Social Media: YourPersonal Learning Assistant

Elaine EdwardsNews Media and Marketing Leader

Russell FeldhausenComputer Support Specialist

Aug. 30, 2012

Social Media Benefits for You• Reaching new audiences• Reaching existing audiences in new, engaging ways

• Building relationships with new and existing clientele

• Building personal learning networks• Rapid response to emerging situations

Personal goals• Improve my own professional and personal

development.• Listen to others and be open to many views

and ways of communicating.• Collaborate with others (colleagues and local

partners).• Bridge and maintain relationships with my

current (local) clients.• Listen to and engage in clientele I might not

normally engage with.

Best Practices

1. Be honest about who you are; don't pretend to be somebody you aren't.

2. Listen, take an active role in the conversation. This is how Extension staff will know what information people want.

3. Don't look at it as another duty. Our publics are finding ways to use new tools, we should too. 4. Surround yourself with people who will risk trying new things

Extension’s role

“To help people think critically, interpret, analyze and apply information they gather from all of the different platforms.” 

How?

 Using available free tools to do our work better.

These tools help make our content more discoverable.

Eli Sagor, Extension forester, University of Minnesota

 

Challenges to social media

107+ million Twitter accounts in U.S.465 million accounts worldwide

YouTube Extension Channel Examples

K-State Research and Extension 937 videos489 subscribers702,000+ views 

(up 500,000 views and 200+ subscribers since Feb. 2012)

Social networking is now mainstream

Blogs – short updates – images and videos245 blogs registered on eXtension

www.extension.org/people/colleagues/socialnetworks 

What's trending?

Google+ 90 million users, prediction 400 million by Dec 2012PinterestOver 11 million users14 minutes dailywomen, 25-54 years old, MidwesternSends more traffic referrals than G+, close to Twitter and Google 

Kansas 4-H Pins It!

http://pinterest.com/pinterestbiz/pinterest-statistics/

Tips on Measuring

Start with goals How many times content is reshared Comments made Increase likes

Analytics of how many start and continue

Facebook insights - marketing

 

Wow factor!

Demographics of followers

 

Photos used with posts result in engagement!

A little birdy told me…

Twitter Tips

Create a Twitter account

Think of an account name. Use your own name. Don't use a lot of numbers.

Use a strong password.

Complete your profile.

Upload a photo.

Don't make your Twitter account private. There are exception, but you want people to find you and converse with you easily.

Anatomy of a Tweet

•

http://www.extension.org/pages/62314/anatomy-of-a-tweet

Send your first tweet!

Use a hashtag #

Reply to someone

•Hover over a tweet and you will see options. Use the Reply button. Then respond.

What is and why do people use hashtags

Starts with #

Used to organize organically

Used to categorize or congregate

Used to make a statement

Monitor conversations

Start following people in Twitter

Find a few people you know and follow people they follow.

@kstate_pres@elainecarol@russfeld@KSUSarah@Kstate@KansasStateFair

Good Tweet? Bad Tweet?

Good Tweet? Bad Tweet?

Good Tweet? Bad Tweet?

Good Tweet? Bad Tweet?

Conversation starter

To learn more...Elaine Edwards - @elainecarol www.facebook.com/elainecarol www.linkedin.com/in/elainehedwards elainee@ksu.edu

Russ Feldhausen - @russfeldrussfeld@ksu.eduksresupport@ksu.edu

 Using Social Media in Extension by Elaine Edwards is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.