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Editor's Notes

1. Lougan B the Social Media and Web Marketing Specialist in Belmont Universities Office of Marketing and Special InitiativesI’ve been in my position for about 3 weeks, previously in the Division of Enrollment ServicesI’m a media kid, I’ve been building and managing small social networks since 2002 on a variety of topics that interested me.I’ve facebooked, blogged, youtubed, linkedin, you name it but today I’m hear to talk about twitter.
2. As many of you know, 140 characters is what makes twitter so distinctive. That’s all it is really. There might be a little geolocational information mixed in there, but in the end that’s all it is. A username and 140 characters. It’s hard to believe how powerful 140 characters can be…
3. The collective tweets of thousands can help topple governments
4. or one tweet could embarrass you more than you could ever know.
5. Twitter in its purest form, is simplicity. It’s only 140 characters. But there is definitely more to it than just random ramblings
6. To keep up with individual conversations on twitter, twitter folks use both hashtags and replies. A hashtag is a marker that denotes that a particular post is related to a conversation. It’s how people stay with a conversation or start one. Replies denote that a post is directed towards a certain person. It isn’t necessarily an reply to another post, but a way of getting someone’s attention.
7. Here is a great example from our match up with University of Wisconsin Badgers this year in the first round of the Men’s NCAA Tournament. When you step back and really look at all of these statuses and conversations…
8. Twitter tells a story.So what does that mean in higher education? You can use Twitter to tell the story of your institution… Do you value student interaction? Do you have lots of news you want to share? There are so many ways to use twitter.
9. At Belmont we look at twitter in several ways. For one, it’s a platform for us to engage students. Belmont, like many small-medium sized private universities, prides itself on students being the center of everything we do, so we’ve made it a central tenant of our social media strategy to engage our students and interact with them. Whether that be congratulating them on being admitted to the university, answering a question about registration, or reporting that wifi is down on the southern corner of the quad.
10. Second, we see twitter as a way to inform our community of what’s going on, on campus. We obviously post our main university news and communications. But In many cases we also advertise things you wouldn’t necessarily publish through the main university news site.
11. As Kary mentioned in her earlier presentation, listening is the key to a good social media strategy Twitter doesn’t just help you tell the story of your institution, but it also shows you what people are saying. A few twitter searches for terms related to your university can go a long way to understanding what’s on people’s minds. It’s also a great way to engage your audience and generate followers. As I mentioned before, we like to engage our prospective students and current students on twitter. We do this using twitter searches, when we see someone mention something interesting about Belmont, we’ll talk right back to them. It surprises people from time to time, but usually it’s a good surprise. Searching also goes beyond just the university.
12. Over the last 2-3 years, I’ve amassed quite a network of folks in the Higher Education Social Media sphere. They are great resources for questions, opinions, and reading material. Plus, everyone likes to share their opinions and help each other with best practices and such. Imagine having a 250 member panel like we have here every day at any time of the day.I like to keep up with latest trends in higher education and special hashtags like #highered allow me to keep up with what’s going on in higher education. It’s pretty amazing to see how much you can learn just by skimming through twitter and finding good tags to follow. Keeping on the latest trends and understanding what the competition is doing keeps me ahead of the game. So with a good network and keeping up with trends and competition , I’m able to build on what I already know.
13. Its pretty tough to empirically measure something as objective as posts on twitter. In general, most people measure twitter in terms of interaction. The most obvious is Follower Count (how many people are following you at one time) or number of Replies in a given period of time.
14. I like a program named Klout which gives you a score based on the amount of influence you carry. This is one of MANY tools out there to help you measure how influential you are, and with twitter that’s what matters. They ability to get your message out. So what are some good ways to do that?
15. It’s really easy to fall into the trap of constantly posting news. News. News. News. While twitter is a great way to disseminate information, you have to be able to convince people that your loudspeaker is worth listening to. Sound like a human, give your twitter account a voice. Crack a joke from time to time. It will really help your followers connect with what you are trying to say. Interacting with your followers isn’t just a way to increase your followers or to appear like you care. Interaction makes your posts just that more interesting. Its also encourages your followers to reply or retweet your messages… amplifying your message
16. Understanding what’s being said about you is the key to responding. Once you understand what’s being said, you can effectively insert yourself into the conversation and build some influence points with your followers or even create new followers from people who didn’t know your account existed. But also listen what’s going on around you. Build a network of peers and listen to what’s going on in the industry. It will help you build great best practices and keep ahead of the game.
17. There are lots of great apps that tie directly into twitter.
18. I like a program named Klout which gives you a score based on the amount of influence you carry. This is one of MANY tools out there to help you measure how influential you are, and with twitter that’s what matters. They ability to get your message out. So what are some good ways to do that?
19. I like a program named Klout which gives you a score based on the amount of influence you carry. This is one of MANY tools out there to help you measure how influential you are, and with twitter that’s what matters. They ability to get your message out. So what are some good ways to do that?
20. Unlike most social media channels, you can’t control what people say to you on Twitter. You can’t delete their posts. You can’t hide what they say. You can usually only influence how people perceive you. So do your best to remain thoughtful and open it goes a long way to how your followers and the public form their opinions of you
21. So I leave you with a little story about humor, a horrible mistake, and turning that mistake into something wonderful.