Harvard, Digital & the Social Web

Perry Hewitt perry_hewitt@harvard.edu

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What’s digital communications?

  Based in Central Administration, as part of a new integrated emphasis on digital and social communications and outreach housed within Harvard Public Affairs & Communications

  Responsible for core web destinations (harvard.edu, Gazette, president.harvard.edu, commencement.harvard.edu) and development of outposts

  Goals include:

− Advance university-wide digital and social initiatives

− Provide guidelines, and act as a clearinghouse for best practices and actionable research (subscribe to PFE, not NIH)

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What are some of the questions informing the evolving digital communications approach?

  Who are the audiences we need to reach and how should we think about them?

  What is the strategy we’ll pursue to get there?

  What are the core properties we can leverage?

  What are the vital partnerships for doing this — and how does this re-shape how Harvard has traditionally thought about partnering?

  How are social technologies changing traditional digital communications?

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So, what’s the strategy?

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What about the social web

"I'd just finished curating my brand, so now I have to spend hours repositioning my presence!"

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We all know the social web is big

More than 300M active users; 90M US 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day The fastest growing demographic 35+

Over 1 billion views a day, or 11,574 views a second

Estimated 20M active users; 5B tweets to date Demographic shifting down in age

Not to mention:

etc.

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And it’s easy to lose perspective

Photo credits: Daniel Kronauer, Jim Linwood, The Lizard Queen

plain old email

11.16.09 New Study Reveals Surprises in How People Share

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Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.

This applies to:

websites social accounts pixel measurement (10:90)

And let’s clear this up – these tools aren’t free

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Questions to consider

  Where are your potential audiences online? What are your objectives in reaching them?

  Engaging in the social web means a significant commitment to contributing content. Are you able and prepared to devote the time?

  Given the time required, are there existing social channels within the University you can use to reach these audiences?

  Who is tasked with maintaining these conversations, and keeping on top of new conventions? Are there natural adopters you can enlist?

  How will your office deal with controversy? Fake accounts?

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Engagement: Killer app revealed

Photo credits: Travis Isaacs

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Engagement: Trading control for influence

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Engagement: Trading individuality for reach

Where are we the People’s Front of Judea vs. the Judean People’s Front?

17/46 <500 followers

27/46 <1000followers

19/46 >1000 followers

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7/46 listed >100 times

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Why is reach important?

We’re also not page 1 for:

  Public policy

  High energy physics

  Clean energy studies

  English literature

  Architecture and design

  Privacy rights

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The Year the Media Died

Tech is taking us for a ride…

Algorithms got me cross-eyed

Madison Avenue’s pain is relevant to our communications strategy

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Parting thoughts

  Messages

− Are you partnered with your PIO?

  Audiences

− Where are they?

− How are you engaging them?

  Reach

− Are you too atomized for impact?

  Measurement

− How much time does it cost?

− Are you reaching target audiences?

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Thank you

Find me: @perryhewitt