A joint talk with @marcdobson where we talked about the different types of social media, offered advice and guidance on its use and presented some examples of effective social media engagement in a Business and Community Engagement (BCE) context. Topics covered included: A brief overview of social media, including some of the platforms available and its use across Education as a whole; The need for a social media strategy, and what to consider; General guidance and best practice when using social media channels, including some pitfalls to avoid; and Specific examples of the use of social media in a BCE context. See http://bce.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2014/04/25/missed-our-social-media-for-bce-webinar-catch-up-here/ for a recording of our talk and supplementary guidance.

1. Social Media for Business and
Community Engagement (BCE)
Marc Dobson
Andrew Stewart

2. What is BCE?
“...the relationships academic institutions
create with external organisations and
individuals.”
(Netskills, 2011)

3. 4 BCE Dimensions
(Netskills, 2011)

4. 4 BCE Dimensions
Which of the following dimensions do you think your
area of work falls into?
A. Employer Engagement
B. Knowledge Transfer/Exchange
C. Lifelong Learning
D. Public Engagement
E. N/A

5. What is Social Media?
What makes social media different is its ability
to use the Internet to allow for fast and
effective two-way interaction to take place.

6. Personal or Work

7. Social Media across HE
98% Facebook Profile
100% Twitter Profile
98% LinkedIn Profile
97% YouTube account
(Edwards, 2013)

8. Social Media for BCE
3% Dedicated “Business” Facebook Page
22% Dedicated Twitter profile
51% Actively used their LinkedIn company
profile
(Edwards, 2013)

9. Average audience size across HE
Facebook fans: 27,600
Twitter followers: 9,500
LinkedIn followers: 3,700
YouTube subscribers: 935*
*(Average video views were much higher – over 460, 000)
(Edwards, 2013)

10. Why Social Media?
#1 Engagement
#2 Transparency
#3 Cost
#4 Search
(Facebook, 2013; Netskills, 2012; Twitter, no date; YouTube, no date)
1.19 billion
1 billion
230 million

11. Tech Top Trumps: http://bit.ly/tech-top-trumps
Location
‘‘Online distance
learning makes
complete sense for the
future delivery of work-
based learning, both
from an operational
and a financial point
of view.’’ (Toole, 2011)

12. Types of Social Media
Blogs/Micro Blogs Social/Business Networks
Image/Video Sharing Content Curation
Slidecasts Webinars
Social Gaming Mobile Apps
Collaborative spaces Location-based
Forums

13. (McCaul, 2010; Jisc infoNet, 2012; Stewart, 2013)
#1 Crowd-wisdom
#2 Crowd-sourcing
#3 Crowd-resourcing
The Innovation Commons
http://theinnovationcommons.co.uk

14. Social Media Strategy
Having a separate social media strategy can
create an additional burden not only in terms
of having to produce it in the first instance, but
also in keeping it up to date, and ensuring its
use within the institution.

15. Social Media Strategy
Does your department/organisation have a social media
strategy?
A. Integrated into other strategic documents
B. We have a corporate social media strategy
C. We have a departmental/service social media strategy
D. We do not consider social media at a strategic level
E. I don’t know

16. Integration
...fundamentally, it’s about helping
you to achieve your organisation’s
strategic objectives.

17. Define your audience
#7 Inactives
#6 Spectators
#5 Joiners
#4 Collectors
#3 Critics
#2 Conversationalists
#1 Creators

18. Roles and responsibilities
(Gizmodo, 2013)

19. Style and tone
(Moth, 2013)

20. Measurement
1# Quantitative
e.g. aims, engagement, and cost.
2# Qualitative
e.g. feedback, recommendations, and
references.

21. Any questions/comments so far?
Raise your hand and use the microphone, or
ask a question in the chat window.
Remember to start your question in the chat
window with ‘Q’

22. Social Media Guidance
“Social media isn't something that you "do",
instead you have to "be" social.”
(Peter Thompson, 2013)

23. Content
● Of interest to your audience
● On topic
● Keep it brief
● Use of multimedia
● Opportunities for your audience to interact

24. Frequency
● How often to communicate?
● Making communication a habit
● Am I repeating myself?

25. Scheduling
● Lining up your content
● Automated posting - If That Then This
● When’s the best time?

26. Scheduling - be careful!

27. When are you most receptive?
AM PM

28. Managing accounts
● Passwords
● What if you’re not around?
● Profiles
● Manage expectations

29. Managing accounts

30. Know your tools
● Get to grips with the platforms
● Try them out first
● Good practice
● Only use what’s effective

31. Archiving social media content
● Often offered by social media platforms
● Can allow for analysis of data
● Useful for tracking development of social media
activity over time

32. Use of social media in BCE
“Partnership is a two-way thing. And exploiting
web technologies means institutions can have
a much enhanced impact both within a locality
and beyond”
Simon Whittemore, Jisc

33. Alumni Engagement - why?
●
http://mashable.com/2009/07/23/alumni-social-media/
Helping Alumni Find Jobs Providing Tools To Spread Information
Collaboration and Connecting With Students Alumni-Generated Content
Fundraising: From E-mails to Tweets Promoting Alumni Networks
Training Alumni To Use Social Media Mobile Reunions
Meeting Alumni Where They're At Connecting The Dots: Google Maps

34. Alumni Engagement - benefits
● Supporting recruitment of prospective students
● Reduced print costs
● Increased engagement
● Re-engagement with ‘lost’ Alumni

35. AGENT Project - Mentoring
● Mentors and mentees using Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn
● Focus on employability

36. Blogs for Alumni Engagement

37. Storify

38. Storify Feed at Newcastle

39. Open Education Resources
"The great promise of technology in education
was to provide cost-effective access to a high
quality education experience, and that's what
OER is doing for us"
Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor, Open University.

40. Open University - SocialLearn
● OpenLearn has existed for some time to make OU
content available to the public
● Social justice mission - policy to openly release 5%+
of content
● Over 600 courses available (2012)
● SocialLearn built to harness the power of social
networking to allow users to control what and how
they learn
●

41. Digital storytelling
● Narrative based videos
● Short
● Images and text
● Recorded voiceover
● Music and Video (keep it to a minimum)
“Stories are about how we experience things, and now about how they actually are”
(Dr Chris McKillop, 2004)

42. Public Engagement - Pi Day Live

43. Questions and Answers
Raise your hand and use the microphone, or
ask a question in the chat window.
Remember to start your question in the chat
window with ‘Q’

44. Useful Links
We’ve produced a Google Doc with resources
mentioned in today’s session, plus more
useful links.

45. Thank you!
We hope you enjoyed today’s webinar - we would appreciate your feedback
References are available on the following slide. To save the slides from today
click on save, whiteboard or they are available at https://www.surveymonkey.
com/s/sm4bce-feedback
A recording of the webinar will be made available shortly - the link will be
circulated to registered participants

46. References
Edwards (2013) http://bit.ly/sm4bce-coventry
Facebook (2013) http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts
Gizmodo (2013) http://bit.ly/gizmodo-hmv
Jisc infoNet (2012) http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/kt/
McCaul (2010) http://bit.ly/leeds-collab-tools
Moth (2013) http://bit.ly/moth-fails
Netskills (2011) http://bit.ly/BCE-AE
Netskills (2012) https://www.netskills.ac.uk/share/file/988
Perry (2012) http://bit.ly/surrey-alumni
Stewart (2013) http://bce.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/11/13/national-innovation-commons/
Toole (2011) Social media: key tools for the future of work-based learning
Twitter (no date) https://about.twitter.com/company
YouTube (no date) http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html