GM Halts Facebook Advertising

I have already read several articles about GM’s decision to halt Facebook Advertising. While most articles point out that GM doesn’t understand Social Marketing, and Ford has already pounced on the topic by pointing out how ineffective GM is as social marketing, and how great they are (which very well may be true), but my question is simple. Really?

I have been working with Facebook and other social technologies for several years now, and I too find Facebook ads relatively ineffective. As a strategist, I find them unreliable in getting people to my pages or events, even when paired with great content. However, maybe more telling is that as a consumer, I have NEVER clicked on an ad. No matter the company, the content, the “call to action” or the picture. I have never clicked on an ad, with the exception of one time, and that was an ad I created and wanted to test.

Now, do I think it makes sense that GM made this big to do about not paying for ads, no. I can’t understand why they would do that. Why not quietly reduce the ad budget, and slowly phase out paid ads, while adding additional and stronger content? After a quick visit the GM Facebook page, I was even more confused by their post.

Don’t tell me; SHOW me. I want to see this new content and how you’ll be providing more of it. I truly want new content, strong content that will drive my opinions and experience.  I do agree with Ford’s comment in the Huffington Post article, GM doesn’t seem to get Facebook marketing, but I don’t think companies should be focused on marketing. Instead, they should be focused on content creation and telling their story and connecting their audience with them and each other.

Maybe this wouldn’t even be a story if Facebook wasn’t so close to going public, yet then again, maybe it still have been a story. Either way, I think GM has a ways to go in learning how to use Facebook and other social technologies to better tell their story, but that doesn’t mean they have to pay for an ad.

Time for Reflection

This past academic year has been a whirlwind. Yes, I know everyone in Student Affairs says that, but this year for me was unique. First, I was part of an office that merged with another office to launch a completely new office. Then got a new job (luckily within the same area), started getting acclimated to new responsibilities, attended a few conferences, presented at most of them, and the list continues. This article isn’t intended to brag about my busy schedule, but instead it’s about my future plans.

A few weeks ago, I was challenged by my supervisor to really reflect on the changes, and use that time of reflection to look ahead and see what this new opportunity meant for me. That’s when it hit me. I had been so focused on my new roles and responsibilities and managing my new reality of day to day “stuff” that I hadn’t stopped to think, let alone reflect.  So my plan this summer is to reflect. I really want to think about what the future of Campus Information Centers (my new role) means, how do we work differently with students and provide information in the timeliest manner to our audience. Seems simple enough, right? Well, no. We often challenge our students to reflect on their experiences, on what they’ve learned while in a leadership role or as student employees, but how often do we really take time to reflect on our own work?

So this year, before the summer even arrives and our students head out for internships or family vacations, I am beginning to think about how I want to reflect. First I want to define what I am reflecting on (defining my questions) so that I can better concentrate and have quality conversations with colleagues and mentors. What are my goals? What have I accomplished so far? What still remains to be accomplished? Second, I want to figure out my outcome. Do I want to reflect and create a plan? Or use the time create a new vision for the office?

 

Content is King

Creating strong content.

Content is King! No matter how nice your profile picture is or how many fans you may have, without strong content, social media is meaningless. That may sound harsh, but sometimes the truth hurts. Fortunately, creating meaningful and strong content isn’t that hard.

1)      Right person – As Jim Collins book Good to Great, says, you need to have the “right people in the right seats”. In this case, it means, you need to identify who the best person(s) is to deliver the content. Is it you, your Dean of Students, or your student worker? Chances are your student employee has a better idea of what his/her peers are looking for in content.

2)      Provide fans a chance to talk – Sometimes the best content doesn’t come from you, rather it comes from your fans. Either through them engaging you or by them engaging other fans. Allow for interactions and questions, don’t always try to lead the conversation, rather, be a part of it.

3)      Prioritize – What is important for your platform to communicate? It can’t be everything, if you try to be the one-stop page, you’ll either miss some things or be posting constantly. If you’re posting constantly, you can’t be listening, and your fans may start tuning out.

4)      Be an advocate – A College Union promotes community; we should be doing the same on our pages. Remember to like/favorite and promote other pages at your institution. This helps you get more content, as well as share more content.

5)      If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all – Just like when you were a child and told not to say anything at all if it wasn’t nice, same goes for social media. Don’t just say something for the sake of saying something. Your content needs to be meaningful. Similarly, don’t try to have “canned” comments ready for a slow day. People can see through meaningless conversations in real life, so they can see through it online.

Creating strong content can be challenging, but it can also be fun. Think differently. It doesn’t always have to be a comment or a question. Maybe it’s simply a musical lyric that’s in reference to something specific to your campus. Or maybe it’s a photo of your Union being cleaned, asking students when was the last time they cleaned their res hall room, or it can even be a video post. Most importantly, have fun. If you’re not having fun, will your fans?

Two Predictions and a Challenge

Like the popular Icebreaker, Two Truths and a Lie, I have Two Predictions and a Challenge for 2012. What does 2012 look like for popular social media sites as well as up and coming social media outlets? Honestly, I have no idea, but here are some of my predictions, along with a challenge for the New Year!

First Prediction: Social media is now about telling “your story”.

Location based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla have been usually regarded as a check in service, but Gowalla tried to change that train of thought. Right around the time of South by Southwest (SXSW)2011, Gowalla had completely revamped their entire application and made it truly a story telling program, rather than a check –in and badge winning based service. Then, in September, Facebook announced their newest design, the Timeline. The Timeline is exactly what it says, a visual timeline of your life. Facebook added in all the important dates, pictures, posts and events. It highlights when you started and left a job, when you got married and so on.

Then in November, Facebook bought Gowalla, announcing that they would be shutting down the service in January. So if you are just going to close it down, why buy it? Well simply put, Gowalla had the talent to tell the stories. The “new” Gowalla was all about telling your story, and they did it quite well.

Other location-based services have come on board. One example is Path. Path is an iPhone and Android app that allows you to visually share where you are, snap pictures of what you see, create video comments and written comments, share your mood through emoticons and more. The really intriguing aspect of Path is that it only allows you to have 150 friends, capitalizing on theory of Dunbar’s number.

Second Prediction: Social media will help you meet new people, not just connect with old high school friends.

While Social Media will always be a great way to stay connected with friends from high school or an old job, it’s becoming a way to meet new people. Platforms such as Hyphos or Spotflag allow you to enter in your interests, and it will automatically find others in a nearby proximity that share the same interest. Applications like Sonar are similar, but also allow you to incorporate your existing social media platforms as a way to share your interests.

Another newer application that is available for Android or iPhone is Banjo. Banjo is a social media platform, which you don’t really have to be in social media to use. When you start Banjo in a location, it will pull in public posts, check-ins, comments, review etc. Fampus, which was created by a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, allows for you to find out about events around your campus and share your experiences with your peers.

2012 Challenge: Use Social Media for more than just marketing.

In 2012 hopefully we will look past Social Media being our solution for marketing, or simply using it as a way to post. But hopefully we will use it as a way to engage with students, build community amongst students and staffs, and more importantly use social media as a student development tool!

How do you PLAN to use Social Media in the New Year? How will it help you achieve your goals of engaging with new students?

Going Mobile!

Students are accessing information differently than they did before. They aren’t always checking our website from their rooms, or even laptops. More often than not, they are accessing our information from some sort of mobile device. For sake of argument in this blog, I’m going to identify “mobile” as either a smartphone (internet capable) or a tablet (such as the iPad).

Often times we hear, there’s an app for that, or visit our mobile site, but what’s the difference? Simply put, mobile sites should be useful when looking for static information, where as an app needs to DO something. For example an app could find you the closest open parking spot in the city, or allows you to listen to a song and then identifies the title and the artist. These apps are doing something for you, whereas a mobile site it better utilized as a way for someone to search for a particular answer, for example utilizing a mobile website for a Campus Information Center.

So, what’s better? Well, it depends on what your goal is. Apps can be fun; they can have extra feature to them, and really engage your audience. However, they can be expensive to develop. You need to create at least two versions of the same app to be accessible on the two main mobile platforms, iPhone OS and Android OS, however you don’t want to leave your Blackberry audience in the dark. You’ll also need to have someone on your staff, or be willing to pay, that can update the app regularly and be ready to troubleshoot any issues.

A mobile website on the other hand can be much more easily created and edited to add new content more freely. However, you can’t incorporate the phones functions such as tweeting, using the camera or GPS location with a mobile site like you can with an app.

So, what should you use? What are your goals? What information or experience are you trying to convey with your audience, and how can you share that information or experience in the most seamless manner? What are your resources? At the very least, utilize some of the students you work with and have them access your office’s website on their mobile devices. Is your website mobile-friendly?

All mobile devices are here to stay and are becoming cheaper, and more easily accessible, particularly to incoming students. In order for us as student affairs professionals, we need to ensure we are engaging and informing our students where they are at. Does your school or department have any sort of mobile presence, either through and an app or mobile site?

Can online presence lead to offline engagement?

Social Media has become a personal interest of mine, from creating new Facebook Pages and apps, or by connecting with friends, peers and even colleagues I have never met over Twitter, I have fully accepted my role as the “Social Media Nerd”. It doesn’t bother me that people may think I spend a lot, or too much, time on social media sites, constantly checking one of my hundreds of blogs I read and updating my twitter account to make sure I didn’t miss a single second of the recent F8 conference.

However, it does catch me off guard when someone doesn’t see the potential for online presence leading to offline engagement. By harmlessly connecting with incoming students through our social networking platforms, I like to think we have made an easy access point for them, and hopefully they will use this access point to better understand our office, programs, service and resources.

Social media isn’t a new way to connect with students, it’s a fundamental shift in how we work with students. If we aren’t meeting our students where they are at, how can we meet them? This post isn’t a lecture about the need, I mean necessity, to get on social networks, rather it is to ask a simple question: How can our online presence lead to students offline engagement? Are we posting status updates to post, or is there some intentionality to them? Are we following up with comments, and relationships built via social networks, or are we forgetting about them the minute we step away from our screens?

To answer my own question, yes, online presence DOES lead to offline engagement, if done right. To do it right, you need to be intentional, and patient. Building online trust and relationships takes time, it hard when you don’t actually meet the person, and see the expression on their face, or here the tone in their voice. But its just as important. You will have those students who show up on your door step day one, but others are more timid, want to see whats going on before becoming involved with whats going on. These students are your audience. How can we show (via social media sites) all the amazing things we are doing, and all thing we have to offer? Is it a video of an event, or great comments from students afterward? Either way, this needs to be facilitated and organized, which means you need to spend time thinking about it, and truly being committed to putting effort and time in created the best possible social media strategy for your office and institution.

The other day, someone said to me “Hey, you’re the social media expert, what do you think about this? I don’t even remember what the question was, but I know I cringed at the opening, “social media expert”. I don’t consider myself an expert, rather someone who has a different understanding of how to use social media tools. As Student Affairs professionals, we all need to have a strong understanding of social media tools. How can we rely on one person in the office who is the “expert” to do 50% of everyone’s job, which is connecting with students, to make a positive difference in their lives?

The Forgotten moments

The other day, a colleague from a different department asked me what I like about working in Student Affairs. So, after talking about the “obvious” benefits, such as the high salary and frequent night and weekend hours,I told him that I enjoy Student Affairs because I make a positive impact in students’ lives. He then asked me how I knew that. Fortunately my office does extensive benchmarking and assessment, so I was able to recite some of the data from our student employees, as well as the students who attend our programs. The research showed that our employees were developing lifelong transferrable skills, such as project management, budgeting and communication. We also know that students who attend our events benefit from them in many ways: gaining new insight at our Lecture series, learning about proper interview etiquette at our etiquette lunches, as well as helping build community and providing stress relief on the weekends.

He thought about my answer for a few minutes, and then said “That’s great, but how do YOU know you make a positive change?” That got me thinking, I know our office plans effective programming, and we work very intentionally about the way we train and support our students, but what am I doing?

This thought had me a little troubled, as a newer professional; I wanted to make sure I was in fact doing what I originally set out to do: help students’ make a positive impact in their lives through personal/professional development.

The weekend before, we had done an exercise in which we were asked to write a note to people in the office saying something positive about them, and when I returned that afternoon to my desk, my bag full of notes was sitting there. Some of the notes were short and simple, while others were longer and a little more detailed, and yet others completely caught me off guard. One student thanked me for helping encourage her to speak up more in defense of her ideas, while another thanked me for helping them grow as a programmer. Others simply said thanks for listening and being a person to bounce ideas off of. Another thanked me for being a warm and inviting person when I come in the office.

While these notes were all touching, and I really appreciated them, it got me thinking. My thought wasn’t about all the positive notes, but instead all the missed opportunities. How many times did I not notice someone enter the office because I was occupied with my work, or forgot to say something positive about a successful program because I was too busy? How do you recognize your students on a regular basis? Most offices do the end of the year celebration, but on a day to day basis how do you show appreciation and support for that positive impact we are working towards?

Who says nothing good happens after 10pm?

Late night programming has become part of the programming portfolio for many campuses. We have seen through assessment efforts at the University of Michigan that 37% of students participate in risky drinking behavior on weekend nights. To combat this, and help create a safe and enjoyable environment for students who are looking for a social outlet, the UMix Late Night program was created.

Now in its fifth year, UMix has seen an impact on campus. In our most recent survey of over 1,100 students, we found that the participants who attended a UMix event drank less than they normally would have and 82% of students who attended UMix did not drink at all on the evenings of events.

We use regularly assess the UMix program to find the newest attractions, or prizes that students would want to win. Through this assessment we have made changes throughout the years. In an effort to make UMix as student oriented as possible, the UMix team is composed of 4 undergraduate students and a Graduate Intern. The students are responsible for coming up with the events, and working closely with agents to book various acts or novelty events. They are also responsible for the marketing aspect of the events. Usually, each individual event has a theme, such as Dueling Piano’s, Skating on Thin Ice, LOL, Discover the Unknown and more. While each event is different, there are several “staple” events, including a free movie, free billiards & video games, Karaoke, and the popular midnight buffet.

Even though UMix was created as an alternative program, for students who don’t want to drink, or attend parties, we try not to market the program as that. We try to emphasis the fun events, and social aspect of UMix. We also do not discourage students who may have gone out to a bar or house party prior to coming to UMIx. We also work to build community outside of the event. We have a strong Facebook following that is always will to provide feedback, whether it’s about t-shirt designs or our next movie. We also have worked to create a social outlet by instituting a weekly “Late Night Knowledge” trivia game. Teams of 2 – 5 compete weekly for a chance to win prizes, as well as compete to earn points for our final event. The games has created several teams, many of which are composed of people who didn’t know each other beforehand, to come back week after week for their chance to win.

Past UMix events have included racing simulators, indoor roller skating, murder mystery shows, comedians, cake your own music videos, and bumper cars. Finding interesting events to do on a weekly or biweekly schedule can be challenging. However, there are several resources available, including the ACUI Late Night Programs Community of Practice.

How does your institution support late night programming? What are some the creative ideas you have done?

Why this week is important in Social Media

For those of you who manage your office/department Facebook page, you probably already know, but today is an important day. Last month, Facebook made an announcement about the impending changes coming to the Facebook Page layout. For people managing the pages, you saw the option to opt in early to the new design and implement some of the new features; if you decided against that, however, today is the day your page will be forced over to the new layout.

Facebook has cited several reasons for the change, including “Better communication”,” More opportunities for expression” and “Improved relevancy,” but what does this really mean? Below are a few of the more glaring changes in the new Facebook design.

Your page will be more like an individual profile.

This change has some really nice benefits.  You can now set up your page to notify you when someone interacts with it, which will make it easier to interact with your fans. You also have the opportunity to “switch” to your page, essentially using it as a person, which will enable you to RSVP to events, comment on the wall of fans, and more. Profile Picture!

Profile Pictures

We have all heard the saying; a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, this is also true for your profile picture. In case you didn’t know, pages can create larger Profile pictures than a personal profile. However, the size has decreased a little with the new design. Now, your image size can be no larger than 180 pixels wide × 540 pixels tall. When designing your profile image, remember it needs to have a place where your name/logo is easily seen, to ensure that your thumbnail will show your identity. Also important to note, you can move your thumbnail around to capture the best part of your larger Profile picture. The thumbnail is the only image that shows when you make a comment, therefore it’s important for the thumbnail to have a clear image.

Facebook Markup Language

This is the biggest change for Facebook. Facebook has in the last several years created their own coding language (FBML); this “app” has easily enabled the most novice coder to create and tweak a tab within their page. However, the FBML app has been removed. For NOW, if you have FBML on your page you should be able to continue editing it. However, Facebook has indicated that even that ability will be going away at some point. In place of FBML Facebook has turned to IFrames.  The easiest way to describe an IFrame is to call it a “website” within your Facebook page. While this adds some complexity to designing your unique page, it also creates a lot of new opportunities for interaction. To make it easier, there are several web-based programs have been created to help you design your own IFrames Tab.

While these changes may be frustrating for some people, they also open up your Facebook Page for new types of interaction with your fans! How are YOU and YOUR office working with Facebook to connect with students?

Toward a More Perfect Union: Political Programming in the Wake of a Tragedy

A few weeks ago the Michigan Union hosted an original, program centered on the President’s annual State of the Union address. Given the current national conversation on civility, we thought it was important to highlight this event as an opportunity for people to come together, start a dialogue, and share ideas. To help facilitate this, University Unions Arts & Programs at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor hosted the “State of the Union @ the Union.”

The idea was simple: engage students in the State of the Union, a historic, constitutionally-mandated tradition many overlook. However, the idea began to grow as we built in several unique mediums for students to voice their beliefs. For example, during the days leading up to the speech, students were encouraged to participate in a “State YOUR own Union” video recording session to talk about the issues they would address if President, and what issues affect today’s students. The Union staff then edited the responses into a 4-minute video. This video was a visual representation of what UM-Ann Arbor Students thought was the state of the union, as well as what they personally felt was important and hoped the President would discuss.

Two state legislators, both Michigan Alumni currently representing Ann Arbor constituents, were also in attendance at the event for a question & answer session. This provided an opportunity for attendees to ask questions about political issues, learn why they got involved as public servants, and listen to their experiences as student leaders at UM. We also provided materials for students to write letters to U.S. troops stationed around the world.

Finally, during the address, we thought it was important for the audience to stay actively engaged in the conversation beyond simply watching as passive participants. In an effort to make the event more interactive, we used PollEverywhere.com as a way to measure students’ reactions throughout the event. We drafted questions prior to the event, including “how do you feel about the health care reform bill,” “What issue facing our country is most important to you”, and “how are you feeling about the President’s address so far” Attendees were able to send SMS text message responses, and poll results were shown live throughout the event. Including this participatory element helped to begin a low-risk dialogue for students in the room, and provided an opportunity for them to reflect and make meaning of the President’s words.

Our key mission was to engage students in an event they might otherwise overlook. Using technology and varying levels of involvement (anonymous text messages, video-recorded statements, and in-person questions for political leaders), we allowed students to self-select the degree to which they wanted to be involved. We were also intentional in building multiple opportunities for reflection into the program, and encouraging students to consider the information on personal, local, and national dimensions. How have you used campus programs to foster dialogue among students on important issues? In what ways can you use technology to transform your events from passive to active participation?