2. What are Social Media? Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses web-based technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogues. A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value. Thanks, Wikipedia.com!
22. Broadcast Emails Find the Broadcast Email Request Form at: alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/volunteers/res/commres/blast_request.php A great way to share information!
The only thing I note on this page is how surprised I felt when I learned that “social media” is a plural while putting together this presentation. Sometimes I make a comment about how it just goes to show there are always new things to learn.
These are some “definitions” of social media that I pulled off of wikipedia. Sometimes I start to read one, but end up saying “blah blah blah” and then try to make a point about how hard it is to define social media because it is constantly growing and changing and means a lot of things in different contexts. I name off some of the most popular social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc… then I cite some examples of typical social media usage, like connecting with family and friends, chatting online, sharing news and photos, and planning events together. Folks are always coming up with new ways to use social media, and there are no established rules as to what is a “right” or “wrong” use of social media (within reason—cyberbullying is generally looked down upon). This freedom allows users to be as creative as they want to be.
This is my favorite slide. This is how a lot of people feel when they get started with social media because there are approximately a bajillion social media options, and new ones constantly being created. I recommend people start with the big one: Facebook. Twitter is another good place to start. The reason to begin with these big sites is that most people already use them, so you don’t have to go nuts trying to recruit everyone to join the site for the sake of your project.
The point of this map is to illustrate the “go where the people are” advice.This is a “map” of social media communities from 2010, drawn to scale if they were countries/continents (artist is from xkcd.com, a nerdy scientific webcomic). I point out how large Facebook is in comparison to the other “countries”, and then like to point out Twitter and Youtube as well. It’s not hard to make a joke about “Farmville” and “Happy Farm” being larger than “Spoken Word”. QQ is widely used in China (which is why it is so big). MMO Isle is basically gaming (MMO = massive multiplayer online). It’s fun to point out some of the smaller islands too… especially if they’re sites that folks tend to think are a bigger deal than they actually are, or sites that came and went: Myspace, AIM, Friendster, Livejournal, etc. At this point, it’s probably good to point out that it has been over a year since this map was built/drawn, so things have probably changed again (i.e. Google+ exists now and Facebook is probably even bigger)…
I just added this slide because I remembered the artist drew an older online communities map in 2007. Isn’t it amazing how much (1) the social media world expanded in three years, and (2) how much each site’s influence changed in that time? Social media is constantly changing—it’s very progressive and keeps getting better and better (good to say this for the folks who get nervous about things that change a lot).
Picking a social media site to work on isn’t hard… neither is setting up the page. These are misconceptions. The really hard part is developing content and establishing an ongoing dynamic that keeps the ball rolling. That’s why it’s important to think about goals before creating the site. I usually just go down the list of questions on this slide—What are your goals? What types of info will you share? Who is your audience? Who will be in charge of making sure your social media are kept up to date and maintained? How often do you plan to update it?Emphasize that getting started is a lot of work, but that hard work pays off once you realize how much it improves the ability for their population to communicate and share information/pictures/whatever with each other, and how much easier it is to pull uninvolved folks in.
This is my intro slide to MHConnect.
This slide just points out where the “Find an Alum” link is on our website. On the front page, and most pages on our site, this link actually drops down to give the user several options for searching for other alumnae, including Search Directory, Advance Search, Global Search, and a few other options. Some pages will only have the one link, which will take you to Global Search (which is the most broad search using keywords). “Find an Alum” is part of the Online Directory, which is part of MHConnect, which is our password-protected, secure online community for alumnae only.
Another part of MHConnect is Class Notes. The benefits of class notes are: your note is posted immediately (no need for it to go through a scribe!), your note can be much longer than it would be in the Quarterly, and you can add a picture to your class note. Class notes on MHConnect are divided into categories (career, births & adoptions, marriages & commitments, catching up, educational news, and general). Online class notes are a great resource for scribes too, because they can just log in and see what classmates have posted when they’re compiling they’re submission for the Quarterly.I do point out that notes posted on our site are secure in the sense that we do not post them publicly on our website, but there is an RSS feed for them, which means technically they could be made public if someone posted the RSS feed publicly—so don’t post any personal information (i.e. SSN, street address, etc), or any sensitive information that you would absolutely not want to be made public ever. This shouldn’t dissuade anyone from using the Class Notes feature, and if anyone has questions or wants to talk more about class notes, they can contact me (be careful what you say, for some reason this section of the presentation has sometimes degraded into a battle over identity-theft and online security—sometimes it’s better just to let them know the class notes are available and assume they’ll read the disclaimer when they check them out on the site).
Class and club websites are a great way to get information out and available on the web. The Alumnae Association adopted WordPress sites in 2010, and we’re having a great time converting classes from the old CMSimple sites to WordPress sites (if anyone asks—we’ll continue to support the CMSimple sites until they stop working, but we’d like to everyone to convert to WordPress). If I were giving the presentation, I’d probably talk about some of my experiences working with the different class years (most notably ‘81 and ’65, who I have worked the most closely with), but you could just mention that we have alumnae from all decades working on their class sites, so they’re user-friendly and very versatile. Class of 1965 even added a form to their site to collect registrations and payments for their mini-reunion!Anyone interested in creating, upgrading, or reviving their class/club site can contact me (Kat) or Ed to get started.(If anyone asks—YES, they can be password-protected, but we recommend against that because it defeats the purpose of having an easily accessible website… although they can password-protect sections of their site if it’s important to them).
Broadcast emails are a great way to spread the word to a population. They are private because they are sent to each user’s email address and are not posted anywhere on the web. Broadcast emails can be used to notify alumnae about upcoming events, important class/club information, request news for scribes, introduce a new website… the possibilities are tremendous. One of my favorite creative uses is by the class of 1965—their scribe emails an extended version of the class notes to all classmates each quarter! (She also posts the extended version on the Class Notes in MHConnect—totally amazing).
Introductory plate for Facebook.
Folks are always asking if they should create a page or a group. Groups are a little more complicated to set up, but more private. Pages are easier to use, but completely public. It really depends on what the user(s) are looking for, and they can google around for more information if they’re really undecided. Ok, and I suppose they can contact me too if they really need to… ;)
LinkedIn introductory slide.
Since LinkedIn is primarily business/career-focused, it suits special interest groups and population segments well (i.e. “lawyers”, “medical”, etc). Clubs and classes might be better off sticking to Facebook.
Twitter introductory slide.
Here’s an example of the class of 1994 using Twitter.
YouTube and Flickr introductory slide.
Here is the Alumnae Association’s YouTube page, where we have videos from Reunion and other AAMHC events. YouTube makes it easy to quickly share videos of ten minutes or less with the world.
Here is the Alumnae Association’s Flickr page. We recommend Flickr for photo management, because there are so many options for sorting, organizing, and displaying photo sets. Flickr also has great embed options for adding to websites, and there are plug-ins for the class/club WordPress sites that easily integrate Flickr photos into the site.
These are the basic “rules” of social media, according to me. Post or update your page often (to keep it alive). Don’t be afraid of posting “too much” information… you’ll get a feel for how often you’ll want to post once you get started (if you don’t already have an idea), but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone complain that someone “updates too often” or “posts too many photos”. Be attentive to your online community—this sort of ties in with that last point in that you will eventually develop a feel for your page… make sure to also keep an eye on the responses you get to your postings. A little goes a long way if you respond to posts because it makes users feel like they are being included and encourages everyone to come back to the page again and again to interact. “Beg, borrow, and ‘steal”” – I have been criticized on this wording, but all I mean by it is that social media is SOCIAL, which means if you find something cool or relevant—post it! (*caveat: don’t post things that you know will upset other people, or that you truly don’t have the right to post, i.e. don’t download someone else’s photoset and post it as your own, although you can link to another person’s photoset and give them credit). It’s all common sense, folks. Have fun!
This is pretty much verbatim. Definitely emphasize the fact that there is a lot of information available on the internet—just google for answers. If anyone needs help, they can contact me.
