Comments on: Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive social media presence

By: jen

jen — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:46:01 +0000

Working in the central Marketing Unit we’ve created accounts on the main social media networks and are now in the process of garnering relevant content and figuring out exactly how we can best leverage these mediums to fit into our existing marketing. I like the idea of educating colleagues and to an extent we’ll be starting that very shortly.

By: Howard

Howard — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:05:48 +0000

Great post!

I think having an official and unofficial presence is the best combination. The benefits of the official presence are obvious, but the unofficial presence means that other people are talking about you and there’s more honest, user-created content to turn to for prospective students.

By: Kevin Prentiss

Kevin Prentiss — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:10:56 +0000

@todd you are clearly an anarchist.

@rachel Thank you again, for sharing your thoughts. You bring up wonderful points!

There seem to be two themes in the post: control vs. empowerment. These are themes that come up a lot in tech and social media – it’s the institution vs. the mob. Clay Shirkey has been writing about this for years. As you mention, now anyone can do it, even if they are bad at it.

Clay says:

“Web logging is a classic example of mass amateurization.
It has de-professionalized publishing.”

Social media de-professionalizes marketing.

(Check out the video here: http://dotsub.com/view/18cf2835-2b92-4516-927d-b4d324606bbf )

The headline’s focus is on “reining in” – as in exercising some centralized authority over others.

But the body of the post talks about how you are empowering the mob with more knowledge, while, at the same time, positioning your department as an expert partner. This is a great example for other schools.

Multiple outlets will happen. The nature of “anyone can do it” is going to continue to break and diffuse centralized taxonomies. The anarchists like Todd will continue to flourish, completely immune to any reining : )

Reining in, as tempting as it is, will mostly serve to damage your relationship with all your potential contributors.

Educating, as you are doing, will definitely help increase the quality of your (now and forever distributed) marketing.

By: Aaron Blakeley

Aaron Blakeley — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:24:03 +0000

I think the social media aspect of the web can be a make or break deal. I know that after a few months of working at my current university I started efforts to “buy” up all the real estate in the social media areas so that we can develop a cohesive idea, integrate into the main site and then release it in a controlled and targeted way.

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:45:19 +0000

I think the real beauty of your social media presence is the “non-official” content created by the user (fan or enemy). They are the destroyers of cohesion, and I salute them!

My “official” University X presence on Flickr/YouTube is no more (or less) valuable than any other users University X tagged pics/vids. Of course, all of my “official” content must be positive, whereas the “non-official” stuff can actually be negative, or dare I say REAL (keg stands FTW!).

AND, as Student Affairs Webmasster (not a typo), I think this line needs some edits:

“I believe the central Web and/or marketing units of a university should also be the campus experts to create and maintain a strong and effective social media presence.”

Here’s my attempt at a revision:

“I believe the people who live and play in the social media world should also be the ones responsible for creating and maintaining a strong and effective social media presence.”

Thanks for all of your posts this week! I’ve really enjoyed reading them and sharing my views.