Blogg-Ed Indetermination

The use of social networking by organizations to promote their goals is rapidly expanding. What was once thought of as an service for individual use is quickly being embraced as an avenue for schools to communicate with many constituent groups and individuals. The field is changing so rapidly that it is difficult to promulgate guidelines let alone policies. Nonetheless, it is important to avoid serious missteps in this new medium.

Here then are some suggestions for using some of the most well-known social networking and web 2.0 technologies: Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, YouTube, and iTunes.

• Each technology should be used to its best advantage based on its users, message type, and consistency with overall school messaging protocols and strategy.
  • Fit the message to the medium. Twitter may not be the best choice to announce a tuition increase, for example, but its a great place to update sports scores.
  • Linked-In may be a better place to look for professional mentors or adveretise a job opening  for students than Facebook, whereas Facebook is terrific for connecting with alumni.
  • YouTube is the place for video. Link to it when you need to share video content, using your own school-branded channel. If the video needs to be private, use an internal network. (If you are a Google education or enterprise customers put it on your Google video site.)
• Mutli-channel communications are powerful and should be used with forethought.
  • Use the small to drive to the large; Twitter or Facebook status updates to YouTube, iTunes, or new blog entries.
    
  • Keep the daily updates down to one or two per day to start with. Anything more than that can be seen as spam by users. As your channels become more diversified, you can increase the total number of updates coming from the organization overall, while keeping the per channel communication number low.
  • Strategically link applications to reduce staff time. For example, Twitter can update Facebook status.
• Official channels of communication should be marked as such.
  • If you have a Facebook fan page or group, use your logo and something like “An official Facebook page of…”
• Determine which channels will be one-way, and which will be two-way.
  • Institutional tweets should be for announcements, not conversations; Facebook groups suggest camaraderie and message exchange whereas, Facebook fan sites can be controlled like a regular Web site; an official YouTube channel should be moderated like any other official channel of the school, with publishing guidelines understood and enforced.
  • Channels need regular feeding and attention.
• Twitter, Facebook, Linked-in and similar channels thrive on daily updates, whereas iTunes and YouTube feature episodic publishing schedules based on when new multimedia content becomes available.
  • If you are concerned about mentions of your organization through non-official channels, subscribe to any one of a number of clipping services which monitor social networks and news organizations.
  • Faculty, staff, and students should be encouraged to create content for and subscribe to these new media gain familiarity and comfort with them, distribute the burden of content creation, and enrich the experience for all users.

My thinking is far from being fully formed on this topic, and I could really use the input of others. Please comment.