This document discusses using social media to connect with students, prospects, and alumni. It recommends having a clear strategy and using tools like Facebook, blogs, discussion boards, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn. Specific strategies are outlined, such as responding quickly to discussion boards to engage students and using LinkedIn to help students build careers and the institution find alumni mentors. It emphasizes having a strategy for each tool and respecting users' time to build an engaged online community.

1. Creating a Virtual Community Using Social Media to Connect With Students, Prospects and Alumni District 3 Conference October 7, 2010 Anthony Juliano

2. Hello!

5. [and bad] Good news

6. “As more people have come online, the more online communication has become the norm. So it isn't thought of as a separate realm anymore, but as one that merges and overlaps with our daily activities.” - Caroline Haythornthwaite, Ph.D. University of Illinois

8. The key: use social media to serve as a resource to students, prospects and alumni

9. “You can buy attention (advertising). You can beg for attention from the media (public relations). You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales). Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page.” - David Meerman Scott

12. 10 sites and tools to connect with students, prospects and alumni

15. Having a Facebook page ≠ Having a Facebook strategy

17. They want to celebrate their association with the brand

18. They want to be heard

20. Most of the conversation happens among the audience, and…

22. Answering student questions?

23. Engaging alumni?It’s up to you—what’s right for your audience, and what can you support with resources.

25. “You may not have thought about Blackboard as a social media tool, but it offers all the interactivity you can desire…”- The Web 2.0 in Education blog

27. Discussion boards

31. Filters spam but allows dissent

32. Connects posters to peersThe result: efficiencies, thousands of questions answered and students satisfied

34. Potential blog topics Faculty authors – subject matter expertise Staff authors – giving the institution a name/face, answering FAQs Student authors – conversations about what they’re learning, giving prospects the chance to hear from peers Leadership authors

40. Labor intensive; many users burn out quickly

42. 10% of users account for 90% of tweets

43. Easy to get lost in the shuffle

47. Great for demonstration, instruction, entertainment

48. You can cross promote

49. Promotes your brand

51. Requires bandwidth

52. Requires skill and an investment in technology

57. 2 MILLION MEMBERS

59. [F]orget about the Next Big Thing. What you want to be looking out for are the Awesome Little Things—networks with specialized functions, unique features and cool underlying technology that may not have the mass appeal that Facebook does but still have the capacity to push the social-media sphere to a new level. - Jesse Stanchak,SmartBlog on Social Media

62. Prepares students for the new job market

65. Cultivate alumni mentors

68. “Imagine a social networking site geared specifically toward connecting college students with their on-campus academic and social communities. Sound familiar? Those are Facebook's roots [and] they're also the roots of Scoop, a forthcoming mobile social app.” - “The Next Facebook: Scoop?” PC World, Aug. 24, 2010

71. Respect the audience’s time

72. Keep mindset in mind—mitigate distractions

73. Respect boundaries

74. Establish community standards

75. Remember: it’s a two-way street

78. Questions?

79. Thanks! ajjuliano@gmail.com (260) 615.3426 AnthonyJuliano.WordPress.com If you enjoyed this presentation, please recommend me on