Alyssa Explains It All, or on being social and open to ideas

Our student blogs have really stepped up in content concepts this year, evolving past “this is what I did last week” and into more purposeful and useful directions. Since I believe in sharing, I’ll post more info here on the various projects, but wanted to start with how a random tweet turned into an outstanding freshman video blog.

On Sept. 1, this tweet to @sunyoswego caught our attention:

A freshman willing to make videos on the college experience? Were we dreaming? After checking Alyssa’s video channel, we realized she had talent, panache and essentially everything you’d want in a video blogger.

After a meeting, we decided on a theme, Alyssa Explains It All, often on the transition to college, an area where she is eminently qualified. Each webisode focuses on a topic, conveying it with humor and honesty, and it appeals to new students as well as those looking at colleges. She does all the work herself. The shows so far:

Episode 1: Time Management

Episode 2: Making Decisions

I’m very happy with how she’s developing the shows, and she has been asking users for topics to explore and explain. But the series also shows one more example of the importance of being in and listening to social media channels. And the importance of remaining open to new ideas and fresh talent. Because who knows … your next great content contributor could be just one tweet away!

building incoming student communities via invite-only facebook groups.

When it comes to community building and management for incoming students, you can find many models involving various costs, commitment levels and features. Like other colleges, we’ve tried many things and sat through countless vendor pitches. So when our orientation coordinator approached me with a modest proposal to build two private invite-only Facebook groups — one for incoming freshmen, one for incoming transfers — it seemed worth a shot.

Like any other community-building attempt on social media, this meant addressing key points:

Staffing: Our orientation operation has many devoted, outgoing and tireless Laker Leaders and other student workers ready to help. Since they learn to be real-life ambassadors during orientation, they are well-suited to playing a similar role in social media.

Security: We had email addresses for incoming students and can invite them via sending a direct link. But coordinators were concerned this link could be shared around and others could get in, so they wanted to verify everyone who asked to join. This is especially hard when students are not using their full name or use a variation of their name as their Facebook handle. The positive about the security is that it keeps out spammers and creepers (and, some students would say happily, parents!), thus maintaining a good atmosphere for interaction.

Building: Security concerns and the added step for verification created a bottleneck for those wishing to join. Shortly after the initial email, I went to the group and found more than 100 students awaiting approval from the community’s coordinators! It is good to see that kind of enthusiastic response but if anyone is stuck in the queue too long it’s not the best introduction. Also, we already have a public-facing Class of 2016 Community on Facebook — which escorted students from interest to application to acceptance to enrollment to pre-orientation — that has more than 700 members and remains very active.

Sustaining: Student workers have done a nice job of generating conversations, posting photos and answering questions. The question-answering was a bit rocky at first but it’s improving. The incoming students have generated some great conversations on a variety of topics. One tool that may or may not see much use is our behind-the-scenes wiki with answers to a lot of commonly asked questions. The excitement on all sides is still high, so maybe this is a bit of a honeymoon phase, but other than some transfers concerned about room-assignment issues, the conversations have been decidedly upbeat.

This experiment bears watching, but we’ve already seen some nice wins. One involves an oft-praised employee in residence life who has made a lot of people happy by working her magic in accommodating students wanting to switch rooms. And transfer commuters — a group that often feels like they get less attention — started a wonderful, supportive conversation that has already cemented great connections. So while this is a preliminary snapshot, and I’m not sure how far into the lifecycle this project will run, I’ll track and report results as the project continues.

what 15 freshmen taught me about social media.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to visit the GST 120: Leadership in Action class, which consists of 15 of our more engaged freshman. It seemed a decent place to learn more about the social media and Web habits of our students. It’s a small sample size, but the students were bright, articulate and painfully honest … and the findings interesting. (View original Google document.)

What do they use and how often?
- All 15 use Facebook. They all check it daily. (Some would check it hourly if they could.)
- 10 use MySpace, but not much. One checks daily; most hardly ever visit any more.
- None are on Twitter. In retrospect, I should have asked why.

How do they form community on Facebook?
- 11 joined the Class of 2013 Facebook group (created by an incoming student)
- 7 joined our Official SUNY Oswego Fans page (others said they would join had they known it existed)
- They joined other campus-related Facebook groups because they were members of real-life groups (Scuba Club, field hockey team, WTOP, Oswegonian, club rugby, floor of Johnson Hall, Del Sarte dance)

I asked them if they thought joining a group was different than becoming a Fan of a page, and they admitted they didn’t even know the difference. Since we set up a Class of 2014 group, I asked if they would feel different joining a group started by an institution vs. one started by a student. The enlightening response: We don’t even look for that or care. We just want to meet other students. Some even said they would prefer the groups be created by the college because they would trust the information more.

As for our college Web site, 12 said they found it the best place for information. Others didn’t express a preference. None thought of social media as the destination for information because they see it more as a place to connect. For our Web site, their main concerns involved usability: forms that didn’t work, non-functional links, difficulty finding specialized information. A few admitted they used they mainly used the search box to navigate, although this isn’t totally atypical of the Web in general (that’s how I navigate Amazon, for example).

In terms of what we can do better, they mentioned it would be great if we had an AIM name or more available chat. One student mentioned a competing college had an AIM presence but disliked that they used it to contact him instead of vice versa. This is a cohort that likes to use communication on demand but isn’t necessarily keen on unwanted contact from institutions. This is the 21st century equivalent of don’t call us, we’ll call you. Other than that, they seemed to find our social media presence appropriate.

I want to jump back to the group/page, institution/student finding. We, as Web communicators, debate all kinds of things we find more important than our users. These students don’t care if it’s a 2014 group or 2014 page. They don’t really care if it’s launched by an institution or a student. They just want to connect. We see and think about tools. They just see an action, an outcome they want.

It’s also worth noting (as Karlyn Morissette points out in this fine blog entry) that students think of social media as social first and foremost. If they find information they can use on Facebook, that’s a bonus. But when they want information, they’ll go to your Web site. A reminder that while we can be distracted by all the shiny objects that are social media platforms, investing in your institutional Web site — and making sure it’s easy to use and functioning — remains as important as ever.