Happy New Year! Wishing you all a joyful and wonderful 2016! As I was writing this post, I realized I started my personal blog ten years ago in June 2006 after I finished competing in track and field for USC. It’s amazing how time flies and how much has changed, yet stayed the same for me.
As we enter in 2016, many trends and posts are talking about what to look out for the upcoming year as far as social media practices go.
Jessica Smith (her blog is one I follow religiously!) outlined some great points to keep in mind for social media relations to sports, and many of these principles apply not only in this particular industry, but others as well. Sprout Social also had some good points to note on what to look for in 2016 as well as far as industry trends.
Here are some of mine for professors and others to keep in mind when it comes to social media:
Have a strategy and purpose
I think this is going to be a key thing, especially for professors. It’s one thing to be active and engaged on social media, but you also want to have set goals in mind for what you want to accomplish. Is it about building a sustainable community? Reaching out and networking with fellow professionals? Or is it about extending your own personal brand? I think we have to look at what is trending and what is relevant for our audiences.
However, we want to also make sure we are not too focus on strategy that we lose our personality. I know many colleagues who feel they have to always be “on.” This is important, but we also have to think about how we present ourselves to have H2H (human-to-human) communications online.
Be more exploratory and experiment
We can’t be afraid of failing – not everyone is perfect. Social media is a lot about trial and error to see what works and what doesn’t. Yet, I see this a lot when it comes to professors on social media – it’s hard to be out there first and test the ropes to see what works and what doesn’t. It does take some time and investment – and there will be times where you will feel frustrated and confused on whether or not you are doing something right or wrong.
What is good about experimenting is the fact you are able to learn from the process and perhaps gain more insight to share with others about what you learned through the process. Whether it is testing out a new platform for class or a new assignment perhaps – you learn something each time. If you need inspiration, look at Matt Kushin who is a true trailblazer and explorer when it comes to social media. Connecting with others and learning from them is key.
Continue education and building bridges
We are all in the same boat here and social media is CONSTANTLY changing and evolving as we all know. As professors, we need to be aware of what are the growing changes and expectations we are seeing in the workplace and make sure we are addressing these for our students. Just to give you an idea here, when I started teaching social media in 2013, I spent about 2 days of class time talking about measurement and analytics. Now, I am spending 6 days talking about this one topic in my classes.
Learning a new tool or platform doesn’t happen over night, but treat this like one of your own classes. Educate yourself through books and videos, tutorials, and reaching out to those who are operating in these capacities. From my own experience, the professionals I have reached out to have been super generous.
We need to continue building bridges with professionals across industries to make sure we continue this conversation as well as learn from them. I think it’s great to see fellow professors invite professionals to class in person and virtually, which is a good start.
Be spontaneous and reach out
Social media is about being social – you never know where some of your biggest opportunities may come from. It’s about reaching out and talking with others to help formulate and build relationships.
How do you do this? Naturally, reaching out via Twitter is one the natural choice here with participating in chat sessions and engaging others with a subject hashtag. But… what about the possibilities of using Snapchat for this? This is definitely possible and has a lot of room for opportunities.
Don’t go to the dark side
We have to be aware of the tendency to voice our emotions online – we have to continue to think before we post and be aware of how this will look to others. Social media is all about first impressions, so you want to always put your best foot forward. The force is indeed strong with you. 🙂
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
