My notes for using social media as a PR tool in education industry.

Learning is not just learning!

As an Educational and Communication Technology major student, we usually design the interactive multimedia-learning environment for students to learn from others. Social media is the important tool for helping student learning. There are 4 advantages when students are using social media as a learning tool.

1.     Collaborating Learning- Students can learn new information from others. When they have new questions, they don’t need to wait teachers to tell them the right answer; however, they can discuss with each other and find out the appropriate answer.

2.     A learning community- Students’ forming a learning community is good for learning new things, because in this community, they have same learning goal. Social media plays an important rule to help forming a learning community.

3.     Getting response quickly- When using social media, students do not have to wait teachers’ answers, they just could get answers from social media quickly.

4.     Eco-friendly- Using social media as a discussing platform, students do not need to print out their questions.

My takeways:

1.     How to set up a goal is important.

2.     Target your audience.

3.     “New social tools relieve some of those burdens, allowing for new kinds of grouping-forming, like using simple sharing to anchor the creation of new group.” (p.25, Here Comes Everybody)

4.     “Social media provides in-depth communications around a subject.”(p.176, New Rules)

5.     POST methods!

Back to a viewpoint from a educational businessman

1.     Who is my audience? Teachers? Students? Parents?

2.     What is my social media strategies? Facebook, Twitter or blogs?

3.     How could I build the interactive learning environment via using social media?

4.     How could I use social media to have a in-depth communications with my clients?

What I still curious about….

When creating social media strategies, are there big differences between non-profit and profit organizations?

How does a non-profit organization use their social media strategies

The United Nation is the biggest nonprofit organization in the world. They have many different departments over the world. Each department is responsible for public issue. One of an affiliation of UN the United Nations Children’s Found (UNICEF), which is devoted to the children’s’ rights and their survival, development and protection. From my own point of view, they put a lot of efforts on their social media pages.

Informative social media pages

When it comes to their social media using, the UNICEF is doing well on managing their Facebook page and Twitter. I have followed their Facebook page and Twitter for about a year and found out they update everyday. Updating the new information everyday is important because a non-profit organization needs to report what they are doing now to the public. 

In terms of the social media, the UNICEF’s Facebook page is update quickly by time. Everyday when I log on my Facebook page I could see their latest information on the wall. Information wise, they update their work to the third world kids among different areas, such as education and public health issue. The UNICEF also put links to other website that are related to their notion. When it comes to children starvation, they put a CNN news link to lead their target audience to a deeper professional report of the issue.

The UNICEF’s twitter is also updating everyday and the title of each tweet relates to their content. Apart from the repetitive news from the Facebook page of UNICEF, they also put the “thank you” information for people who donate money to them. Checking the follower, we could found out there are other affiliations of UN and many resources related to children’s safety and health.

Furthermore, their Facebook page and Twitter put many links for users to reach other resource. On their Facebook page, they put links of Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and last but not least a donate account. I think this is a very smart way to put a donate account in an obvious place. As a non-profit organization, it needs funds from everywhere, and this is also one of the crucial reasons why the UNICEF sets a social media page to reach the public’s attention to their working.  

There still are rooms for improving

1.  Eye-catching hashtag. It is surprised me that most of the UNICEF’s tweet does not have a hashtag. I would suggest they put a hashtag on each of the tweet. It could help their followers to select the information they are interested in.

2.  Target the audience more specifically. Generally speaking, I think they try hard to manage their social media pages. As a non-profit organization, the goal of setting a social media page is different from a profit organization. There is often great lacking of funds and human resource for a non-profit organization. Let’s generally divide their followers to two main groups, one is professional white-collar level and the other is students level. For white-collar level, they would concern about children’s health and education condition, but they are too busy to do something real effort for them. They would choose to donate money to help children to improve their rights. So, I would suggest the UNICEF enhance the information about how they use money. Furthermore, they could add some links for students who are interested in being a volunteer in the UNICEF.

3.  More interaction with their followers. I found out that the UNICEF seldom has the interactions with their followers on the Facebook. I would suggest they could enhance this part.

Social media, a good tool for me.

Ted B. is one of my classmates in the graduate program of Educational Communication and Technology. Ted is now the direct of distance learning in School of Continuing Professional Studies in New York University. Furthermore, he is an instructor, teaching a research methods course in SCPS.

Here are my interviewing questions for him.

Q1: Do you use social media as a tool to cooperate with your coworkers?

Yes. Because NYU is developing other campus around the world, one is in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, I need social media to connect to my coworkers. Using social media makes me and my coworkers feel like no jet lag, we could post important information on social media and discuss on it. If we need to discuss more details, we would choose to have on line conferences.

Q2: In your class, do you also choose social media as a tool to teach student?

Apart from the work in distance learning center, I also teaching a research method course this summer. In this course, I have developed a long time assignment, which is a blog. I like to hear their reflections from the blogs. There are some advantages for my students to write a blog. First, blogs reflect their deeper thinking. In class, we discuss some questions and students could ponder these questions and write them down in their blog. Second, blogs encourage students to discuss with others further. Blogs provide a place for students to discuss with their classmate. Sometimes, it makes students do not feel awkward when pointing out different viewpoints.

Q3: What kind of social media you choose?

1. Blogs. I have asked students to develop their blog for reflecting their thoughts.

2. Facebook. We have Facebook pages for NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. Coworkers keep updating the latest news for the public, including community, parents, current students and future students.

3. Chatter. I mainly use Chatter for working purpose. This social media is much more private and people could share documents on it.

4. Yammer. This social media is for teaching. I set up a group for my students could share their study notes or questions on line.

5. Google+. This is for teaching methods sharing. I have some friends who are teaching similar courses. We often discuss our teaching methods or teaching material on the Google+. Sometimes, when I am looking for an idea for teaching, I would post my questions or experiences on line and discuss with my friends.

Q4: Are there any advantages when you using social media as a teaching tool or a communication tool?

1. Saving times. Social media provides a convenient way for me to discuss teaching methods with my friends. Also, we could share the latest news very quickly to coworkers in NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai.

2. Forming learning community. For my students, I think social media provides a good place for them to discuss with learning problems. For me, I also use social media to exchange my teaching experience with my friends.

Social media and the freedom of speech.

Last week, we discussed about the event of Obama twitter town hall. This reminds me the great antigovernment movement, which happened in Egypt few months ago. In the United State, the President takes the advantage of social media as a great channel to listen to the opinion from the public; in the Egypt, the public uses social media to against their government.

Who has the greater power? The government or the public?

From the Egypt protests happened recently, it tells the truth that if the government still refuses to listen to the voice from the public, the pub

lic might show that discontent in an aggressive way. Protesters in the movement mainly call for greater democratic rights and solving the unemployment problems. [1] When a 28-year –old Egyptian man, Khale Said was witnessed that the Egyptian police killed him because he had the evidence of the police corruption, the anger of the Egyptian people was to the extreme. [2]

Therefore, people form a variety of social-economic they created a Facebook page, “We are all Khale Said” [3], and the protesters use this Facebook page as a tool to connect with others who also have discontent with the Mubarak government. When the Mubarak government was aware of the powerful role that social media were playing in Egypt, some supporters of the Mubarak government popped to the Facebook page and tried to speak for the government.

Overwhelming power of social media

The Japanese government is famous for a calm style when handling a big devastate. In the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that rocked Japan this march, the Japanese Government tended to release the earthquake news in a “bright” way. However, from the social media, Japanese people could understand the deeper earthquake information.

Apart from being another resource to know the latest news in the earthquake, the social media also plays another vital role this time. At very first time when the earthquake happened, the internet, telephone, mobile phone were temporary out of order, people used the Facebook or Twitter to send a message to their families or friends and let them know they were fine.

In the past days, people usually connected to the world by reading news. Now, people tend to get information form social media. However, with the exploding information everyday, how does audience choose their information? Or what the role does the government should play when protect the public’s freedom of speech? From my point of view, there are two answers to these questions.

1. Policy. In class, we discussed about there should be a social media in each company. However, when it comes to a whole society, there should be a complete social media law to regulate the public while using the social media, such as protecting users’ policy, punishing inappropriate speech.

2. Well-educated citizenship. This might be a cliché, but in a digital ear, maybe there should be an organized educational system to speech on the internet.

References:

[1] http://www.egyptianrevolution.com/

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06face.html?pagewanted=all

[3] http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk?sk=photos

My review for the President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall

Social media has played an important role in our life. After watching President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall, I feel it is so true! Nowadays, the influence of social media not just affects the way we keep in touch with friends, but also help us to update the President’s leading strategies in the future. The President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall is hold by the White House and there are questions selected from the twitter by 8 curators, showing on the screen. President Obama answers these questions. This is a remarkable event, because this is the first time the President of the United Stated answers questions to the public through social media directly.

From my point of view, generally speaking, President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall is a good public relations strategy from the White House. Here are my thoughts:

1. Good Speaker, genuine listener.

From this video, President Obama listened every question carefully and tried to answer them precisely. At some points, this makes the crowd feel that he would like to understand the questions people have in their lives. He also tried to answer each question very precisely.

2. Provide an up to date and good channel for the public to interact with President Obama.

This event provided a good channel for the public to have a chance to ask the President Obama their questions, which reflect the problems in the current society. According to Social Media Today, there are some demographics showing the age of major users of the Twitter is 18-34. The age represents the young generations who engage in participating with discussing public issue in the society. I think the Obama government chose the twitter to communicate with people maybe they are preparing to win some you generation supporters. With using the hot social media in the United Stated, the Obama government also tries to represent a new image of the government that they are open-mined and up-to-date.

There are some questions of the President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall worth to be considered.

1.Why twitter?

I am just curious why the White House choose the Twitter as the medium to communicate with the public. Although I made a research on line and found out it is the widely used social media in the United State. Would it be an official advertisement for the twitter? Why don’t they choose other social media, like Facebook?

2. How they choose the questions

According to the video the Obama’s Twitter Town Hall, just 17 questions are selected and answers. Although these questions are variety, it seems the curators chose these questions from main big cities in the United Stated. I would suggest they could choose the questions from more different city.

3. Too long to answer each question

Each tweet has 140 words limit, so each questions the President Obama answers need to be narrowed down to 140 words. From the video, I could tell that the President Obama tried to answer every question as detailed as possible. However, if in the case, I would suggest the President Obama answer each question shorter, that’s way, he could answer more questions.

Update 07/20/2011

Some thoughts are added after the class on 07/19

Is social media disrupting public relations?

The prosperous social media tools, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook are changing the pubic relation industry nowadays. Not only we use these social media to keep in touch with our old friends, but also people from diverse industries use it as a tool to promote themselves.

Is it familiar to you that seeing your friends like a new restaurant in the town? Or is it easier nowadays to find a promotion activity for our favorite brand on twitter than old days. Yes, I do not think I could deny the fact that social media is becoming a wildly- using tool in the area of public relations. Therefore, I do not agree with the statement that social media is disrupting pubic relation.

From our daily life experiences, we could find different business using social media to promote their products. I also found many politicians they also using social media as a tool to promote themselves. They post their current opinion toward this country. They also answer questions that the public has. There is a piece of interesting news in my country. The president in my country releases a strong ideological tendency on his Facebook (chances are that it was released by his staff members.). Moreover, he also popped a question to the public on his Facebook. This interests the public discussing and also the chasing of other Taiwanese news firms.

The prosperous social media tools, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook are changing the pubic relation industry nowadays. Not only we use these social media to keep in touch with our old friends, but also people from diverse industries use it as a tool to promote themselves.

However, there is one problem that occurs to me. When it comes to discuss the question what is social media disrupting the public relation. In some cases, if a politician or a company does not use it well, it might jeopardize their public relations.