Links to all of the talks mentioned can be accessed by navigating through the presentation itself. Also mentioned in the presentation: Dennis Crowley’s foursquare check-ins visualization video:

Foursquare check-ins show the pulse of New York City and Tokyo from Foursquare on Vimeo.

Looking for more SXSW Interactive 2013 content? Check out their Soundcloud set of various sessions you can listen to at your computer or on your mobile device.

We also briefly discussed the Battle for BU (thanks to Ryan Bersani for explaining it to us), and Spredfast, which is currently being used by PR, the Dean of Students office, Admissions and Alumni Relations.

Finally, we reviewed a web timeline of communications sent out from the University during the week of the Boston Marathon. SMC members should receive an e-mail shortly with a link to that timeline. Thank you again to all of our Communicators who helped spread important announcements on their platforms and answered questions.

We will plan to meet again in late August. Please feel free to email us with suggested topics.

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.

Our account is now manager of the majority of campus venues. If you have previously been the manager of your venue (for example, Raul in the Howard Thurman Center), this should still be the case. If you are a Social Media Communicator and would like to become a manager of your location, send us an e-mail with your Foursquare username and we’ll add you. This will allow you to edit your building’s information and add specials.

Additionally, if you search for your venue and find false information in the profile (ex. phone numbers, category, missing Twitter handle, etc.) please let us know and we can change it. We will talk more about this, along with launching specials, at the September meeting.

Foursquare and geolocation services

Mary Tunney and Jenny Mackintosh of Public Relations introduced their plan to roll out Foursquare campus-wide in the next few weeks. In their own words:

Foursquare is a mobile application that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. It is a friend-finder, a social city guide and a game that challenges users to experience new things, and rewards them for doing so. Foursquare lets users “check in” to a place when they’re there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they’ve been and who they’ve been there with.

They have been working to compile a list of venues related to Boston University in preparation for Foursquare to launch a Boston University Foursquare page (similar to the Syracuse University Foursquare page, for example). Currently, BU has a profile page, which will be converted into the newer university landing page in the next week or so. Once BU “owns” those venues on Foursquare, we will be able to access analytics on who is visiting, as well as manage specials and discounts at particular locations around campus.

Leo Pare of Athletics asked about the accuracy of checking in to locations close to each other, for example, Nickerson Field and Agganis Arena. We clarified that Foursquare’s check-in system is not automatic; it can use geolocation services on your phone to suggest nearby locations, but ultimately, it is up to the user to check in. Susan Lebovits of Sustainability asked if Foursquare could be used to mark “green” landmarks around campus as part of a promotion, since the actual Sustainability office is not likely to be visited by the general population. We suggested that she send a list of venues she might be interested in promoting so that we can include them in a second round of requests. We also discussed SCVNGR as another tool that might allow her to create a challenge on her own.  Raul Fernandez of the Howard Thurman Center also underlined a few of the key differences between Foursquare and SCVNGR, describing SCVNGR as “more flexible and customizable” with the addition of challenges and “treks.”

BU Today’s new editor, John O’Rourke

John O’Rourke came by the Social Media Communicators meeting to introduce himself and to give some insights on what BU Today is looking to cover in the upcoming academic year. They are looking for feedback on the site — the good, the bad, and any suggestions on how to make BU Today a more effective news source for the campus community. They will put a stronger emphasis on student stories this year in the hopes of boosting student readership. They are also looking to expand beyond their core set of campus experts and to talk with a broader range of professors. Any information or suggestions can be directed either to today@bu.edu, or to John O’Rourke directly.

Kim Cornuelle, BU Today’s production manager, also went over some tips for coverage. The front page has three headlines and one feature per day during the regular academic year. If you have an event coming up, make sure to put it into the BU Calendar, as they populate their BU Today calendar (both on the site and in the daily e-mail) from those events. They also suggested keeping BU Today in the loop for social media-related cross-promotional opportunities — any official event hashtags on Twitter, links and other information can be included in the bottoms of stories to help promote use.

Upcoming Events

Sustainability, SPH, DAR, FitRec and CFA all had events to promote this month, which we will list in the “Communicators” section shortly. If you do not have access to this section, please send an e-mail to jemack@bu.edu to request.

Update 4:22 pm: The event listing is now live & available to the SMC group.