On Facebook, Bigger Isn’t Always Better (10,000 Words): When asking how many Facebook fans you should have, consider the quality of those fans — are they participating? Are they visiting regularly?

10 Blogging Tactics That Increased One Business’ Traffic by 300% (Hubspot Blog): Using your blog as an FAQ repository and posting regularly (this business posted twice per week) are great ideas we’re planning on implementing here. What other tips have helped you build interest in your blog?

WordCamp 2011 is being hosted at Boston University. There is even an education track — check the schedule today.

Asian Slur Video Surfaces at Syracuse University (Storify): A great case study in how a school’s public relations team should consider social media as part of their crisis communications plans.

The Web Is Shrinking. Now What? (AllThingsD): Paying attention to the distinction to the “social web vs. the searchable web.”

@ is the Universal Sign of Engagement (Brian Solis): What real engagement (vs. reactionary conversation) really means. Found this article via Professor Steve Quigley and his Summer Session 1 #BUNewMedia class. Follow the hashtag on Twitter for updates and interesting articles.

Boston University and Social Media (Emma Tangerine): Emma Tangoren‘s blog post on what transpired this week between BU Students and @USATODAYcollege is a must-read. Many social media communicators and their efforts were mentioned. Also see her Storify summary and the related BU Quad article.

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

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.

Video Content, Flip Cameras & Video Editing

Lauren Davalla and Kira Jastive of Public Relations presented a handful of videos, produced by the department using Flip video cameras and shared using BUniverse and the BU Now blog. Public Relations is now using Flip video to respond to breaking news and build a library of content around evergreen topics. One video interview with Cutler Cleveland on the oil spill was later repurposed in a BU Today story. Kira and Lauren emphasized one of the main benefits of creating your own video content: it can be repurposed across many social channels (blogs, Facebook, BUniverse, Twitter) and help to promote experts outside of the university.

Jean Connaughton (CFA) explained that she had been playing with an HD Flip video camera at the Tanglewood Institute, and said that Flip video is a good way to share an event without having to rely on an external crew — a new way to showcase events that would otherwise go uncovered. The group also discussed the quality and options available when comparing Flip-type quickcams to more expensive digital video cameras (optical versus digital zoom, software for editing, etc.)

Kim Cornuelle of BU Today offered her suggestions on video editing: the staff uses Final Cut or Avid for videos and iMovie for slideshows. They also use a conversion tool, MPEG Streamclip, to convert videos for iMovie. She offered that while videos edited using Windows Movie Maker and iMovie will not be as clean looking as Final Cut videos, they’re a fine (much more affordable) standby.

To conclude the discussion on video, Mary Tunney offered to look into scheduling a workshop with a freelance video editor to go over filming and editing techniques. She will have more details on this in the fall.

QR Codes

Susan Lebovits of Sustainability presented briefly on her investigation of QR Codes with an outside vendor. She explained them as a type of barcode that can be added to posters or other print media, and then scanned by smartphones to bring users to specific websites. They are looking to try the technology in the fall for Sustainability promotions. Specific websites/tools discussed included ScanLife and Stickybits.

WordPress Upgrades & Facebook Integration

Scott Dasse of New Media came by to answer questions related to WordPress. Many groups are migrating their websites over to WordPress in the near future. Scott explained that many “shiny” widgets (such as Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr stream tools) are not currently able to be added directly to sites because they require editing of the theme, while others can simply be embedded right into a WordPress “text” widget. He emphasized that many of these “shiny” tools will actually hold up load time of the page, which is why they have not yet allowed them. As a workaround, they could investigate building something custom in WordPress (as part of the theme) that would be allowed for general use.

CFA said they use social media (mainly Facebook) often to announce changes to events, which is easier to update than the website itself. SMG also asked about inclusion of the “Like” button, which Scott said made sense to include. He also mentioned that a gallery widget is in the works, and should be available soon. Corinne Steinbrenner pointed us to the Collegian current issue on the CGS website, and their use of AddThis on individual stories (example). The tool can be directly added to the story without the need for a widget request.

Upcoming Events

Mary opened up the floor for event announcements which might require some coordination from the Social Media Communicators. We’ve compiled the list, including applicable hashtags and web addresses, and placed them in the “Communicators” section of the blog (Kerberos login required). If you are a Social Media Communicator and are unable to access this section, please send a request to jemack@bu.edu.

(Image courtesy Damon Duncan on Flickr.)