The Power of Social Media for Campus Initatives

On January 20, 2012 I had the opportunity to present a session on, "The Power of Social Media- and How to Use it Effectively. The session was presented to a planning group at UW-La Crosse who are considering a social media initative to explain key issue of a student referendum to fund a new student center. The session graphically illustrated how social media can affect political issues. This workshop took the social media strategies used in politics and applied them to a project to explain and obtain support for a new student center complex.

Some key decisions and outcomes from the workshop included the following:

1) when using Twitter- decide upon who approves the tweets.
2) consider what Facebook apps are most appropriate for this initative
3) consider using rich media within the social media framework
4) consider using an interactive blog to continue the social conversation
5) promote the work you are doing with social media, in traditional media such as campus newsletters, e-mails, and the local press.

As the 2011 ECAR study states, the overarchiving observation is that, "technology could be used more strategically to engage students in academic life." In this project, we will see if we can accomplish this goal.