The world is still obsessed with Facebook
It’s safe to say that this social networking stuff is here to stay. And its impact on higher education has never been greater. This story about Jackson Community College is representative of the larger trend in higher education towards engaging students and prospects via social media. In just a couple of years, they’ve gone from having virtually no presence in social media to now having well over 1,600 people that “like” the institution on Facebook. Not bad, and certainly in line with what other institutions are seeing.
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A Tale of Two Movies
Two movies opened on October 1: The Social Network. Aaron Sorkin’s take on the founding of Facebook, and Freakonomics, a series of segments illustrating some of the concepts of the best-selling book. Counter-intuitively, Freakonomics was promoted through non-traditional means: it was available for on-demand viewing through iTunes about a month before its theater release date and offered ‘pay-what-you-can’ screenings in major cities. The movie about social networking was promoted through the standard channels of television and newspaper.
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Morning, Noon or Night?
One of the themes that Intelliworks often focuses on in our conference presentations is signal versus noise— how do we reach our constituents amid the noise of the internet? The factors involved in sending a meaningful message that attracts attention are one part art and one part science. The art involves things like copy writing, selecting content and branding, while the science involves things like channel and audience selection.
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Social Connections and Privacy
Each time Facebook releases a new feature, the blogs and tech reporters go nuts complaining about privacy. Facebook usually does nothing, users accept the changes and the cycle repeats itself. Most of the millennials I know have been dissatisfied with Facebook’s increasingly intrusive features. But I can count on one hand the number who have actually deactivated their accounts.
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Old Spice University
By now, you've no doubt seen the latest internet meme to take the world by storm...the Old Spice Man and his personalized responses to just about anyone asking for his advice. As reported by PC Magazine, "Old Spice this week capitalized on the popularity of its recent TV advertisements with a series of YouTube videos in which "Old Spice guy" Isaiah Mustafa answered questions from the Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit communities." The response has been wildly popular and blogs ranging from Techcrunch and Mashable to the Huffington Post have picked up the action.
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Are you being followed?
The University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research recently released the results of their third annual survey on social media in college admissions. Research continues to show that social media adoption at four year colleges and universities is outpacing that of Fortune 500 companies. Trends indicate that awareness and engagement in social media in admissions has grown at a steady rate over the past three years.
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The Future of the Fan Page
Much ink has been spilled over recent weeks regarding Facebook’s new features. One of the recent changes- the addition of Community Pages- has taken a backseat to more pressing issues regarding privacy. But upon further inspection, it seem that Community Pages have wide-reaching implications when it comes to organizations and their social media marketing.
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Plugged in and Addicted
I can’t think of anyone I know whose job doesn’t revolve around their computer. With my laptop as the centerpiece of my desk I can’t even imagine what people did at work before computers. At home it’s the same story- my housemates and I are rarely without our laptops which are our televisions, cookbooks, stereos and malls. About a week ago, a University of Maryland study asked 200 students to unplug from computers and phones for 24 hours.
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Social Media Layers
During the past few years, social media sites have encouraged participation by adding their site as another layer to the internet. By this I mean, not only can I read the news on the New York Times website, but I can also share the article through Twitter, LinkedIn, Mixx, Digg, MySpace, Facebook and Yahoo! Buzz.
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Making Sure You Count
While some industries have taken a long time to catch onto social media, the government in particular always seems to lag behind the rest of us. It took matters of national security for the military to finally take steps to establish guidelines for its use. Most recently the Census Bureau is trying something new- a public relations campaign for the 2010 census.
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