We asked attendees about progression of their blogging efforts, and the sentiment from many was that groups are moving away from blogging due to time constraints and management. BU Dining Services said they had recently taken to Tumblr, as it easily allows them to post pictures and other shorter pieces of content. Admissions brought up their new blog, which allows them a way to provide more information to prospective students. PR mentioned that one of their latest blogs, Professor Voices, had been migrated from blogs.bu.edu to a new BU WordPress site.

Kat Cornetta of the Dean of Students office advised that departmental blogs, rather than being made separate entities on blogs.bu.edu, can be integrated into BU WordPress websites by:

• Creating blog posts in “News”
• Assigning each post to a category, which is the blog’s name
• Adding the category to the site’s main navigation

By creating multiple categories, you can create multiple “blogs,” which are simply subsections of your website.

Next, we discussed location-based services like Foursquare, and though some groups expressed interest in using it, no one seemed to have solid strategies yet. An example was brought up about using the Foursquare “Lists” feature to compile recurring features, like BU Today’s “Nearby Neighborhoods” or “Lunch Anyone?” series, to repurpose content and drive Foursquare users back to BU sites.

Other technical discussions followed, including:

• Embedding playable Vimeo clips on Facebook pages
• Reserving Foursquare venues and adding venue managers
• The inability to create LinkedIn sub-pages (currently limited to one main company page for Boston University, per LinkedIn’s guidelines)

We also shared a link to a Google Doc for all Social Media Communicators to post events that need cross-promotion. If you still need this link, please send us an e-mail.

Did you have an interesting discussion that wasn’t mentioned here? Feel free to leave it in the comments.

Developing the Social Media Management Team (@Greg2dot0′s Blog): “Focus on the behavior, not the tool.” Thinking lately about social media adoption in an organization as much more than technology training; it’s a culture change. I met with Robin Lubbock of WBUR several weeks ago and he explained how he’s meeting with staff one-on-one to get them set up on social tools (because everyone learns differently.)

Tumblr Now Has More Blogs Than WordPress.com (Mashable): Nearly 20.9M blogs have been created on Tumblr. We’re currently experimenting as well. Thinking of ways we can use Tumblr to talk with students (since so many are using Tumblr for their personal blogs (and tagging Boston University.) I’m looking at similar social portals that emphasize photos & short text — even personal website builders like flavors.me, about.me and Jason Kottke’s stellar.io now emphasize foolproof signup/design and visual appeal.

5 Tips for Launching Multiple Facebook Fan Pages (10,000 Words): “Assess your progress” is the key part for me. Facebook Pages (even if you’re only managing one) should have clear goals in place that tie directly to your overall marketing efforts. How do you assess your Facebook Page’s success? What particular metrics do you track? Did you know: Social Media Communicator for the School of Public Health, Elana Zak, is a contributor to this blog? Check out her latest post, “Standing Up for the Journalism Degree”

Nieman Reports: Curation, Community and the Future of News (The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University): Steven Rosenbaum sees an area for growth in “content curation” jobs: sifting through the massive amounts of social data surrounding a news event, and finding the key messages and influencers in the conversation. Be sure to check out the Digital Lifestyle Survey findings (I’m not sure whether I should be proud or embarrassed to say I’m in the “48.5%” category on that second graph — how about you?)

The Liberty Hotel’s Social Media page: This caught my eye this week. Looking forward to the launch of a social media guide for all BU accounts (currently in the works). Twitter users: Have you bookmarked our “BU on Twitter” list?

BU 2015: Student Blogs

We’ve noticed several initiatives across campus by students and organizations to acclimate prospective and current students (especially BU 2015) to life at BU and in Boston this summer. Some examples:

• The Quad’s “Cheapskate’s Guide to Boston,” running all summer, and “Orienting to BU,” just for freshmen
• COM Ambassadors: Check out their blog — they’re tweeting on @COMUGrad, too.
• BU FYI, run by the Dean of Students’ office (check Kenn’s blog, too — he has a new playlist each week for orientation)
• Common@Mugar: The Mugar team has been pounding the pavement — check out their latest initiative, New@BU, aimed at the freshman class. They also released a fun video this week on Session 2 of orientation.

Anything we might be missing? Have an article that struck a chord for you this past week? Send it our way in the comments.

- Jenny

Image courtesy roncaglia on Flickr / Creative Commons.

#BUSCVNGR

Michael DeFillippis (COM’13) came to the meeting to speak on behalf of his teammates (Alex Shuck and Rachel Sprung) and their experience with the SCVNGR Beantown Challenge. From February 7th through the 14th, the Boston University community was invited to participate in various challenges at campus locations (the GSU, Warren Towers, SMG) for points and prizes. For the campaign, they:

• Created a Facebook event page
• Enlisted the help of 17 “student ambassadors” from the Dean of Students office, who helped to spread the word
• Launched a fan page for Dean Elmore
• Created an initial batch of 15 challenges
• Used #BUSCVNGR to spread the word on Twitter

During the campaign:

• 113 participants played (this number does not include the team or ambassadors)
• An average of 22 challenges were completed per person
• New challenges were rolled out to keep up with the demand of new games

Some limitations of the tool include: iPhone and Android support only (if the challenges are connected into treks, SMS-capable phones can play, too). Limited backend functionality, including analytics (exportable views of participants, freeform text entries for challenges). There was also some confusion on challenge resets, which allow participants to do the same challenge for more points after an hour has passed.

To learn more about their campaign, visit the Beantown Challenge SCVNGR page, as well as coverage from the BU Quad.

BU Culture Shock

Raul Fernandez of the Howard Thurman Center presented on the efforts of the BU Culture Shock blog, a student-run operation with roughly 30 staff members (contributors and four editorial). The blog recently celebrated its first birthday, and has seen tremendous growth — in strategy, traffic and working knowledge. Some brief highlights:

• Currently netting roughly 4,400 hits/month on a custom-built WordPress frame
• About 20% of reader base are “frequent fliers” — considered heavy repeat visitors
• Emphasis on “street cred”/authenticity of voice. Allow writers ample freedom to say things in their own way
• Give student writers & editors opportunity to self-edit and self-police with occasional spot-checking from the staff
• Be Younonymous: Compelling content from anonymous guest contributors
• Releasing content at an average rate of 20 posts per week
• Recruiting new writers through current writers
• Using Google Analytics to benchmark against past performance

We asked Raul if he would be willing to share more about the inner workings of making BU Culture Shock run smoothly, and he has kindly provided us with the presentation he delivered during the meeting. Social Media Communicators members can access it on the SMC Google Group.

Facebook Pages

Jenny Mackintosh of Public Relations updated the Communicators on recent changes made to Facebook Page functionality. Facebook Pages now act more similarly to Profiles, including the ability to “Use Facebook as Your Page.” This includes updates & notifications (new fans and wall posts), the ability to view the News Feed as the Page, and the ability to write on other Pages’ walls. Some possible trouble spots included:

• Pages’ walls no longer in complete timeline order (help for admins: Admin View)
• Confusion about switching between “Use Facebook as Your Page” and “Use Facebook as Yourself” — could lead to erroneous posts from the wrong author.
• Facebook no longer automatically delivering news feed updates to fans who haven’t visited your Page recently (read more about this on All Facebook)

Upcoming Events

Our last item on the agenda was to go over upcoming events for cross promotion and introduce new members. We have posted the Upcoming Events to the Google Group, which can be accessed by all Social Media Communicators. If you can’t see the group, simply request an invite on the page.

Questions? Comments? Leave them below!

Highlights:

• Blogging is a cornerstone to SM campaign
• Focus on “combined relevance” which should tell you the reason your content matters – also, “personal relevance” which is why content is important to your specific audience
• Content should, first and foremost, be audience focused and not vehicle to push information about one’s self (on blog as well we other SM platforms)
• Potential audiences are looking for a “point of view” on blogs
• Use “Social Proof” to verify your content by embedding SM buttons and prove to audience the relevancy of posts
• Grammar and writing quality matter
• Weekends are ideal for sharing content
• Custom designed formats are ideal
• Make blog post titles descriptive to drive appeal on SM sharing sites
• Multiple blog authors, with profiles, is preferred
• Limiting categories can help page organization
• Avoid “TLDR” (too long, didn’t read)

Want to watch the webinar yourself? Dan’s talk is hosted in its entirety on HubSpot.

At Student Health Services Wellness Education, we use social media quite regularly. We know that the population we serve is connected to many platforms including Facebook and Twitter. We also know from the research that most people get answers to their health questions online or from a friend versus a health educator or medical professional. While this knowledge makes it difficult to dispel myths, it is helpful to get the word out to our students in this format.

About one year ago, we created the BU Student Health Facebook page and since then, we have added close to 2,000 friends. On our Facebook page, you will find a daily status update that varies from day to day. On Wednesdays, for instance, we provide a weekly wellness tip, while on Fridays we provide a weird body fact. We also create all of our events on Facebook and invite our friends — we have found that we can get the word out about what is going much faster this way than with large, costly posters. We also use Facebook to post interesting health and wellness news clips and to create surveys for students to participate in. Since approximately 85% of college-age students are on Facebook, we think that this is a valuable resource to our office.

In addition to Facebook, we use our Wellness blog quite regularly. We always post our upcoming events, Student Health news and programs, and other health and wellness information. Because we are able to update it ourselves, it is a little more user-friendly than the general Student Health website. We typically put a new post about something important every one to two days. We have noticed that certain posts get more attention than others. For example, just before an event, many students will visit the Upcoming Events page. We also notice that students seem to be very interested in articles related to the flu, stress, and the GTK campaign.

Lastly, we have started a Twitter page. We were reluctant at first because last year around this time, students were telling us that they didn’t actually use Twitter, but they did follow other people like celebrities. It seems, however, that there has been a slight change with more students making use of Twitter. Typically, we simply link our Facebook status updates to our Twitter page to ensure that we have similar message, and also because it takes much less time. We have found that writing quick, fifteen-word health messages are noticed by our students because sometimes our messages get retweeted.

We think that using social media can help us permeate our health messages in ways that may have been difficult previously. We think that the blog and our Facebook page have gained popularity and we hope that our Twitter followers will follow the same path. Because of our use of social media for health promotion, I was asked to speak at the upcoming NECHA (New England College Health Association) conference. I am very excited about this opportunity, and to continue learning about how social media can help increase health and wellness awareness among BU students.

We hope that guest posts like Michelle’s can help other social media practitioners at BU gain some insight into how different organizations on campus are using social media to their benefit. If you’re interested in writing a guest post of your own, please contact us!