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Social Media Strategy in Higher Education

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 16 Jul 2011, 11:57

Is it sensible to be writing on Friday what I did on Tuesday?

I've face this dilemma a thousand times after 35 years of keeping a diary.

Better late than never if the events are of value (they are) and worth sharing (they are) and of educational value to My M.A (they're that too).

I took notes all the way through a day long workshop on Social Media in Higher Education with Tracy Payle of Pickle Jar.

I even held the iPad aloft to take screen grabs of her presentation, as well as grabs of any exeercises I worked on with my colleague from Imperial.

The 'Heads Up' for me were the exercises we did anda the results we collectively produced. We must see those who could become engaged in social media as a plethora of types with different inate skills and interests.

Then play to their strengths.

Not rocket science, but a reminder.

We might hsve more than a library of content to put out, but better only to offer what we understand, believe or know thst our audience want.

Then to see the long-term engagement with people as they think about, become inspired by, then sign up for a qualification ... And their journey onwards as a student and alumni.

(all being was initially written off an ipad. Without fingers like chopsticks editing and correctng is impossible. I know present this as a draft to fix later. I can't use html or any of the dropnox tools either. I undersetood that the OU were 'tablet agnostic'. At the moment, at least in the VLE, they are not fully iPad).

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Design Museum

How best to use Social Media to market you university

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 13 Jul 2011, 21:45

I've been at Central House, UCL all day with fellow Social Media people from the following universities: Kings, UCL, Birkbeck, Leeds, Liverpool, LSE, Cranfield, Bath and Imperial College ...

With 'the student rooms' also present.

As someone remarked it was like a Business School workshop.

It impressed me that the approach was less about tools and more about planning, culture, content, results and convincing colleagues in Higher Education to buy in.

Having understood for some time the necessary tactic of listen, comment and create I have to wonder if the division of effort across these should be 5:3:1

i.e. Effort to be certain you are addressing the right people matters far more than churning out content.

Rolling Twitter content was lambasted as failing to engage.

We never really touched on the pedagogical value of content provided through Open Learn or developed and shared by Faculty, alumni, students and even prospective students.

Insead does a star turn, but I feel confident also that The OU Business School is inclined to be innovative.

Much more to follow. This was like reading several copies of the New Scientist and stumbling upon several gems.

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