Recognizing your bias in social media

As university communicators, we're paid to love and promote our institutions. We not only read our own press; we write it. Even though we all know that our colleges and universities aren't perfect, we wouldn't thrive in our positions if we didn't believe in the mission and leadership of our organizations.

This professional bias leads us to tread a difficult line when it comes to social media. If we're doing a good job of monitoring our brand online, we will inevitably see something negative at some point. Jessica Krywosa at the .eduGuru blog authored a post on her recent experience with negative Facebook comments, which also includes helpful comments on handling such issues.

But beyond our official social media channels also lies a wide range of forums, blogs and other social resources in which our institutions have no voice. Yes, we could respond as individuals to negative attacks when we see them on discussion forums or blogs, but we need to resist the urge to do so lightheartedly or in the heat of the moment. Most readers will immediately discredit comments that smell like they've been authored by a company representative. Some social media sources specifically ban biased responses (i.e., Wikipedia). At bare minimum, PR-sounding responses will be unwelcome in most any online community.

Most professional communicators know to pause and think before responding publicly to negative press. But while marketing professionals may know these protocols, we must remember that everyone in our organizations has the same publishing access to social media that we do. Not only do we need to be disciplined and not act prematurely, we must educate our internal audiences about these issues as well.

Are your headlines #Twitter-friendly?

News-style writing values brevity and clarity, and no where is that more important than on Twitter. With its 140-character limit and heavy concentration of journalist users, effective headline writing is critical for getting the biggest bang for news releases or blog posts on Twitter.

• Be concise. VERY concise. Yes, you may have 140 characters on Twitter, but that doesn't mean you should use all of them. First, you'll need to include a shortened URL to the full news release (minimum length: 20 characters if you use bit.ly). Second, you'll want Twitterers to "retweet" your release, so subtract another 20 characters "RT @username" and a brief comment. In other words, headlines should be shorter than 100 characters.
  
  
• Be clear. If you're lucky enough for your blog post or news release to go viral, you'll want your headline to be clear without additional context. Tweets that are serially retweeted will often lose the original Twitter handle, so the source may not be identifiable before users click on your link.
  
  
• Be relevant. If you're wanting your message to reach an audience outside of your normal followers, use hashtags (or "#" pound-signs) to reach those groups. Of course, that means that the topic needs to be a part of your headline and match the appropriate hashtag. For example, if I want to reach bankruptcy lawyers on Twitter about a new seminar, I should add #bankruptcy #law hashtags to the tweet.

Happy tweeting!

Social Media and Faculty Publicity

Faculty stars. You know who they are, and so do they. They may be prolific authors, influential activists, professional leaders or international speakers. Their achievements are frequent and important within their spheres of influence.

And these stars want you to magnify their shine through publicity.

Not too long ago, there weren't many options for handling stellar, PR-happy faculty. You could give into their requests for publicity in the few channels available (namely news releases or institutional publications), featuring them with such frequency that other quieter professors become obscured. The other option was to draw a line in the sand and say no, offending the well-regarded faculty member. Needless to say, both options had significant drawbacks.

Enter the social Web to the rescue!

With a flexible and well-designed Web site and social media presence, higher ed communicators now have a broad range of tools at their disposal for promoting faculty achievements. Instead of saying "no, we can't write another news release about you" to a prestigious professor, we can now respond with "congratulations, we've already posted your news to your department Web page and our college's Twitter feed." Here is our new range of options:

• College/university magazine article
• News release
• Home page spotlight
• Lower-level Web site features (i.e., departmental home pages)
  
• Facebook update (reserved for accomplishments that reflect more widely on the institution)
  
• Twitter update
• Flickr/YouTube (if media available)
• "Faculty applause" or "Faculty in the news" Web pages
  
• Testimonial quotes/features in marketing materials
• E-newsletter profile