Facebook – Page 23 – Andrew Careaga

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Elizabeth Allen, associate director of alumni relations at the Caltech Alumni Association. Liz discusses higher ed, alumni relations, communications, baseball and other passions on Twitter @lizallen.

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You are not alone.

Not on Facebook, anyway.

At this point, your institution probably has an “official” group on Facebook. You carefully selected the main photo to reflect the personality of your campus, you slavishly posted upcoming events, and you promoted it through your newsletter and with an email campaign. That’s great!

But did you search Facebook for other groups branded with your institution’s name? Chances are there’s a group (or many groups) for alumni, students, or prospective students of your campus. They have lots of group members, active conversations and upcoming events.

Now what? You start to panic. What if someone says something bad about your institution? The administration has no control over the content! You want to notify general counsel. You want to call the president. You want to shut these “unofficial” groups down!

Stop. Take a breath.

Don’t panic. Participate.*

Web 2.0 and social media is all about user generated content. Expressing ideas and opinions. It’s a conversation. It’s not your job to stymie that conversation. Your job is to help manage and observe. Here are some approaches to interacting with “unofficial” groups:

Join the group. It may seem obvious, but join your “unofficial” university groups on Facebook. If the group has open membership, just click and join. If you need to request membership, this is a good opportunity to introduce yourself to the group manager. Once you’re in, you can take a look at what’s been posted by the group members. You don’t have to join all of the groups – use your best judgment.

Form a partnership. Send a message to the group’s administrator letting them know that you’re available as a campus connection and resource. Establishing a good rapport from the beginning will help you in the long run.

Don’t Crash the Party. The group is already an established community. Don’t try to insert yourself; you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. It’s like showing up at a cocktail party and shouting “Hi everyone! I’m here! The party can start!” You will come across as completely inauthentic – or worse. To start, just sit back and observe. If someone posts a question you can answer, (What are the bookstore’s hours? When is commencement this year?) respond and contribute. Developing “street cred” takes time.

Keep Up. New groups are created on Facebook all the time. Run a search at least once a week to check and see if a new group has popped up. Additionally, try to keep up with references to your institution on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other websites. Create a Google Alert to help you keep tabs on things.

Simply ignoring the groups or hoping they go away isn’t the best approach. Joining the community and becoming a “digital native” will keep you in the conversation.

*If you’re headed to this year’s CASE Summit in San Francisco, register for the preconference workshop, “Don’t Panic, Participate: A Common Sense Guide to Social Media for Advancement Officers” presented by Michael Stoner, President of mStoner, and me.

Now that Twitter is all the rage among mainstream media (a point I touched on in yesterday’s mediamorphosis post), it’s only a matter of time before journalists turn their attention to the Next New Shiny Toy (whatever that is, or will be). At least that’s the argument Jay Moonah makes in his post describing the seven phases of mainstream media coverage of social media. He even illustrates it for us with the following chart:

The continuum of social media coverage, via Media Driving (click image to enlarge)

Moonah shows how media coverage of social networks follows a predictable arc, the rise and fall in seven steps:

What is X? — Pretty self-explanatory, early stories (perhaps in the form of sidebars or other short formats) explaining what the social network is, at least at a rudimentary level.

Why X is Silly — Usually in the form of editorial or as a part of a larger story, comments saying Twitter is “populated mainly by people keen to share the minutiae of their lives” and the like.

Why X is Great! — Stories about social/fundraising efforts like Twestival and other uses of the technology for fun and profit.

Guess What Celebrity is Using X Now? — This is about where Twitter is at right now — hey, look at which music star or mayor or basketball player is using it!

The Dark Side of X — This is where the Twitter coverage is (IMHO) most likely headed next. Remember stories about people having affairs on Second Life or Facebook bullying? Watch for similar stories about Twitter very soon.

X Doesn’t Live Up To Promise — I thought it was interesting that one of the most recent stories I’d seen on Second Life was about the British government defending spending a pretty paltry sum on experimenting with the virtual world as a meeting place. I couldn’t help but thinking that they would have almost certainly been universally praised for this effort two years ago, back when Second Life was all the rage.

Hey, What Ever Happened To X? — Seen any mainstream media stories on Myspace lately? Even though the social network is still used regularly by millions of users (probably far more than use Twitter) I don’t recall seeing a lot of stories about it specifically, except perhaps as part of laundry list of services lumped in with Facebook and Twitter. And perhaps that’s a good thing for Myspace — it’s possible that it is now just taken for granted as part of the landscape of services that we use online, like search or email. It will be interesting to see if Twitter gets to the same place before it falls off the mainstream media radar, and more interestingly if coverage of the NEXT big thing in social networks follows the same pattern.

Will the coverage of Twitter follow this predictable path? So far, it seems to be.