I have been an advocate not only for students, but for professors to make sure they are 1) aware of their online reputation and 2) making sure to provide personalized branding to their various products. Of course, we think of these products most of the time as being books, articles, and other items we work on both for our teaching and research purposes.
However, we are now in 2014 and we have to consider what this means for classes and research for professors. I remember when I started using social media for my classes at Tennessee and found that I was using my last name always to brand the class on social media.
I never went towards listing just the class title from the university catalog for many reasons. First, there were SO many other classes with the same classification that would make it difficult to follow. Second, I wanted something that I could show fellow professors, students, and professionals – hey, this is my class and here’s the community we formed with it.
So, how do you go about in creating a personalized branding for your class and work with social media? Here are a few tips I would like to share with you on this:
- Personalized hashtag [Twitter]: Many professors have done this to separate their classes from others – and it’s pretty easy if you have a unique last name. Luckily, there have not been many Frebergs teaching social media classes. 🙂 This can be done on Twitter, but make sure to use it on other social media platforms as well. That’s why I included a Instagram icon to list on my syllabus so I let the students know that they can share updates both from Twitter and Instagram.
- Personalized visual messages [Instagram]: I found this to be very useful. I used Instagram a lot to share content about my class (#Freberg13). Whether it was videos and pictures of guest lectures, but also inspirational messages and messages with updates for the class. Over and the Rhonna app are great for this, and you can tag your images both in the update as well as on the image you share. I share these of course with my personal Instagram account, but I’m still able to share these images within my FB and Twitter accounts as well.
- Personalized Storifys for class: What better way to share the community you are building in class by collecting what others are sharing in relations to the class hashtag? I did this for my class this past semester and it was fun to see what the students were saying – as well as others who were following the conversations (ex. other students, professionals, and brands). Here’s the last one I created for my class for their final presentations.
- Let others know about your personalized hashtag for class: If you have guest speakers come into your class, make sure they are aware of the class hashtag so they can share it with their followers and others. Share this hashtag with local agencies to see 1) what the students are sharing and talking about to see if any one would be good to reach out to for an internship, job, etc and 2) they can also benefit for the articles and updates you are sharing with the class. I’ve actually had several students get internships and jobs based on what they did on social media for the class.
Overall, personalizing and branding your content to be shared on social media reaps huge benefits for professors and their classes. It’s another way to virtually brand your communities and conversations. It’s not only about who you know nowadays, but it’s also what you know. Showing others that you have created this branded community not only raises the profile for you as a professors, but the product of your classes and what your students can bring to the table for brands, agencies, and organizations in PR and social media.
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen
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