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.

The Social Media Communicators welcomed two representatives from Google Plus to campus for a presentation of the network on Tuesday, June 12. The team provided a walk-through of the basics of Google Plus, and provided some food for thought on how higher education communicators might be able to use it for their benefit. Five key takeaways from the afternoon:

- Google is aiming to integrate many of its existing tools directly into Plus. Plus will eventually become what Google calls “The Social Spine” of its products. The ability to share with others and interact socially will be available through Plus for documents, photos and photo editing, games, events and more.

- Circles can be an effective marketing tool. Not only can you curate circles of alumni, students, media and other focused groups to target with messaging, circles can also be shared with others to boost followership. For example, a school’s page could share a circle of key publications it recommends its students keep updated with. A professor could also create a circle of students in his or her class, and then share the circle so that everyone could connect with each other.

- Hangouts are a key advantage for Plus, and can be used for one-on-one and one-to-many. From a professor using a Hangout for virtual office hours, to a Hangout on Air, broadcast live on YouTube to showcase a campus event, Hangouts can be used for many different applications.

- Plus activity affects search. Google’s “Search Plus Your World” makes Google Plus an integral part of more personalized search. Participation in Google Plus provides an advantage when someone searches for your department or institution, and can connect with you directly.

- Providing social context with Plus can also affect your AdWords campaigns. Google Plus page endorsements and campaign extensions, according to the representatives who spoke with us, can have a positive impact on click-through rates of AdWords campaigns. If you use AdWords, this is something to consider.

A few more resources and examples to peruse:

• Google in Education
• Boston University on Google Plus

For questions on starting your own presence on Google Plus, reach out to us or directly to Zack Yeremian of the Google Boston Local Marketing Team at zyeremian@google.com

Pinterest

As Pinterest membership continues to grow, some SMC members have asked if it will work for their marketing efforts. Among the BU communicators adopting Pinterest:

• Dean of Students: Kat Hasenauer pointed us to Kenn Elmore’s page, which will be used during orientation to curate the presentation topics on the fly. Each presenter will be “pinned” with their name, office, and one key takeaway: “My advice to you as a freshman.”
• Student Activities Office: Melissa Grove helps to curate SAO’s Pinterest account as a resource for students. Boards help students with event planning and ideas, as well as fun boards like “We Love Scarlet.” They are also following other schools to see how they’re using the tool. They plan to increase their efforts on the platform over the summer with the help of student workers.
• College of Communication: Though COM’s Pinterest may soon be targeted to only the Photojournalism program, Paul Kresge admitted that they wanted to experiment with the platform because “it was there and it was something new” (a sentiment that felt common across the room). Paul also pointed to their Springpad account, recently set up by the company’s ambassadors, which pulls in richer data, including Google Maps and Yelp reviews, which may make guides for students more useful.

Overall, the feeling about Pinterest seemed to be 1) it’s caught our attention because of the user base growth & news, 2) it may not be a tool for every department, but it’s worth experimenting with for now, and 3) the best use case so far seems to be to provide useful information & guides for students. One person pointed to Drake University’s Pinterest as a great example of a higher ed institution using the tool well.

Class of 2016

Gordon Ryan, Admissions’ new Digital & Social Media Marketing Manager, spoke briefly about the Class of 2016′s reaction to admissions decisions on March 24. Using @ApplytoBU, Gordon estimates he responded to over 500 students with tweets of congratulations (dashing the myth that high school students aren’t on Twitter). He also mentioned that the Class of 2016 Facebook page jumped from about 500 members (from Early Decision) to over 3,000. The page now has nearly 3,800 fans (for a class of 3,900, a significant participation rate). Gordon estimates that about 10 percent of their website visits during that week came from social media referrals, and every post they put up receives between 500-2,000 engagements (clicks, etc).

Individual schools are experimenting with social engagement for their new fall class, too. The School of Public Health will be piloting a Yammer group for one class, and possibly a Facebook group for another at the same time. The College of Communication also has established a Facebook page and Twitter account for its freshman class.

Facebook

A few new features of Facebook were discussed in brief, namely the new “Groups at Universities” functionality that Boston University is a part of. Current BU Facebook administrators have no control over the activity here (no “superadmin” capabilities), and pages are not listed here, nor pre-existing groups. For now, it is likely a listening tool for connecting with students, but if SMCers find other uses for it down the road, please let us know.

The new “messages” capability for Pages was also mentioned as an aside. This can be turned on or off, but can serve as a way for fans to ask questions that they may not want to post on the Page’s wall.

If you are interested in sharing with other SMCers more between meetings, don’t forget to join the BU Social Facebook group.

CAS Presents

Jeremy Schwab presented the latest campaign from the College of Arts & Sciences, a series of faculty expert videos dubbed “CAS Presents.” He showcased one, “Why is Modeling a Bad Job?” featuring sociology professor Ashley Mears:

Using the help of his department’s interns, Jeremy will continue to produce video showcases of the CAS faculty. You can view all of their videos here.

We will aim to schedule two more meetings this summer, the first in June focusing on Google Plus, and the second in July or August. Please reach out to Mary or Jenny with any questions, or post it to the Facebook group.

On December 6, the Social Media Communicators met to discuss the use of QR codes, the emergence of Google+, and techniques for managing social media channels. The Public Relations team unveiled their new website, which includes a social media directory for schools, departments, and student groups.

Social Media Directory

Tom Testa, AVP of Public Relations, presented the new PR website, designed to house comprehensive faculty profiles, news releases and a directory of Boston University social media channels, among other services. Communicators should contact Mary Tunney to list their accounts.

QR Codes

While a few groups have tried using QR codes, including the Dean of Students office and the School of Medicine Alumni Association, the conclusion seems to be that while the technology is interesting, there are pitfalls and barriers to use. Kat Hasenauer of DOS explained that many students did not seem to understand how they work, or that they needed additional software on their phones to read them. She also mentioned that several students still have old-fashioned flip phones, which cannot read QR codes at all. One communicator suggested that directions on how to use a QR code should be included on the marketing materials where the code is being used. Scott Dasse of Interactive Design suggests this article on QR code adoption and use.

Google+

Since we recently launched the Boston University Google+ page, we wanted to ask about other communicators’ experience with the platform. Only a couple of departments mentioned their plans to use it, and opinions of it were mixed. Raul Fernandez of the Howard Thurman Center asserted that it’s yet another platform to maintain, but if the audience is there, he would support its integration into their strategy. By many accounts, the most powerful thing about Google+ is the role it plays in search. Ryan Bersani of Online Giving praised it for its customizable privacy settings, while others expressed concern that their privacy would be compromised in ways they did not explicitly allow.

Andrea Little from the School of Management said that they had been considering using the Google+ Hangouts functionality with their Admissions team. (Since the meeting, the Dean of Students office has hosted a Hangout with Cecilia Lalama in the Educational Resource Center.) It seems that currently, Google+ adoption is a phase of experimentation. A few things to keep in mind:

• Reserving your Google+ page means it will go live immediately. Unlike Facebook, the page will go live immediately.
• Pages are currently limited to one administrator and ownership is not transferable. But according to recent news, this should change soon.
• Tools like HootSuite are beginning to enable cross-posting to Google+, as well as Facebook and Twitter, to aid with time management and consistency across platforms.

Since Tuesday’s meeting, BU was featured with Emerson and Harvard in a BostInnovation piece on higher ed adoption of Google Plus.

Time Management

Finally, the group discussed time management. How are departments managing their platforms, and the messaging across them? Robert Flynn of Dining Services said that he is maintaining all of their platforms on his own, and that until it is no longer feasible, he would prefer it that way, citing concerns of maintaining a consistent voice. Other teams, including the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Public Health, and Admissions have taken a team approach, designating different employees and schedules for social media management. Kelsey Labrot of the Howard Thurman Center suggested a few tools to help with scheduling posts, including CoTweet and Tweue.

Suggestions for the next meeting? Comments on the topics discussed? Leave them below, or send a note to jemack@bu.edu.

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.

In last month’s BU Social Media Communicators meeting, Nathaniel Boyle of Interactive Design presented on the challenges of maintaining BU’s brand identity standards (outlined at bu.edu/brand) on social networks. I asked if he would discuss some of these guidelines here. Nat, take it away!

Brand standards can be tricky and at times seem heavy-handed. The instinct is often to do your best within the guidelines established. Despite the best of intentions, this approach almost always winds up violating the guidelines.

In order to avoid degradation, distortion, or improper spacing of the BU logo or seal, and to maintain a suite of social presences that are presentably cross-branded across the University without any confusion as to what’s official and what’s not, we have established the following social media brand guidelines for University-wide usage. Following these guidelines will ensure you’re representing the University on third-party social media platforms appropriately.

Here’s the approach you should take:

• Consider your avatars, profile and background images to be extensions of your web presence.
• If you do not have a visual aesthetic to your web presence, consider social your opportunity to give yourself a consistent, recognizable look and feel.
• These are your social media accounts, so please consider the social “personality” you want your aesthetic to convey. And don’t be afraid to have fun!

To make this easier, we’ve compiled a series of themes that you can download. Each theme includes a Twitter avatar, Twitter background, and Facebook profile picture. I would recommend at least downloading one to get a sense of visual identity consistency, and also image sizes, etc.

And never forget the most important rule: DON’T use a BU logo as your graphical representation, unless it appears in a photo.

#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!

Some key takeaways included:

- eMarketer estimates that by 2014, 60% of internet users will read blogs at least monthly (from 45% in 2008)

- Lines between blogging, microblogging and social networking are continuing to blur

- Facebook still leads the way in top method to promote blog content (according to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2010)

- Fostering & maintaining relationships with local influential bloggers is an ongoing priority for Public Relations

- One of the best ways to get BU noticed by bloggers is to create rich, relevant content (blogging ourselves — pull vs. push)

If you are a member of the Social Media Communicators Google Group, you can now access the full presentation. We look forward to hearing more from our SMC’s as they develop their own blogs. If you are interested in speaking to the group about your school’s or department’s blogging efforts, please let us know.

Image courtesy Kristina B on Flickr.

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.

Ryan started by presenting some of his experiments with Facebook’s social plugin tools. He has incorporated them on his own into alumni event registration pages (managed with the help of Harris Connect). He has a test site and has set up redirects for the Facebook components with the format bu.edu/alumni/like/xxxx (where xxxx is the event and date indicator). Ryan explained that the redirects are necessary because WordPress (on which the alumni site is built) does not support the alteration of meta tags, which is required for some Facebook social plugins to be functional.

Jacki DeAngelo and Adriane Dean shared their experience in using Radian6. Though they have been using it for a short time, they are already understanding the depth of what Radian6, a web conversation monitoring tool, can provide. They emphasized the “river of news” portion of the tool as being most useful, and the ability to gauge sentiment around a particular professor or program is useful. They noted that much of Radian6‘s features are more catered to corporate clients, rather than higher ed (for example, brand sentiment comparisons), but they have been tweaking the system to cater to the information they’re interested in. Jacki and Adriane would be glad to set up a tutorial one-on-one with anyone in the SMC group who is interested in test driving Radian6.