The Digitized Social Media Conference

Are you "Digitized?"

Today marked the second annual "Digitized" social media conference at The H Hotel in Midland, MI hosted by the Social Media Club Great Lakes Bay. The event brought together social media professionals from various industries and levels of expertise to discuss and share experiences in the ever-evolving - and increasingly challenging - world of social media.

I had the unique opportunity to attend the event as an exhibitor (sharing more information about CMU's online Undergraduate Certificate in Social media), as a presenter (on the topic of digital and social media advertising), and as social media professional looking to learn from others.

I arrived at 7:30 a.m. this morning to set up our exhibition space as a conference sponsor - oops, we're supposed to call it "advertiser" in higher education. I brought several flyers for the social media certificate as well as brochures about our online programs, the online Master of Science in Administration degree, and an "at-a-glace" flyer about our Saginaw, MI center, given its proximity to the conference. I spoke with several attendees and I was shocked at how many individuals came up to me simply because they were CMU alums. I was also fortunate enough to meet with two students currently enrolled in the second course in the social media certificate program (JRN 250). I was thrilled that one of the students, William Hard, was able to attend the conference for free due to one of the complementary tickets we received as an "advertiser."

Kaleb Patrick, our associate director of marketing, co-presented with me this morning on combining digital and social media advertising efforts into an overall marketing strategy. View our Prezi here. I was surprised by the great feedback I received from several conference attendees, despite a presentation that was not rehearsed prior to the conference. Since it was a social media conference, several attendees where "live tweeting" and we received a lot of great feedback there as well.  

Speaking of Twitter, the conference was a wonderful way to engage with other social media professionals via social media. The Twitter hashtag #digitized was highly active and allowed me to drastically increase my engagement on Twitter throughout the day. This comes at a perfect time because we have been examining Klout in my social media certificate course and I am very curious to track the influence of today's activity on my overall Klout score. In theory, I should see a slight increase in my score due to the substantial increase in mentions, retweets, and followers I received throughout the day. I hope to maintain this level of engagement with these individuals in a continual effort to brand myself as a social media professional on Twitter.

Finally, I couldn't help but think about the presentation by the guest speaker in my social media certificate course - Nikki Little - throughout the conference. Nikki spoke at length about taking online networking connections offline and emphasized the importance of traditional networking opportunities. Taking her recommendations to heart, I made sure to bring extra business cards and I tried to chat with as many people as possible throughout the day. As a result, I received a large number of business cards - and more importantly - new networking connections. I am expecting to both submit and receive several LinkedIn connection requests in the next few days.

Overall, this was a fantastic experience which I hope will yield new connections and positive results for me professionally as well as for Central Michigan University's Global Campus.

Building your audience in higher education

If you build it, they will come...

That's not always the case in social media, unless you're a major brand with extensive branding exposure. Most organizations, higher education especially, need to utilize a variety of tools in order to build your overall social media fan base and reach. How do you do that? Like many things in social media, different organizations will need to employ different tactics. It must be specifically tailored to your brand or organization - one of many good reasons why you should have a full time social media professional on staff.

Institutions of higher education are rarely technological innovators and are typically resistant to change. However, that's not to say more traditional tactics can't be employed to enhance the awareness and exposure of your institution's or department's various identities on social networks. Including icons on promotional materials, advertising, and print pieces are a good start - just try to include some sort of call-to-action that makes sense. "Follow us" doesn't cut it any more (plus, it's the inappropriate nomenclature for most networks anyway). Alumni associations and departments may have success with a periodic e-mail blast to urging their constituents to join them on various social networks while explaining the benefits and "value add" for doing so.

Working in "continuing" or "distance" education, we've tried several of these tactics to reach our students and alumni at Central Michigan University's Global Campus. We're also trying to get more students involved via specific print pieces, you'll see an example of our postcard size in the photo. Aside from the postcard, we have a 8.5" x 11" and full poster sized pieces all promoting our presences on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare. We specifically choose Foursquare because we are sending these pieces to each of our 38 locations across the United States. Students are encouraged to "check in" at their CMU Global Campus center while they're there. We've incorporated QR (short for quick response) codes so students and prospective students alike can quickly scan and connect via a smartphone.

These materials have not yet hit all of our centers, but I eagerly await to see if we see a significant increase in our overall number of fans, followers, and group members as a result. If nothing else, I hope to raise awareness and engagement across all of our social media identities.

What are your thoughts? In what ways are you spreading the word about your Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, etc.?

Welcome to "Social media for higher education"

Hello and thank you for reading!

My name is Eric Joyce and I am the online marketing coordinator for Central Michigan University's Global Campus. In this blog, I plan to share my experiences and expertise marketing and interacting through audiences via social media, but with a focus on its application to higher education. As we all know, higher education can be a difficult and challenging world complicated by licensure and regulatory restrictions. Furthermore, for-profit institutions don't often play by the same rules as their non-profit counterparts.

I hope you enjoy following along and sharing your personal insight and experiences with me along the way!

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