Social Media Platforms

Public

Discussion:

Susan,

Keep in mind that if you have multiple goals, your group may not be the best means to accomplishing all. It sounds like you established the group to create a supportive community to address the feelings of "isolation" as you mentioned in a previous post. Additionally, the community can act as a resource for students/alumni to help each other. With a group, you must take the role of community builder - facilitate and guide discussion and ask for community support. There are no magic bullets with how to respond to all posts but as an example, if an individual is saying something like "I'll never find a job," how might you respond in a way that demonstrates support and encouragement while also trying to get the community involved or key influencers in the community? For instance, maybe there is a star alumni who loves your department. Might you ask this person to share their advice/words of encouragement? If they are an advocate of Career Services, it is likely they'd be glad to help.

You may find that you need multiple accounts. For example, I used to use a Facebook group for Alumni and my strategy there was to have the community help themselves which extended my capabilities. I could ask the community questions, ask them to help others, provide advice, share information, help with job leads, etc. The Facebook Fan Page was to improve student relations and build affinity with the Career Services department so our strategy there was to share helpful information, increase participation through a variety of tactics, etc. Additionally, we had a Facebook profile. We established this because our policies were that we were not able to "friend" students but we could "friend" graduates. The benefit of "friending" people is that you can private message them, view their wall posts if they are set to private, etc. which helps with data mining and strategic engagement. So, we would market our Fan Page to students but when they became graduates, we'd send a friend invite. This gave us multiple options and allowed us to use Facebook in multiple ways for our intended purposes. Facebook Fan pages do provide stats and metrics so it is something to consider if you'd like to measure your growth, engagement and what types of posts students are engaging with which can help you adjust your strategies.

Anecdotal evidence is ok - not everyone feels the need to measure hard numbers and analytics. In fact, sometimes, it can be overwhelming so do what makes sense for you and just know that your bottom line goals are what matters. Social is just a tool to help you accomplish those goals. Just as we have used tools such as the phone, the fax machine, or computers, we must also use social media as merely one more tool in our toolbox to accomplish our goals.

Thanks for sharing.

Robert Starks Jr.

Susan, Keep in mind that if you have multiple goals, your group may not be the best means to accomplishing all. It sounds like you established the group to create a supportive community to address the feelings of "isolation" as you mentioned in a previous post. Additionally, the community can act as a resource for students/alumni to help each other. With a group, you must take the role of community builder - facilitate and guide discussion and ask for community support. There are no magic bullets with how to respond to all posts but as an example, if an individual is saying something like "I'll never find a job," how might you respond in a way that demonstrates support and encouragement while also trying to get the community involved or key influencers in the community? For instance, maybe there is a star alumni who loves your department. Might you ask this person to share their advice/words of encouragement? If they are an advocate of Career Services, it is likely they'd be glad to help. You may find that you need multiple accounts. For example, I used to use a Facebook group for Alumni and my strategy there was to have the community help themselves which extended my capabilities. I could ask the community questions, ask them to help others, provide advice, share information, help with job leads, etc. The Facebook Fan Page was to improve student relations and build affinity with the Career Services department so our strategy there was to share helpful information, increase participation through a variety of tactics, etc. Additionally, we had a Facebook profile. We established this because our policies were that we were not able to "friend" students but we could "friend" graduates. The benefit of "friending" people is that you can private message them, view their wall posts if they are set to private, etc. which helps with data mining and strategic engagement. So, we would market our Fan Page to students but when they became graduates, we'd send a friend invite. This gave us multiple options and allowed us to use Facebook in multiple ways for our intended purposes. Facebook Fan pages do provide stats and metrics so it is something to consider if you'd like to measure your growth, engagement and what types of posts students are engaging with which can help you adjust your strategies. Anecdotal evidence is ok - not everyone feels the need to measure hard numbers and analytics. In fact, sometimes, it can be overwhelming so do what makes sense for you and just know that your bottom line goals are what matters. Social is just a tool to help you accomplish those goals. Just as we have used tools such as the phone, the fax machine, or computers, we must also use social media as merely one more tool in our toolbox to accomplish our goals. Thanks for sharing. Robert Starks Jr.