Rachel Reuben

Last August Facebook gave Pages administrators the ability to publish their Facebook updates to their Twitter accounts automatically. Administrators can decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers at all, and if so, which type of information to share, such as status updates, links, photos, notes, and events.

This, my friends, is what my friend Chris Brogan has coined “robot activity.” I agree and would go further and say you shouldn’t do it.

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Looking for something new to try this spring for your recruiting efforts? I recently saw a demo for CollegeWeekLive and was quite impressed with its features and the possibilities it creates for recruiters across the country.

Side note: This may seem like a sales pitch, but it’s not. I don’t work for CollegeWeekLive, nor am I a current client. I’m just an impressed individual who works in marketing and communication at a university, and wanted to share this with you, as I hadn’t heard much about them before seeing this demo.

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Last week one of my friends on Twitter tweeted, “Just added myself to http://campustweet.com  - Ithaca College and Georgetown University.”

My immediate thought — is this another one of those sites that’s going to create buzz most of the day by our circle of common friends and then fade, or could this one actually stick? Lots of friends tweeted questions about it as more and more tweets “Just added myself to ….” came across the stream. The folks at campustweet.com (@campustweet on Twitter) were kind enough send me their e-mail address so I could ask them eight questions about their service. Here’s the interview.

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Last week I updated our university’s Facebook Fan Page status to say:

I thought it might get a comment, or like, or two, but was absolutely floored to find this volume of response, most of which came within the same hour I posted.

And then it happened two more times within the same week.

Here’s an expanded view of some of these comments:

Sometimes, keeping it simple just works. SUNY Plattsburgh is also having a great deal of interaction over on their page as is SUNY Oswego. Never before have we seen alumni comment on our wall. This spirit and sense of community is a gold mine for alumni relations. One of the comments was actually an alum asking if we have a separate Facebook Fan Page just for alumni. (We don’t. Yet.)

I didn’t have a strong strategy behind the scenes. We didn’t hold committee meetings to decide what to say.  I just hoped for some new students to share their excitement, to feel welcomed, and to breath a little life into our page, instead of the “business as usual” answers to the same questions over and over again.

Something as simple as a status update that ties to an emotional time in new, current, and former students lives seems to resonate. This has expanded my thinking on how we’ll use this feature going forward. Maybe your campus has certain traditions (i.e. Slope Day at Cornell University, Foundation Day at the University of Albany, etc.) – highlight or countdown to some of them, give them behind the scenes updates and snapshots.

How are you using your university’s status? Are you seeing this kind of interaction?

Thank you to all of our readers who voted for .eduGuru for this year’s eduStyle Awards in the category “Best Higher Ed Blog.” We are truly grateful for your support. All six of us (Kyle, Karlyn, Fienen, Nick, Nikki & Rachel) love having this outlet to blog about our experiences and topics that affect so many of us in higher education. Your comments and continued conversations on Twitter and via e-mail give us the fuel we need to keep this going.

Our good friend Tony from “Tales from the Redesignland” congratulated us as in one of his famous comic strips.

Here are some individual thank yous from each of us:

Kyle, Karlyn & Nikki:

Rachel:

Fienen:

And here’s his hysterical promo when the voting was open earlier this spring.

Nick: