2% 39% 39%
YouTube 5% 25% 48% 16% 7%
Blog (any) 5% 5% 35% 7% 49%
Linked In 2% 11% 20% 27% 39%
Flickr 0% 0% 7% 19% 74%
Plaxo 0% 0% 7% 0% 93%
My Space 0% 0% 0% 9% 91%
Digg 0% 0% 0% 5% 95%

9. Methods of SM Access
• Respondents could check as many methods
as applied for various SM programs
• Facebook: 91% used a computer and 36%
used a smart phone

10. SM Access Frequencies
Methods Used by Extension Family Economics
Educators to Access Social Media Sites (N =45)
SM Site Computer Smart Phone Web-Enabled TV Other N/A
Facebook 91% 36% 0% 4% 7%
Twitter 56% 13% 0% 4% 40%
YouTube 91% 18% 2% 4% 9%
Blog (any) 50% 0% 0% 2% 50%
Linked In 62% 12% 0% 2% 38%
Flickr 20% 0% 0% 0% 80%
Plaxo 8% 0% 0% 0% 92%
My Space 10% 0% 0% 0% 90%
Digg 2% 0% 0% 0% 98%

11. SM Content Posted By FSA
CoP Members
• News releases • Newsletters
• Financial columns • Program
• Fact sheets announcements
• Articles • Pictures from events
• Video links • Summaries of
• Research findings legislative changes
• Original “how to” • Links to eXtension
videos • Quick tips
• Organization minutes

12. Personal or Professional
Social Media Use ?
Key decision to
make early on:
how much of 53% had
content
your personal about both
Professional
life (if any) to
Personal
reveal
47% focused on
one or the other

13. Potential Outreach
• < 50 to several hundred friends/followers
per individual respondent (N =45)
• Collectively, 5,965 message recipients
• Average of ≈ 132 message recipients per
respondent

14. Administrative Matters I
• < ¼ (22%) of respondents report SM outreach
to their Extension administrators
– Annual reports
– Online planning/reporting systems
– Impact evaluation reports
– CVs
• 27% would like to

15. Administrative Matters II
• 29% said institution has a SM policy or
guidelines
• 33% said institution did not
• 38% did not know

16. Common Institutional Social
Media Use Policies
• “Be careful not to do anything personal
on work time”
• Do not mention trade names
• Content must be research-based
• Inappropriate material could be cause
for disciplinary Action

17. Tracking Impact
• About ¼ (27%) of sample tracked use of SM
content
– Scribd
– Google alerts
– Bit.ly (to track clicks on links)
– Facebook reports
– Number of Twitter followers
• 36% said they did not know how to track use but
would like to

18. Great Collegiality Reported
• Over ¾ (78%) were willing to have their SM
content reused by other FSA CoP members
• 93% were willing to use FSA CoP-created
content on their own SM sites
– Cut and paste or re-tweet messages

19. General Comments
• Interested in receiving “ready to use” SM messages
• Not allowed to use SM at work; must do SM
outreach at home on personal time
• Want training on SM use and evaluation tools
• Need simple to follow “cheat sheets”
• “We all need to be on board” [using social media]

20. Subsequent FSA CoP Social
Media Webinar
How to Use and Evaluate Social Media in
Financial Education
Duration: 01:28:44
URL for Viewing:
https://connect.extension.iastate.edu/p52944724/

21. Implications I
• Provide step-by-step social media training
– FSA CoP developed a successful “Twitter
Homework Assignment”
• Work Smarter, Not Harder
– Have a few people write SM messages for
many and track their aggregate impact
• Establish/publicize institutional SM
guidelines

22. Implications II
• Aggregate impacts could be impressive
– 45 people had potential to reach almost 6,000
– Those 6,000 could potentially reach many more
• Extension educators need to learn social
media evaluation metrics
• Begin SM programming with Facebook,
YouTube, and Twitter

23. Implications III
• Address the issue of low smart phone access
– Would increase ability to post messages “on the go”
– Lack of technical know-how?
– Lack of budget for a data plan?
• Determine the opportunity cost of SM use
– What do Extension educators give up at work
and/or at home?

24. Comments? Questions?
What is the social media capacity of your
CoP?
What can your CoP leaders do to expand
it?
Best wishes!