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College students use social media to rally relief for #Haiti

Across the country, college students are using social media to rally support for relief efforts in Haiti.

A January Term class on grassroots marketing at Huntington University (Ind.), for example, is using the Twitter hashtag #jterm to spread word about a fundraising opportunity benefiting two relief organizations. They've also set up a special Facebook page to support their selected causes.

The idea for using social media to support charitable organizations was built into the curriculum from the beginning of the course, but the devastating earthquake in Haiti galvanized action by the 25 students in instructor Andrew Hoffman's class.

Andrew Malloy, a freshman pursuing a degree in business management, posted this report to his blog:

This morning in our class we discussed the crisis in Haiti. Our conclusion was to all rally around Concern Worldwide and help raise money for them. Our goal is to raise $1,000 by Monday January 18th (5 days from now). This evening we have raised over $800. That is a testament to social media’s power. In one day, a group of people changed course on their project and then a body of people united to aid the cause. This has truly been a blessing and amazing experience!

Meanwhile, three HU graduates serving Mission of Hope: Haiti set up a new blog to support disaster relief. The blog features photos, first-hand accounts, and opportunities to give. The team's alma mater linked it to the university's fan page on Facebook. Word spread quickly through the virtual community, resulting in a regional fundraising event organized by a radio station and area churches.

These are but two examples of uncounted similar scenarios playing out on college campuses nationwide. Globally concerned students with well-honed social-media skills are a new target audience for charities and relief organizations seeking advocates and donors.

Using Insights to shape Facebook page content

In an earlier post, I wrote about how Facebook usernames help grow brand fan pages. As a postscript, the growth of our university's fan base continued through the month of September. The page reached 2,000 fans on October 8. That's 500 new fans in three weeks, or an overall increase of 286% since the page's username was implemented in midsummer.



Given the size of our enrollment and alumni base, I expect the growth to plateau. But meanwhile, I have found the composition of our fan base fascinating. The group skews female (57%). The age demographics are even more interesting. According our Insights report:

18% are potential future college students, ages 13-17.
32% are currently of traditional college age, 18-24.
25% are probably recent alumni, ages 25-34
11% are ages 25-44
9% are ages 45-54
4% are ages 55+

These statistics have been remarkably stable since June. They did not change significantly even after we added Facebook buttons to our campus portal (for current students) or Admissions page (for prospective students).

The age demographics have made me reconsider how we shape our Facebook page content. We need to keep the material aimed at prospective students, but we need to add more material designed to serve current students and alumni.

About half of our fans live within a two-hour drive of the university. That's important to note when using Facebook to promote special events, such as concerts or athletic competitions. Facebook allows simple segmentation of updates sent to fans. We can shape our communication stream appropriately, routinely inviting those who live nearby but not sending spammy invitations to those far away. (Of course, Homecoming invitations will go worldwide!)

I would like your suggestions about Facebook content for the 25-44 population -- the largest segment of our fan base. If you fall into that category, what kind of resources would you like to see added to your alma mater's Facebook page? Wall posts about alumni, faculty, and student achievements are a natural. What else should be added to the standing content on the other sections -- for example, the Boxes tab or the Events tab?

Post a comment and share your thoughts.

Facebook username helped double university's fan base in 6 weeks

In June, Facebook enabled page managers to establish intuitive "usernames" for their pages. This made it possible for companies, celebrities, and organizations to create short, intuitive URLs for their Facebook content (e.g. www.facebook.com/username).

At first, this service was only available to Facebook pages that had been set up prior to May 31, 2009, and had attracted at least 1,000 fans by that date. On June 28, Facebook enabled usernames for other pages with at least 25 fans.

I got up early on Monday, June 29, and claimed the intuitive address www.facebook.com/huntingtonuniversity for my campus. Our Facebook page had been set up for a full year, but despite regular updates and some pay-per-click advertising, it had only attracted a few hundred fans.

However, once we established the easy-to-type (and easy-to-remember) URL, our number of fans began to climb steadily. Critical mass accelerated this growth when students returned to campus on August 28 and made new connections with each other and with the university. Throughout this period, content updates and promotion strategies stayed about the same, but the shorter URL made it easier for fans to share the site. After setting up our Facebook username, we doubled our fan base in six weeks. The chart below demonstrates the dramatic results.



Now that there is an easier way to direct people to the page, we expect to continue expanding our fan base through promotion in other media. We have not yet mentioned the new Facebook page URL in our alumni magazine or mailed any postcards, but these are obvious next steps.

If you manage a Facebook page for your college, university, or campus organization, give serious thought to creating an intuitive URL for the site. Guidelines are available here: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=900.

7 Discoveries of a Newly Fledged Tweep

In my last post, I described my belated adoption of Twitter. I promised then to share some of my discoveries as a Twitter neophyte. Here goes:

1. Twitter is supposed to be fun. Like any business communication tool, Twitter deserves to be taken seriously – but not too seriously. Twitter users expect your tweets to have personality, to reflect the people behind the brand. Letting some individuality show in your tweet stream is not only acceptable, it is expected. If your tweets are boringly institutional, your following will shrivel.

2.Twitter is two-way communication. In PR school, they teach that public relations is supposed to be a two-way street, enabling companies and publics to understand each other. Twitter is well suited to this purpose. Some companies are using Twitter as part of a careful customer-service strategy. Their reps have branded Twitter accounts (e.g. @ACME_Joe) that they use to respond to complaints. I tweeted my dissatisfaction about a particular software product recently and was surprised (and pleased) to get a prompt response. Twitter makes it easy to give and receive feedback. When my university set up a new Twitter account for its alumni association, we simply asked the first few dozen followers what they wanted us to tweet about. The replies shaped our communication strategy.

3. Twitter doesn’t require a fancy phone. Our sports information director uses a regular flip phone to text-message scores and stats to Twitter immediately following competitions. She loves the mobility and immediacy of reporting via Twitter. Of course, if you do have a smart phone, there are additional possibilities. I had fun last week tweeting photos from our campus move-in extravaganza and orientation festivities. (Contact me @johnpaff and I’ll let you know what apps I currently favor on my Blackberry Storm.)

4. Twitter is more satisfying than RSS. I've deleted feed readers and most news apps from my smart phone. Twitter gives me a better way to catch up on news in those odd moments between meetings. I follow a few carefully selected news sources that are important to me: regional newspapers and television stations, niche publications serving higher education, and journals on marketing and advertising. Their headlines are mixed in with updates from friends and colleagues in an endlessly customizable stream.

5. Multiple accounts make a lot of sense. My small campus has four official Twitter accounts. Each has an intuitive name that describes the content of the feed: @HU_News (selected headlines), @HU_Alumni (accomplishments of grads and events of interest), @HU_Sports (brief scores and stats), and @HU_EXCEL (for our adult students). Some constituents follow more than one of these streams, so we try not to cross-post.

6. Twitter tools abound. There are many good third-party software tools available to help you juggle multiple accounts. I began with Tweetdeck, but recently switched to HootSuite because it is web-based (and therefore portable) and because it allows me to authorize several authors for each of our tweet streams without sharing Twitter passwords. Neat trick. Other tools allow you to import updates from other sources into your Twitter stream. For example, I use TwitterFeed to share U Marketing Guru postings instantly. (Caution: Do this sparingly.)

7. Live a life worth tweeting. As ConversantLife blogger Won Kim posted earlier today, “Truth be told, it doesn’t matter whether you’re on Twitter or not. It's whether we're living a life worth tweeting.” If you do decide to join the Twitterverse, do so in a meaningful way. If you waste your 140 characters tweeting pointlessly about what you had for breakfast, no one will care. But if your Twitter updates reflect a life well lived -- sharing good cheer, enlightenment, and real value -- your following is sure to grow.

Twitter: Therapy for Graying PR Types

Recently, I have been feeling old. And it’s not the newly prescribed bifocals. I blame Twitter.

You see, I have always pictured myself an early adopter of emerging communication technologies. When I took my first higher-ed PR job—way back in the day, when my current colleagues were still in junior high—I ordered the first PCs for the public relations office and strung telephone wire above the ceiling tiles so we could share a printer. We started faxing our news releases instead of mailing them. In fact, I installed some nifty software that would automagically fax our news to regional media, even at night. Back then, this was cutting-edge stuff.

But somewhere along the way, I must have gotten a little complacent, a little too content, a little too self-identified as a PR guy with a geek streak. When the social media revolution burst onto the scene, I opened a Facebook account, but thought of it only as a place to play games with my kids. I avoided MySpace and shunned LinkedIn. I sniffed disapprovingly at Twitter as a refuge for the hopelessly self-absorbed: “I am sitting on the patio, folding socks.” Who cares?

Then it happened. Suddenly, last winter, Twitter was everywhere. Every trade journal, popular magazine, or PR rag I picked up had not one but several articles about Twitter as a business communication tool. This caught me completely off guard, and I didn’t quite buy it. I made casual inquiries of some trusted friends in the industry, asking if they had experimented with Twitter. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that several of my peers had fully embraced Twitter as a means of reaching twenty-somethings. They had opened multiple Twitter accounts and had integrated the service with their news blogs and RSS feeds. My comeuppance was complete when I seemed to be the only one at a recent PR conference who had never seen anything like the Twitterfall projected at the front of the room.

It was like awakening with a start after falling asleep in the sun; it burned. Determined not to lose any more time, I jumped in with both feet. For several months now, I have been playing catch-up with Twitter. While the results so far have been modest, at least I feel that I'm back in the game, tech-wise. That’s good therapy.

Next Time: Discoveries of a Newly Fledged Tweep