The Missing Component of Social Media Strategy

Organizations are wanting step-by-step approaches to creating social media activities that bring an obvious return on investment. Because often marketing and public relations are looked upon to lead social media strategies, the return on investments are focused on marketing goals.

As educational organizations approach social media, they (admittedly, I have fallen in this trap) have looked at marketing strategies and looked toward corporate and non-profit organizations as models of using social media tools.

One of the problems of using these businesses as models is that their goals are different than educational organizations. As a result, they often do not include collaboration as a component of their online strategy.

Educational organizations (obviously) hope to increase the knowledge of others with a greater goal that more education will improve something. Education, we hope, will develop better management skills, improve health, increase production, improve efficiency, increase profits, improve quality of life, improve communities, strengthen families, or improve the public good, develop research, or invoke innovations.

Cooperative Extension’s mission is to provide working knowledge (with the overall goal to improve the quality of life) through education that is grounded in research, implying that Extension must continuously increase our own knowledge and education to fulfill our mission.

When Jonell Hinsey, Peg Shuffstall, Rhonda Conlon, and I presented Components of Social Media at the National Extension Technology Conference, we did not mention collaboration as a component of a social media strategy. That is an oversight. Thus, I have since added a slide that says “Consider Collaboration Efforts” for the purpose of building knowledge.

Collaborating with others--who are knowledgeable and passionate and who question and stretch our own knowledge--should be a purposeful component of social media strategy. As we collaborate with others, it becomes apparent that social media is not something that is owned by the communications and marketing team—but should be approached as an educational tool and used at every level of the organization, but in particular, used by educators.

Components of Social Media Strategy

View more presentations from Anne Adrian.

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Shifting Gears—Social media strategist

On May 1, I started a new position—still in Extension but new responsibilities. My new title is Social Media Strategist for Military Families Community of Practice, an eXtension Initiative.

The purpose of this joint project between Department of Defense and USDA-NIFA is to develop educational efforts that will strengthen military families, particularly by reaching out to “helping professionals”.

Cooperative Extension has a long history of providing education to the public, particularly in strengthening families. This partnership joins resources, talents, and passion to strengthen military families through collaboration, education, and research.

The very first step is to assess current programs where Cooperate Extension is working to help strengthen military families.

Some of the next steps will be to help those who support military families connect and build relationships with each other and create online environments that support sharing expertise, resources, and learning. These individuals maybe DoD family support professionals (helping professionals), Cooperative Extension educators, non‐governmental and community‐based organizations, and other groups with expertise in supporting families.

Another of my duties is to lead effort in establishing a Network Literacy Community of Practice. Will Richardson defines network literacy as "the ability to create, grow, and navigate personal learning networks in safe, ethical, and effective ways." This purpose of this community of practice is to help educate and and engage the public on the use of social media technologies in group problem solving, community organizing, and social learning.

One of my values is to accept all community members as contributors or potential contributors of content and educational development.

This position places me into the line of work I really love—using social media to build relationships, connect, learn, and help others. It also offers new ways of working, creating partnerships, and building knowledge with people in and outside of Cooperative Extension.

I attended the Milblogging Conference a few weeks ago to get an idea of how the military and those who support the military use social media and to learn about a community I am unfamiliar with. They did not know me and I did not know anyone before attending. Everyone I met seemed excited to hear of universities are supporting research and education for military families. The military blogging community is passionate about the military, supporting military personnel, and their families.

Since 2001, almost 1 million children have experienced a parent’s deployment. A parent’s departure, the return, and the reintegration after deployment create significant challenges to children and families. Strength of military families have significant impacts on armed forces’ effectiveness.

This partnership will cultivate collaborations with educational institutions, non‐governmental and community‐based organizations, and other groups and organizations with expertise in early childhood education, youth development or related fields to further support family support programs, workforce development, and child care & youth development.

Lots of challenges lie ahead. One is that many people don’t understand the role of Cooperative Extension. Another challenge is connecting people who don’t know each other and fostering trust among distributive and unknown groups.

Another challenge, for me personally, is to continue to identify and connect with my current online communities. I will definitely continue to tweet and blog about social media, open communications, education, and research. I will continue to tweet, and possibly blog about those communities and industries, I know about, such as agriculture. I hope these my current communities will continue to follow and converse, and hopefully, learn something about family education and the military. I hope the vice versa occurs as well.

I am definitely shifting gears, but not abandoning any community that I have been a part of.

My focus will be in helping others using social media to connect  and develop relationships and collaborations that build knowledge, thus enabling and enhancing personal and community learning.

References:

Lester, Patricia, et al. The Long War and Parental Combat Deployment: Effects of Military Children and At-Home Spouses. www.jaacap.org Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Volume 49, Number 4, April 2010.

Manos, Gail H. War and the Military Family. www.jaacap.org. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Volume 49, Number 4, April 2010.

It is what it is

I was trying to make a decision that I thought would have been easy. However, a wrinkle—a constraint—appeared, making me angry, disappointed, helpless and less confident. The new constraint also caused me to question the direction I wanted to go.

Two colleagues whom I depended on for consultation and advice said independently to me. “Well, it is what it is.” Both times when I heard this, I thought “Good grief! That statement is not very helpful!”

They were saying accept the situation as it is—it is not going to change. They were and are right.

After I accepted the constraint—the disappointing situation—as it was, I began to gain confidence in seeing new possibilities. I had to accept the disappointing news as it was. With the acceptance and gained confidence, I finally got to a point that I could aggressively think about the future opportunities.

It seems several friends and colleagues are going through their own life issues. Some of these situations are nuisances, others are health or economic changes that shock our daily living and makes us question our priorities.

Not until we accept these situations as what they are, can we free ourselves of frustrations, anger, and disappointment and positively solve problems and make a difference.

Without acceptance, we scream “Why can’t I do this?” or “Why can’t I have it my way?”. We feel anger, disappointment and blame toward the people we think caused the situation. Until we accept bad (or even good) news as what it is, we cannot shape our own future. The acceptance frees us from the exhausting emotional distress, and gives way to a path of proactive decisions and possibilities of growth.

Life’s bumps, nuisances, and heartbreaking news give us reasons to be disappointed, depressed, mad, grumpy, and mean. Acceptance of “it is what it is” gives us of the ability to tackle our negative emotions and turn them into positive actions that make a difference.

We all can identify someone in our lives who positively approaches bad news. Their behavior and actions inspire us, give us joy and shape us—causing us to think about our own priorities.

I am thankful for my two colleagues who had the courage and the honesty to tell me to accept the constraint as it is. It was their clarity that freed me of frustration and opened a new outlook to my future. 

PHOTO: Originally uploaded by BeInspiredDesigns   It Is What It Is on Red Scrabble Tile

del.icio.us Tags: Leadership

Cooperative Extension and Social Media

Chris Raines, a meat scientist who uses @ITweetMeat as his Twitter handle, explained the importance of social media use in Extension.

He makes several points about Extension and our online work. Below, I am continuing the conversation.

• Cooperative Extension’s 100 year history and purpose is to help improve lives through education.
• Cooperative Extension is about changing for benefitting individuals and communities.
• Cooperative Extension bases its education on research. Research, sometimes, can appear to conflict with other research. An example where research can lead to confusing recommendations is with sun exposure. Low Vitamin D can lead to fatigue, increase cancer and cardiovascular disease risks. Researchers recommend 20 minutes in the sun without sunscreen. However, other researchers suggest that sun exposure increases skin cancer risks. We see similar conflicting research around topics like environment, food production, and health. Cooperative Extension’s strength is to make sense of research, particularly research that conflicts, and understand and communicate research in context. “Content without context is just noise.” (from @rands).
• Cooperative Extension will continue to keep its local community ties, but has and will continue to grow an online presence. Cooperative Extension’s online presence is not a  replacement for our local, face-to-face contacts, but rather a way to build, maintain, and strengthen these relationships. Early in my use of social media, the best—and first recognized—benefit was the ability to maintain and build understanding with people I already knew.This understanding, credibility, and trust gained were and are immeasurable. Many people who don’t interact online don’t realize that relationships can be built successfully online and they often discount the value of these relationships. Those who fail to see the benefit of building relationships online are failing their organizations.
• Just as in our personal lives, online we have different levels of relationships. Building and developing relationships online occur when we take the time to listen and interact with others—just like we expect Cooperative Extension professionals to develop local relationships—they should do this online.
• Cooperative Extension is no longer bound by county, state, and national boundaries.
• The game changer (Chris Raines uses the term) for Cooperative Extension is that we can now research, build content, and build knowledge with anyone in physical, online, and “expert” communities. Building knowledge activities are not constrained to land-grant faculty, but can and should be encouraged with others who share the passion and knowledge. We are no longer limited to those who are close geographically, those who we have personally met, or those communities we already familiar with.
• Online environments give Cooperative Extension new ways to do basic Cooperative Extension work. Seaman Knapp and George Washington Carver embedded themselves in communities, by working with individuals to develop experiments and create on-site and personally learning environments.
• Cooperative Extension’s online presence is imperative, not only to disseminate information (if we think this is all there is in social media we are doomed), but to also embed ourselves in communities, working with individuals to help with research and develop educational content.

Some Cooperative Extension educators are interacting online. The challenge is we need more Extension professionals, like Chris Raines, to participate—by listening and engaging—in online communities for the purpose of building knowledge and learning.

del.icio.us Tags: Cooperative Extension,agchat,agriculture,agsmext

Military Blogging Conference

I attended the Military Blogging conference to

• learn about military, retired military, and military support groups who use of social media
• meet people who represent groups that help military families.

A summary of my observations are:

• Military bloggers are passionate, as you would expect.
• Military bloggers who began blogging in 2002 and 2003 were leaders and drove a grass roots movement that led to identifying military bloggers in a loosely structured group, but tightly connected and networked individuals. The blog sites are aggregated on the Military Blogging web site.
• Thousands of non-profit organizations serve military, soldiers, veterans, and families.
• Throughout this community of military bloggers, they all have a sense of responsibility toward families.
• As military families engage, the expression and sharing of small frustrations is often what ties military spouses together, regardless of their location.
• Social media has enabled a community of individuals who are passionate about the military to form tight bonds of respect, admiration, trust, expectations, and influence among this community.
• Over time, these bloggers have become influential not only among their own online communities, but also in making a difference in perceptions, policy, and legislation.
• One reason for their influence is that blogging has moved to, and is encouraged, by soldiers and others to tell real stories. 
• Though some of the early bloggers, started blogging anonymous, now it seems that there is not a concern of separating personal life and professional life online. In fact, telling own personal stories are encouraged.
• @pricefloyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, says that military needs more conversations on topics about the military. Does not mean that mistakes will not be made and that mistakes that have been made are not more harmful than other mistakes.
• Military leaders at this conference understand how two-way and multi-way engagement becomes powerful.
• Social media is not only used to disseminate but also to engage to learn, and possibly change, leaders’ approacha and behavior.
• @pricefloyd says that having dissenting comments and points of view that do not have approval gives more credibility to the engagement.
• Military uses 3rd party sites so the world can read and interact and tell stories first hand reports from the troops.
• The approach is to encourage people throughout the military to “go out and tell their stories”. Military leaders know that those online are professionals and “will do the right thing”.
• Army leaders encourage individuals to blog on their own sites and link and cross link to the army blog site. They don’t care about negative articles or positive article, but they care that bloggers tell accurate stories.
• The military has to use both traditional and new media.
• The leaders see that criticisms are good because it means others are reading the blogs and gives something for them to learn. Negative criticisms will stay blogs unless it is overly obscene.

This conference has been one that is somewhat out of my element. It is refreshing to hear from leaders of the military who “get social media”, understand how

• conflicting opinions are ways to learn and adjust.
• personal accounts can be powerful ways to tell the military story.
• engagement leads to learning and improving
• trusting people throughout the military to do the right thing without posting strict rules is a good way to capitalize personalized stories.
• grass-roots connections build credibility and trust.

All day, I keep thinking that if the military can trust their people to do the right thing and find value in dissenting comments, why aren’t more educational institutions in-tuned to the value of learning and improving based on the freedom of engagement.

Photo is embedded from http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/1360677126/

del.icio.us Tags: military bloggers,milblogging,engagement

Transparency and Authenticity

Jaume Plensa Transparency
Originally uploaded by Arenamontanus

Some firms and organizations insist they are have an unprecedented brand name and reputation—one they can maintain without social media. The new caution today, though, is that transparency of organizations is no longer totally up to the organizations, and the brand can be easily tarnished.

There is a greater push, demand, and expectation that individuals' and organizations' actions must be true to their values and their communications. Organizations must do their homework, know facts, and know how communications, associations, and actions affect their reputations. Because if they don't, someone else will bring forced transparency to the organization.

Online environments, rapid fire and viral communications, will make it harder to keep brand images, if organizations are not true in their actions. Everyone throughout organizations, including customer services, operations, sales, marketing, public relations, decision-makers, and research and development, must understand and portray the same image that is marketed and is perceived.  Flip that thought on its head: what is marketed must portray the values and operations of the organization. 

Organizations, large and small, must understand how loyalty can be lost when their own actions do not portray their marketed images or do not serve customers’ needs.

All organizations—non-for-profit, advocacy, educational, corporate, and entrepreneurs—have to be really good at what they do. They have to serve their organizations’ purposes and customers’ and communities’ changing needs.

Additionally, organizations must be able to:

• know they have no control of what other people say and understand the power—negative and positive—of others.
• match actions and operations with image, mottos, slogans, advertisements, and social media efforts.
• know facts about their own organizations, competitive organizations, and respective industries.
• accept that conflicts will happen, but demonstrate understanding and adjust, if necessary, but staying true to the values of the organization.
• admit mistakes.
• be responsive.
• adjust and realign processes and operations for needed changes.
• communicate processes and operations that change based on demands.

As customers, potential customers, and competitors observe behaviors and experience services that are contrary to the organizations’ images, through online communications—with viral potential—they share their experiences and observations. This means that organizations can no longer hide their weaknesses. Transparency, or lack of, is no longer up to organizations to decide.

Transparency and authenticity should not only be discussed in online environments, but also considered in the way organizations conduct business. There is no hiding.

 

del.icio.us Tags: online transparency,authentic,open

Twitter Chat

In some online communities, Twitter is used for chatting on a particular topic at a designated time. These chats use a specific hashtag to aggregate the tweets during the online discussion.

Twubs and Tweetchat are two common applications used to facilitate Twitter chats. Though Tweetdeck can be used too, Twubs and Tweetchat work better because the chat tweets tend to appear in rapid fire. 

As you enter a tweet in the application (Twubs or Tweetchat), the application will automatically insert the hashtag at the end of the tweet.

The application (Twubs or Tweetchat) captures all tweets with the hashtag and displays them on the web page.

One disadvantage of participating in a Twitter chat is that all of your followers see all of your tweets for the chat. Depending on your community, this excessive tweeting can be annoying. Thus, some Twitter chat participants warn their followers prior to the chat.

Each Twitter chat is organized to fit its needs, goals, and community. For instance, for some chats, a designated guest “speaker” participates and answers questions from the members of the chat. The members keep the conversation going by firing off more questions, retweeting answers and participants’ comments, and questioning and conversing with others in the chat.

Some chats, like #Agchat, have designated questions that are asked by the moderator of the chat. The chat members answer the questions by indicating the question number.

For instance, in the AgChat session on Farm Equipment Question 2 and one of the answers to Question 2 are shown below. 

@agchat: Q2: What new planting/seeding specific technologies do you feel have made biggest impact on your #farm? #agchat

@FarmerHaley: Q2 Strip till and no till has planting has made tremendous improvements for our farm as well #agchat

Most Twitter chats will ask you to identify yourself, and possibly, give you a chance to plug your area of interest, web page, event, etc.

Some regularly scheduled chats are posted on a Google spreadsheet.

 

Steps to participating in a Twitter chat using Twubs (Tweetchat is similar).

1. Using your browser, sign into to Twitter. Then go to the www.twubs.com or www.tweetchat.com.
2. At Twubs’ page (or Tweetchat page), select the Sign in button. Then select “Twitter Sign In”.
3. 
   Twubs Sign In
   Originally uploaded by aafromaa
4. If you have already signed into Twitter, then you will be given the choice to “Allow” Twubs to use Twitter sign in.
   
   Twubs Allow Twitter button
   Originally uploaded by aafromaa
   
5. Once you are in Twubs or Tweetchat, enter the hashtag you are following.
   
   Twubs hashtag
   Originally uploaded by aafromaa
   
6. The tweets will start appearing below the entry space for your tweets.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Twitter,Twitter chat,Agchat

Social media is more than public relations and marketing efforts

When companies are considering adopting social media, they often turn toward their Public Relations and Marketing departments to investigate, develop a social media strategy, and implement social media within their companies.

If organizations think of social media as another outlet for the company and involve only those who market the company, then these companies are missing out on many benefits of social online environments, such as:

• Integration of functions.
• Elimination of organization silos.
• Personal and organizational learning from outside the organization and from within the organization.
• Driving innovations through internal and external collaborations.
• Educating clients, potential clients, and communities about products, processes, services, and technical knowledge.
• Having staff (not in PR and Marketing) who are passionate about what they do and what they love about the organization tell their story.
• Utilizing small circles of influence to spread knowledge of the organization, its products, its services, its goodwill, its values, and its purpose.
• Learning of problems that the organization may have solutions for.
• Learning of problems that the organization may develop solutions for.
• Connecting problem solvers with those people in and out of the organization who are having problems relating to the organization’s services, products, and processes.
• Connecting with potential clients who are unaware that the organization may have solutions for their problems.
• Maintaining and building credibility and understanding among staff who don’t see each other often, but work in similar work areas or serve in different places in the work flow. 
• Building a collective organizational reputation based on the online professional reputation of employees throughout the organization.
• Maximizing the benefits of workstreamining and freeranging.
• Having fun within the routine of daily work.

del.icio.us Tags: social media,marketing,public relations,silos,integration