Connecting social media to strategic communications

Charlie Melichar who is the VP for Communications at Colgate wrote a blog post the other day that got me thinking. He titled it Social media sustainability and starts to ask some good questions about how you sustain a really good social media program. How do you incorporate that program into an overall strategic communication plan?

For many people just getting up a Facebook page or loading some videos to YouTube might be enough. Your Vice President may not interested in social media and that’s ok because you don’t have the time or the staff for it. I would make an argument to that group that you are really missing opportunities.

But for those of us that have truly invested time, staff, resources into social media Charlie asks some really great questions. How do sustain the program past a student intern or staff members with an interest? I think there is another blog post on that topic but I am interested if people have opionions on the topic? Thoughts, comments, suggestions…

New baby 2.0

Last night at 6:31 pm I became a dad for the second time. 

Of course that’s big news for the Redfern family but not necessarily interesting for readers of this blog looking for some type of higher ed web insight.  (Read on the next section is how I tie it back together.)

I was actually quite amazed at how people found out about Kaitlyn. Of course I made some phone calls to my wife’s parents, my parents, and brothers. But that was all I had time for so I posted the news on Twitter which also updates my facebook status. Within minutes hundreds of people from cousins to high school buddies had access to the news. The comments and congratulations started to roll in. I was amazed at how fast the news spread.

My Aunt didn’t hear the news with a phone call from her sister but rather from one of her children (my cousin) who saw it on Facebook. How amazing. I didn’t have to wait and send out an email almost certainly forgetting one or more friends. I could post updates and pictures throughout the evening and the rest of the week.

Clearly I had great content of high interest to my audience. Those two things put together and delivered via social networks made for a fun evening.

Rolling out a new president

Over the course of the last week I have been “heads down” as I like to say in a project. I ignored twitter, articles piled up in my Google reader, and some of my on campus constituents heard “we’ll get to that next week”.

Last week I had an opportunity that doesn’t come around every year for a marketing professional in higher education. On Friday Gettysburg College trustees unanimously named Janet Morgan Riggs ‘77 our 14th president. It was one of the most interesting and quite frankly fun professional experiences of my career.

Since Dr. Riggs had been presented to campus the week before as a sole finalist we had a about a week to prepare for the announcement roll out but we wanted to think outside the box and incorporate our Web 2.0 and Social Media strategy. We had a detailed plan for the week with assignments so everything was all set to go come Friday morning and all we had to do was push the buttons. (It never quite works out as you plan but Friday was pretty close)

Shortly after the board voted the announcement was made in the following ways:

• News release posted on website (also pushed to RSS feed and twitter account) Included within the news release was a short video (also posted to YouTube) of  Dr. Riggs which outlined her vision for Gettysburg’s future as well as a flicker photo gallery. Since she graduated from Gettysburg we were able to find historical shots from her yearbooks.

• Large flash banner on the college homepage changed to reflect the announcement

• On-campus email
• Alumni and parent email
• Text message to those who had signed up
• Facebook update to fans as well as the fan page photo was updated to reflect the announcement
• Gettysburg College Linkedin group had the news release posted

We attempted to keep things current throughout the day as well.

• By around 3:00 pm we had posted a video interview with the chair of the search committee that was done that morning around 7:30 am.
• We also posted to our flicker photo gallery photos from the different campus events and receptions throughout the day
• The President’s website was completely updated by the end of the day.

Since we had enabled comments on our news releases in November and sent an update to fans on Facebook we have had quite a response to the announcement. We have received over 30 comments from alumni, parents, and friends on the news story and an additional 5 or 6 posts on the fan page.

As I said at the top of this post this experience the most interesting of my career. How did we do? Could we have taken advantage of Web 2.0 and Social Media tools in different ways? Could we have engaged our audiences better?

Let me know.

Plinky – what do you think?

What is Plinky?

According to the email that I received this afternoon

Plinky is a service that makes it easy for you to create inspired content on the web.

Every day we provide a prompt (like a question, or a challenge) and you answer. Depending on the prompt, your answer may contain photos, maps, playlists and more. You can easily share your Plinky answers on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and most other major blogging services.

We know you’ve got something interesting to say. Plinky is here to help you say it in a fun and compelling way.

This intrigued me enough to sign up for an account and try it. They have nice easy ways to post your responses to facebook, twitter, or your blog.Todays questions was:

If you were a famous rapper, who would be in your posse?

Check out the site and see what you think.

www.plinky.com

As 2008 ends 2009 begins…

It is a very quiet day here on campusl. Most of the offices have closed up for the holidays and people have gone home. Ironically enough just the online content editor and myself remain on the second floor. My email is cleaned up and the board in my office has been erased and the new 2009 projects are in place. I started to think back to the year behind 2008. I started 2008 with many projects to do and plans to fulfill. But as often happens during a year new programs started, priorities changed, and of course in case you hadn’t heard the economy tanked.

So mid way through the year our plans changed, priorities were shifted, and we adopted. I spent more time on facebook, linkedin, twitter, and other social networking sites than our edu site for the first time in my professional career this fall/winter in an effort to truly develop a social media strategy. It was fun, exciting, and really pushed me to do some of my best thinking.

As we begin 2009 I wonder what is ahead for Gettysburg and for the web. What will the climate of higher ed be in 2009 as enrollment numbers are shaky and development efforts are uncertain. Maximizing technology, content, free tools, and time will be at a premium. At Gettysburg we prepare for a major overhaul of the academic department pages, moving the catalog totally online, and moving the alumni magazine to a truly online format for at least 1 issue. Of course those are just the things we know about know. What really energizes me are the things we don’t know about and will have to adjust for mid way.

Hope you enjoy the holidays with your friends and families…see you in 2009!