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MicroBlogging

Twitterview with EduWEB Conference Director Shelley Wetzel

by Tom Williams on February 25, 2010

in Higher Education, Interview, MicroBlogging, Recruitment, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

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I recently did my first ever Twitterview with Shelley Wetzel, director of the eduWEB conference.  This conference pulls together some of the best and brightest Web developers, marketers, designers and technologists serving the Higher Education market (both working in colleges and universities and serving that market).

eduWEB ConferenceLast year, InnoGage joined forces with Jadu and sponsored the Social Media at the Conference in Chicago.  The idea just kind of hit me out of the blue.  When I shared it with Shelley, she was on board immediately.  Jadu jumped in to assist and the whole thing came off beautifully.  You can read more about that HERE if you want.

Now, onto the Twitterview!  You can view the twitterview HERE (at least for the next few months) Or you can attempt to read it in the blog below….

Remember, since Twitter streams down, you have to go to the BOTTOM first and read your way up.  You’ll see that the tweets don’t always pull through in complete sequential order so you need to watch out for that too.  Enjoy the Twitterview…HEAD TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST AND START READING UPWARDS.

Realtime results for eduweb

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Social Media Smart - Don’t let your brand walk out the door

by Tom Williams on February 10, 2010

in Blogging, Branding, Companies, MicroBlogging, Oops!!, Social Media, Twitter

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ButlerAbout a year ago Butler University in Indiana had a social media superstar working in marketing and admissions.  This individual really put Butler on the map and in front of the curve.  The problem is that when this individual left Butler to start his own social media consulting firm, all that Social Media Equity walked right out the door.  He had inadvertently built his own brand on Butler’s dime. There was a transition attempt, but in reality, Butler really fell off the Social Media map.

What went wrong?

How can you avoid this same mistake?

The great thing about Social Media is that it’s personal.  The HARD thing about Social Media is that it’s personal!  People don’t want to tweet with a brand.  That is like going into a store and having a conversation with the Mannequin about how nicely she is dressed.  However, if you ignore the brand completely and put all the equity into the Person, then - just like Butler - they can walk out the door.

There is no silver bullet here as each company is different.  However, here are some ideas you can implement which will at least help you straddle this difficult problem.

Ryan Squire OSU Medical CenterIf you have a Social Media guru in house, you could have them combine their twitter with your brand.  A great example of this is Ryan Squire.  When Ryan used to tweet for NBC, his twitter handle was @NBCSquire.  He built up a large following under this name but when he left NBC for OSU Medical Center, the twitter account did not go with him.  He now tweets under OSUSquire, thus co-branding with Ohio State.  The upside of this method is (personal + brand) which ensures the brand can’t walk out the door.  The down side is the twitter accounts, although they don’t go with Ryan, are virtually worthless without him.

Bresnan Communications Twitter AccountAnother twitter example I have seen is at Bresnan Communications.  Bresnan’s customer service recently launched a twitter account called @JenatBresnan.  This account uses a characterture avatar.  What I really like about this is you still have a picture of a person, not a logo, so people are more likely to talk to this person.  However, it really is portable.  If Jen ever leaves Bresnan and Tracy takes over, she can still tweet under JenatBresnan, which would be much harder if the avatar was an actual photo of Jen.

Rock Star BloggerLastly - blogging.  Many times with Corporate blogs, the entire thing hinges on one person - the Rock Star.  If the Rock Star leaves, the blog is basically dead.  You may be able to transition the corporate blog to another writer, but the audience has developed a personal relationship with the Rock Star who just left so this transition will be rocky at best.

A good alternative to this is to have a multi-person blog where you have several writers.  In this situation people tend to follow the the “company” more than any individual blogger since each post could be from someone different.  Many PeepsIf you lose one of your bloggers, this is hardly noticeable at the corporate blog level and you can easily bring one or two new bloggers on board without disruption.

Again - there is no one-size-fits-all solution here.  My challenge to you is that when you go into a social media strategy that you do so with your head on straight - thinking through how you are going to balance “Personal” with “Brand”.  Don’t let your Social Media Brand walk out the door.

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Suspended by Twitter PART 2 The Recap

July 7, 2009

For those of you who missed my earlier blog post, I discovered recently that my personal twitter account @tom8williams, had been suspended by Twitter without an explanation.  I am happy to say that I was back in the twitterverse after several hours, but the event caused me to take pause and ponder the event.  It [...]

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Will Tweedeck save Twitter from Facebook?

April 9, 2009

I downloaded the new version of TweetDeck today and something immediately caught my eye…

Notice anything?  Like…..that little Facebook checkbox?
You’ve probably noticed that Facebook recently changed it’s main page to look just like a tweet stream.  This was their response to the massive following twitter is receiving.  Many people immediately declared the Death of Twitter! …But [...]

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KASCAC Presentation - SM for Recruiting

March 23, 2009

I had the honor of hanging out in Kentucky for a brief time last week and speaking to a group of admissions professionals at the KASCAC conference.   My presentation covered the 3 pillars of implementing social media for recruiting:
Start with Strategy and be sure you begin “at the end” with your goals in mind.   [...]

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Clueless Company is now following you on twitter

January 20, 2009

If you are a twitterer, you have no doubt experienced this annoying problem.  You check your inbox and you see that “peoplegatherer” or “shoes-4-less” is now following you on twitter.  Clearly this company sought you out because they value your opinion and want to connect personally with you right?

Out of some kind of sick impulse, [...]

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