Guest-blogging – Page 4

The guest blogging continues today with a post from Georgiana Cohen, managing editor of web communications at Tufts University. Catch up with her on Twitter (@radiofreegeorgy) or check out her own blog, Safe Digression.

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Everyone always talks about how great it is to have rich photo and video content on your site. Better yet, how about user-generated rich photo and video content? Sounds good, right? But with everything else you have to do, how can you find time to shoot and edit your own multimedia content, much less run a contest or solicit content from the community?

The good news is, students are producing this content anyway, and there’s a relatively easy way to catch a lot of it, thanks to the ability to “favorite” selected content.

When users upload photos or video to Flickr and YouTube, they have the option or adding tags to their content. Some people do, some people don’t; some people may use the name of your institution, or some may use its unsightly nickname. But a lot of folks are tagging content properly. So, as long as your school has a relatively distinctive name (sorry, Brown and Temple), you stand a good chance of finding photo and video content from your community.

Instead of going to these pages all the time, I import the feeds for each tag (YouTube; Flickr) into my RSS reader. I created free Flickr and YouTube accounts (which also serves the purpose of reserving my institution’s name so an imposter doesn’t settle in), and I am always logged into these accounts when I peruse this content. When I see a photo or video I like, I favorite it. Just like that, I am reaching out into the content stratosphere and creating collections of user-created, institution-approved rich content.

Now what?

Now the challenge is, what do I do with them? Ideally, I don’t want to have to rely on people stumbling across the favorites page on my institution’s YouTube or Flickr account. Luckily, there are ways to bring that content onto your own website. Flickr makes it easy by providing an RSS feed of your favorite. With YouTube, it’s a little harder since all they offer is a page and not a feed, but there are some ways to pull that content. (Metafilter has some guidance.)

If you have a talented developer at your disposal, he or she can probably work with those feeds to whip up a nifty presentation of that content on your site. If you don’t, never fear. Many of the YouTube and Flickr apps that you can install on your Facebook page have options that enable you to pull your favorites. To highlight this content on your own site, Yahoo Pipes has some quick and dirty solutions for embedding your Flickr and YouTube favorites. They may not be pretty, but they’ll get the job done. (This is how we do it at Tufts.)

Is this ideal? No. Aside from being at the mercy of externally created content and third-party formatting, there are arguments about whether it is proper to highlight other people’s content on your own site. That is a question you will have to resolve within your own institution. But at the very least, nothing prevents you from aggregating your favorites and linking to them, so long as you don’t present the content as your own. And if you are hopeful of gaining the capacity to create your own media-rich content in the future, you can take away some lessons from the authentic, organic content you peruse on these sites, maybe even make contacts with some of the more compelling content creators. Those relationships could prove fruitful in the future.

People are talking about “listening” a lot nowadays with regard to brand and reputation management, particularly in the context of Twitter. But by extending your listening to media-rich services like Flickr and YouTube, you can not only see what media people are creating in relation to your institution, but use some of it to enhance your own web presence and maybe create a community in the process.

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.