Tag: social media

How to write killer blogs and LinkedIn articles

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I’m putting together some toolkits for Hallam staff who are using social media to tell their stories and engage with their audiences.

So this is the first in a series. It’s a simple how-to guide for people who want to write blogs and LinkedIn articles.

I’ll repost this under a new ‘Toolkits’ sub-heading in the social media guidelines.

What should I write about?

Your blog – whether you’re hosting it on WordPress or posting it on LinkedIn – is a window into your expertise, and you as a communicator. A good blog isn’t used as somewhere to store research papers and resources, or a method of sending out information. It’s a way for people to get a sense of your expertise, your ideas and your values.

So you should write about those things. Your expertise is what makes you different. Your ideas are what people will take away from your blog, and your values are what will keep them coming back.

A great way to get started is to write about something that’s in the news, and examine it through the unique lens of your expertise, ideas and values.

How many words?

The ideal blog post or LinkedIn article length is anywhere from 600 to 800 words, depending on the amount of rich media that you’re including in the post.

Getting the structure right

Your first paragraph is important. Along with the headline, it’s the hook that convinces the reader to read on.

Try a few different ways of opening your post, and run them by friends and colleagues. You could reference a recent news event, explore a personal reflection, or make a dramatic statement.

Once you’ve hooked them, your reader is likely to skim-read, so use section breaks, sub-headings, lists and bullets to break blocks of text up, and keep paragraphs short (one to three sentences).

Images and videos do the same thing, and they can help you illustrate a point. Make sure you have usage rights for visual assets. You can use the search tools on Google image search to find images that have been labelled for reuse.

Always check the usage rights for images

Picture captions can be a fun way to highlight a key point and re-engage the reader

Embed URLs as hyperlinks, and set them to open in a new window, so that your readers stay on your blog.

You want to take your reader on a journey throughout your post, so promise them something juicy (revelation, insight, facts) early on, then deliver it in the middle section.

Wrap things up with key takeaways and learnings, but don’t worry about making your ending too neat and perfect. You can leave loose ends for another post.

If you’re in doubt about how to end the article, pose your readers a question. Ask for feedback, opposing views, other sources.

And remember: your blog post is supposed to be a conversation-starter. Ask for comments, and respond to them. Maybe you’ll get ideas for a follow-up post.

Language, tone and punctuation

Unless you’re writing for a niche audience, plain language is a good idea. So, if you want to reach a wider audience, keep jargon to a minimum.

Avoid cliches and archaic words and phrases (use ‘while’ instead of ‘whilst’, for example). Your sentences should be a maximum of 30 words long. Your grammar and punctuation are important, but don’t use overly-complicated punctuation (I heartily recommend R L Trask’s Penguin Guide to Punctuation, by the way – it busts a lot of myths).

Use exclamation points sparingly, and only ever one at a time. Question marks can be used as and when you need them, and are also solitary characters.

Pay attention to the rhythm of your writing. Vary the length of your sentences to add pace and dynamics. Try it. It’s fun.

And it’s fine to start the odd sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’. But don’t overdo it.

Your tone of voice should be warm, personal and direct (‘During the event, I was amazed to learn that…’, ‘By now, you’ve probably noticed that…’). If you’re writing something from a position of authority, you can afford to have a more authoritative tone of voice, but beware of sounding pompous.

I don’t recommend writing about yourself in the third person. Ever.

Remember, a blog post isn’t a news bulletin or an announcement. It’s more than technical writing: it should give the reader an insight into the situation or issue from the author’s point of view.

Your blog’s not just informative: we want to see the human being behind the words.

Different approaches to headlines

Write the headline last. You want to address the reader directly, so make it engaging. It could be counter-intuitive and subversive (‘Why face-to-face meetings are making you less productive’) – if that gives you a springboard into an interesting argument.

The list-article format (‘Six ways to manage your inbox’) works for some people, but don’t use it for every blog post, because your blog will start to look like clickbait.

Here are some common approaches for blog post titles:

  • Numbered lists: “Five cat photos that changed the internet”
  • Dates: “The best cats on the internet in January 2017”
  • Questions: “Why are cats so popular on the internet?”
  • Call-to-action: “Download our expert guide to cats on the internet”

Tags are important

Be sure to add some relevant tags to your post before you publish. They help people find your posts. You might want to use categories, if your blog has that functionality, so that people can easily search and browse your blog.

Writing on LinkedIn

To post your blog on LinkedIn, log in to your account and hit the ‘write an article’ button in the status update box. This will take you to a simple WordPress-style interface, where you can:

  • Upload a header image
  • Insert a title for your article
  • Add formatted text, including bullet points and sub-headers
  • Add rich media, such as images, videos and links

You can publish your article by hitting the ‘publish’ button in the top right, or you can close the browser window and come back to it later – it will auto-save.

When you publish your article, you’ll be asked to add a status update so that you share the link from your profile. Add a comment about your article and hit ‘publish’. You’ve just posted your first article on LinkedIn!

If you look in your browser’s address bar, you’ll see you’ve got a unique URL for that LinkedIn article, so copy it and share it with your networks.

By the way, here’s a really good article about writing on LinkedIn. A lot of it applies to blogging in general. Have fun, and let me know if you found this useful.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

Six principles of doing video better

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There’s been a massive growth in online video consumption in the last two or three years. According to the latest stats, half of us are regularly watching video on mobile devices.

screen-shot-2016-03-30-at-15-27-57

And the trend is set to continue. No big surprises, then.

But the definition of video is changing: we watch video on a plethora of platforms, in a number of different formats.

We watch disposable 15-second clips, filmed in portrait and covered in scribbles and doodles, on Snapchat and Instagram. We watch two-minute semi-professional instructional videos, product reviews and comedy skits on YouTube. And we watch live streams on Facebook and Periscope.

Video has grown sideways as well as upwards.

This trend brings a problem for the content producers: saturation. As organisations cotton on to this trend, they shift their focus to producing video content, and social media users become overloaded, swiping and scrolling past your carefully-crafted video.

So there’s a need to adapt. These are some of things I’ve been doing to adapt. You might find them useful too.

My six principles of doing video better

  1. Make shorter videos. Vine may be dead, but short viewing times are here to stay. They say a photograph should say one thing – it should have one idea to communicate. Video needs to be the same.
  2. Subtitles. People are watching with the sound down, so bite the bullet and sub your videos if they’re for social channels.
  3. Make it about people. If you can, make it about your audience. Who are they? What do they want? Tell them a story that answers those questions, and I guarantee they’ll engage with it. This graduation video is an example of it working for us.
  4. Do less, but better. Stop posting badly-edited, shaky smartphone videos, and invest in a decent bit of kit. Even a basic camcorder on a tripod will get you better results. Look at how the most popular YouTube vloggers do it.
  5. Make paid-for promotion a part of your strategy. If your videos have a call-to-action, or you’re trying to achieve huge online consumption of your content, stump up for a bit of advertising. You don’t need a huge budget to reach new people on social, but you do need a budget.
  6. Make it for the platform it’s being distributed on. Someone looking for pretty things on Instagram wants a very different experience to someone searching and browsing YouTube.

These are principles I’ve adopted over the last few weeks, and they’re working for our social channels. During graduation fortnight we posted eight graduation-themed videos on our Facebook page, including a live broadcast from Sheffield City Hall.

Those videos generated a combined organic reach of 185,000 over two weeks, and a couple of the posts generated a ton of comments from users who wanted to share their own pride in being a Sheffield Hallam student, graduand or alumnus.

We did OK for likes, comments and shares on Twitter too.

Lastly, it’s important, as always, not to get too dazzled by the technology. As communicators, we’re sometimes driven by output, and there’s always a danger of us falling into the ‘we need a *insert output*’ trap.

So start with the goal, then move onto the audience, platform and output. Keep asking why. If you’re sure video is the right medium for the story, you’ll get a lot more out of it if you plan the video. You don’t need to storyboard it, but you should definitely think about these things:

  • Concept – what’s your ‘elevator pitch’ for the video?
  • Narrative – how is the story told? Down-the-line, over-the-shoulder, voiceover?
  • Locations – what do you know about your locations? They bring with them a whole range of challenges.
  • Pace – how many shots will you need in the edit? How fast do things move?
  • Technology – what kit do you need to make it happen?

I hope that gives you some food for thought. I’m always keen to hear how people approach video, so let me know your own tips for creating engaging video content – in the comments, or over on Twitter.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

Social strategy in four (easy?) steps

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LONG POST ALERT!

TL;DR: Writing strategies for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Long process, loads to do, need help. Watch this space.

I’m currently leading on a very exciting piece of work: a set of platform-specific social media strategies for the University’s corporate social channels.

Until now, I’ve argued that we don’t need a social media strategy – we have a communications strategy which directs our approach to all of our comms, and social media is a set of tools we use as part of that.

That’s still true. We don’t need an over-arching social media strategy. But we do need to know exactly what we use Facebook for, what we use Twitter for and what we use Instagram for.

We’ve come a long way over the last year, developing more collaborative approaches to social media, opening corporate channels up to student takeovers and becoming much more serious about our approach to content planning.

So it’s an opportunity to take things to the next level.

Taking things to the next level

Taking things to the next level – there will be challenges and pitfalls, and an enormous monkey

The starting point for these platform-specific strategies is identify the priority platforms. I’m looking at Facebook first – because it’s just huge, with 1.7bn monthly users – followed by Twitter, then Instagram.

In fact, let’s call those platforms The Big Three.

Why are they a priority? Because a lot of what we do on social media is about recruitment and retention of students, and those channels tend to be where most of our engagement happens with that target audience.

Added to those three, Snapchat and Yik Yak are lurking in the background. We were late to the party with Snapchat, so our network is less developed than it is on The Big Three. That doesn’t mean those platforms are out of scope, it just means I’ll get to them when they emerge as priorities.

Additionally, I’m doing a similar piece of work for our LinkedIn presence. It’s a very different platform to The Big Three, so is completely separate to this work.

Of course, there’s a process to follow here. Although there’s knowledge and expertise in our marketing and communications teams, much of what we do is instinctive. So we’re starting from scratch.

Step one

Step one is putting the team together. Initially, we have representatives from across our mar-comms teams, from content specialists to internal comms experts. That group might expand, and we might break into smaller groups for specific pieces of work.

Step two

The next step is to establish some goals. This bit is essential for an effective strategy. We’re looking at business objectives first (get people to an open day), then aligning them to goals we can achieve with social media (track clicks, measure conversions).

Basic stuff, but without it we’re jumping straight into tactical stuff.

It’s very easy to get sidetracked during this step, as we either get lost in the possibilities, or we get dazzled by shiny things. When this happens, it’s important to ask ‘why’.

“What’s our objective?”

“We could do with a social media account for X audience.”

“But why?”

“So that we can achieve Y.”

Bingo. That’s a goal. Everything leading up to it is tactical, and can be shelved for now.

Step three

The next thing to do is an audit of existing channels. Specifically, what we’re doing with the corporate Facebook page. With the main Twitter account. With our Instagram account.

How do we use Messenger? What are we doing with check-ins? Reviews?

What works well as an organic post to our timeline? What generates engagement? What works well as an advert?

Who’s doing it well, or better than us? What works well for them? What are they doing that we’re not?

A lot of this is about the technology. How are we using it? And what does that say about us?

What does our use of social media say about the culture of the University?

This is a huge piece of work, and needs to be focused on each channel separately. The aim here is to look at functionality, audience and competitors. Top level stats like the size of the network are less relevant right now (unless ‘to grow a bigger audience on X channel’ has emerged as a goal).

What’s clear from this step of the process is that knowing your audience is essential. And that knowledge needs to be qualitative, as well as data-driven.

Step four

Finally, once we’ve established the goals, done the audit and audience research, we’ll be ready to work out what content we need for each platform. That’s when we’ll have a strategy.

There’s a mix of content to be determined. ‘Shouting about’ things and endless promotion switches audiences off, so we’ll need to be conversational and human.

The annoyance factor is real

The annoyance factor is real

We do need to promote things and raise awareness of stuff, but we need to do it in the right way, and at the right times.

Our content needs to be tailored to each channel. The days of ‘have you put it on social media?’ are over.

Audiences choose their platforms because they want to experience that platform. If we want to engage an audience on Instagram, we need to make a thing for Instagram. And knowing that audience, what they want from a platform, and what they’re OK with from us, is fundamental.

Your audience: who are they and what do they want?

This is such a big piece of work (really it’s three pieces of work) that I expect it will take two or three months to ‘complete’. And, even then, it will never really be finished. We’ll need to review and adjust regularly, depending on what happens to each platform.

I’ll post more about our strategies for our social platforms as the work develops. It’s still very early. If you’ve got questions, or you’d like to know more about the process, drop me a line or a tweet and I’ll tell you what I can.

And if you’ve got experience of writing a social media strategy, let me know in the comments, or on Twitter. I’d love to hear from you.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

Thought leadership from the top

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Today Sheffield Hallam’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chris Husbands, has published a blog on the BERA website about how social media has transformed professional communities.

In his BERA blog, he says that: “Social media has brought together teachers, policy wonks and academics in virtual coalitions. Some say that there has been nothing like it before, though those who do largely overlook the ‘teachers’ centre’ movement of the 1970s and 1980s which also, in admittedly local settings, also brought together like minded teachers who formed networks which brought about change.  But even so the scale here is quite remarkable.”

Prof Husbands is a prolific blogger and tweeter. He writes a weekly blog and uses it as a channel for communicating with staff – it’s a great way to keep in regular contact to discuss topical education issues, celebrate successes, and just tell people what he’s been doing.

Chris_Husbands412

For communications professionals, having a senior leader who sees the potential and the opportunities provided by social media is really valuable. We know that social is here to stay. The channels may change in the future, but digital communication is now embedded in our personal and professional lives.

Chris is a great example of how senior leaders can use social media for communication, engagement in debate, and thought leadership. His recent blog about the Government’s plans for new grammar schools in The Conversation pulled no punches.

His blogs for the Institute of Education where he worked until December 2015, are being compiled and edited into a new book, which will be available on their website soon.

 

Ally Mogg, Head of News and PR

@allymogg

Installation successful

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Last week, our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chris Husbands, was formally installed in a ceremony at Sheffield Cathedral. There was an audience of more than 300 guests in attendance- a mixture of local bigwigs, staff and students.

Professor Husbands is only the fourth VC we’ve had at Hallam, so these moments of pomp and ceremony are rare, and we wanted to open the installation ceremony up to our whole community.

Aside from the traditional content we knew we’d be putting out, like a press release and a staff news item, we wanted to use social to involve people and make them feel part of the event by giving them front row access.

We decided a livestream would be the best way of doing this, but wanted to take a minimal approach, in terms of kit.

We’d also started to think about our Facebook audience, looking beyond current students (who a lot of our content is pitched at) to other really engaged audiences. We know from looking at our reactions (formerly limited to likes) and comments that Hallam staff are really engaged with our Facebook page.

With Facebook Live now available to all Facebook users (not just celebrities, as was the case when it launched in summer 2015) and offering us greater potential reach than Periscope would, we decided to dip our toe in the water and try out this fledgling technology to broadcast the 30 minute ceremony.

A week before showtime, something happened- well, someone happened, to be precise: Chewbacca Mom.

chewbacca_mom

She blew up the internet and took home the record for the most-watched Facebook Live video ever (currently at 154m views)- as well as notching up TV appearances, college scholarships, a visit to Facebook HQ and more Chewbacca masks than she can shake a stick at.

This left us more psyched than ever to try out Facebook Live for the VC’s installation. This was a technology that people were excited about so there couldn’t have been a better time for us.

On the day, we chose a location for our tripod which would give us a great view of the action, allow us to rig our small mic up to the podium and, importantly, mean others involved in the event wouldn’t be tripping over us.

We quickly gained live viewers, reactions and comments. We peaked at 64 live viewers, with people dipping in and out. One advantage of Facebook Live is that the video stays on your timeline after the live broadcast and can be shared- so we’ve currently had almost 4,200 views of the video. (Fancy boosting that? Check out the video here).

Some other stats, for all the number nerds like me out there:

  • The video post has been shared 19 times on Facebook
  • It’s got a total of 195 reactions, comments and shares
  • Our post has so far reached 12,606 people, which is great reach for organic content

So, not quite a Chewbacca Mom (they’ll be a rare phenomenon), but not too shabby for an iPhone on a tripod in a Cathedral.

My top 3 tips from this experience:

  1. Have a pre-written, pre-agreed (if necessary) description for your video saved on your phone that you can quickly copy and paste across to your Facebook Live post before you start broadcasting; I did this and it really took the pressure out of worrying about typos in the heat of the moment.
  2. Have a second device (another phone or tablet) to hand so you can follow the viewers’ experience, be doubly sure of any moderation requirements and also as backup in case of failure.
  3. Carry out a location visit in advance of your Facebook Live broadcast, so you can check that your data connection or WiFi will cope. WiFi coverage for the bit of the Cathedral I was in wasn’t optimum, but luckily my 4G was up to the job.

VC_install

Have you tried Facebook Live yet or are you considering it? What was your experience? If you haven’t used it yet, what do you think the risks or barriers are? I’m looking forward to using it again in future to engage our staff.

Sara Kouchakji-Allen, head of employee and change communications
@sara_koo

 

 

When the World Cup came to Sheffield

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For a week in April this year, we used Sheffield Hallam’s main Twitter account – @sheffhallamuni – to run a daily give-away, utilising Twitter’s excellent polls functionality. Every day for a week, users could vote in a poll on our timeline for the chance to win a branded hoodie.

Of course, we did it for a reason. We didn’t just have piles of burgundy hoodies lying around we wanted to get rid of. We had an objective: fun.

Okay, that’s over-simplifying it, but it’s essentially right. Organisations do a lot of promoting on social media – ‘shouting’ about this, ‘making some noise’ about that – and they forget that social media is about conversations.

In order to have a conversation with someone, you need to listen to them.

The impetus for doing a give-away came from that simple premise: we wanted to ask our followers a question, and engage them in a dialogue. Specifically, we were interested in our current students, who are our most engaged audience on Twitter. And it coincided perfectly with Varsity – the city’s annual celebration of student sport.

Varsity is a real celebration of student sport in Sheffield, and an opportunity to highlight the sense of belonging among students.

Varsity is a real celebration of student sport in Sheffield, and an opportunity to highlight the sense of belonging among students.

In order for it to succeed, we knew it had to be something fun and conversational, that our followers would want to take part in. We wanted to run it over a few days, to build up a bit of momentum – and for it to feel like an event.

Lastly, we wanted to celebrate the great city that we’re proud to be a part of.

So we came up with the World Cup of Sheffield. For five days, our followers would tell us what they thought was the best thing about Sheffield. And on the last day the final would decide what the best thing in Sheffield was.

So, once again, here are the component pieces of our give-away:

  • fun
  • conversational
  • about students
  • celebrates Sheffield
  • sport theme
  • sustained

What was the goal? Brand affinity. We wanted to have some fun with a very engaged audience – current students – and let them know that we listen to them, and care what they think (and say).

How do you measure something like that? Engagement. You want people to take part . . . and hopefully even have some fun with it.

And here’s what we did. (Disclaimer: I had a bit of help from a small group of students, who came up with some suggestions of what we should include in the polls.)

We cued the competition up, explaining the format before we launched into the first poll. Day one resulted in 132 votes, 69 likes and a couple of RTs. There were no replies, but we learned that our followers really like Tamper Coffee.

On day two we asked our followers to vote for their favourite cinema.

Although there were less votes, there was a slight increase in the number of likes. We started to have some fun with Twitter’s selection of gifs.

Engagement stayed at a similar level on day three, but the conversation started to take shape, and some of the local businesses we were talking about joined in.

Day four was marred by controversy – the topic of gig venues in Sheffield is emotive. Questions were asked.

And things got tense.

The number of votes and likes was a lot higher than previous days. Why? There are a number of possibilities, including:

  • the sustained approach was generating more interest
  • our followers are more engaged later in the week
  • the poll subject was more relevant to our audience
  • all of the above

Friday was the final round of #WorldCupSheff, in which all of the week’s winners went up against each other to determine the Best Thing in SheffieldTM.

And there you have it. A clear winner.

Let’s go back to our original plan:

Fun

Was it fun? Well, we certainly enjoyed watching the poll results come in, and the conversations that developed each day. But let’s look at our total levels of engagement.

During #WorldCupSheff week (17-23 April 2016) we had a total of 56 replies to our tweets, 103 RTs, 10 RTs with comments, and 582 likes. Our total level of engagement (9,108 individual engagements) was a 107.9% increase on the previous week (4,381 individual engagements).

And engagement is a decent indicator of people having fun – it means they’re enjoying your content, and finding it relevant and interesting.

So we’ll conclude that it was fun. What was the next objective?

Conversational

This is straightforward: the World Cup of Sheffield was a conversation. We asked people a question, they told us an answer, and they asked questions of us. And the stats support that statement, with 78% of our posts being conversational during that week, and 22% of them being classed by our social media monitoring software as ‘updates’.

About students

The World Cup of Sheffield was all about students. The branded hoodies, the venues, cafés and restaurants, which were suggested by a small group of students . . . it was a conversation about student life in Sheffield. And a quick scan of the users who liked the posts shows that the most engaged audience was Sheffield Hallam students.

Celebrates Sheffield

From burritos to gig venues, cinemas to café culture, this was all about the Steel City.

Sport theme

It was the World Cup . . . of Sheffield. That’s quite a sporty theme.

Sustained

It ran for a week, and gained momentum towards the end. The length of time it ran for felt right, and it needed a few days to pick up pace.

What did we get out of #WorldCupSheff? Our goal was brand affinity, and a sense of good will among our followers. We eased off on promotion, shouting and making noise, and for a week we had fun, rewarding engagement with daily prizes.

Would we do it again? Definitely. I can see #WorldCupSheff making a return on a regular basis. The investment is minimal, and we ran a week-long brand affinity campaign for the cost of a few hoodies and a bit of staff time.

Would I change anything? Yes, if only to make sure we weren’t repeating ourselves. Getting input from students was really important in making the content relevant, and that’s something we could develop further.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve it next time, leave me a comment, or tweet me.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

LinkedIn 3D conference: 7 key themes and a few takeaways

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Cherry blossom in Spring at University of Birmingham

The venue was University of Birmingham’s beautiful campus. Photo by Jonathan Crannage.

This week, I took part in the LinkedIn3D conference at the University of Birmingham, presenting a few stats about our University Page before starting a conversation about content – what works, what doesn’t. I was joined by Higher Education professionals from three key areas: careers, alumni and marketing-communications.

The conference, organised by LinkedIn’s education evangelist Charles Hardy, was opened by the always-brilliant Eric Stoller, and has since been documented comprehensively by Warwick University’s digital comms expert Dave Musson.

The format was free-and-easy, with much of the content on the day being shaped by those in attendance. Some key themes emerged early on, and they’re themes that will resonate with anyone in Higher Education who uses social media to support their work.

Here they are:

One team working

Large organisations have trouble getting teams to talk to each other, let alone work with each other. At Sheffield Hallam, planning for our showcase sessions has spurred us on, and we’re in the process of setting up a LinkedIn working group, dedicated to planning content and finding opportunities to make the most of the platform.

What we’re finding is that it’s difficult to get people from every single area round a table, so start with a core of people who can get on with it. Eventually, others will join in.

Content

Eric Stoller said it best in his keynote: “University Pages showcase the vibe of your institution, through the content you post and the comments people leave.”

Unsurprisingly, a lot of discussion throughout the day was about the amorphous subject of content. I opened the marcomms track by showcasing some of the things I’d been posting on Hallam’s University Page. In particular, a nostalgic post about our old campus on Psalter Lane, which has generated 149 likes and 39 comments so far.

That’s a really high level of engagement, and it continues to get more. In general, good content on LinkedIn seems to have more longevity than Facebook or Twitter, which are usually home to fleeting moments. Replying to comments is important, if you want to keep the conversation going, and doing it in a personal way usually gets better results.

Dave Musson talked us through his approach at Warwick: they post once a day, early on in the day, and it tends to get good engagement.

There was a lot of talk of LinkedIn’s interface, how to get round the lack of formatting options, and its lack of native video.

My lightbulb moment happened when the discussion moving towards the idea of alumni-generated content. Jonathan Crannage, digital content co-ordinator at Loughborough University, is a Sheffield Hallam alumnus, and tweeted me during the workshop about his collection of Psalter Campus photos.

That kind of approach to user-generated content would be really interesting to try on a University Page, and I’m keen to try it out.

Groups

A lot of people still use discussion groups to broadcast. At Sheffield Hallam we haven’t cracked that nut either.

The best advice came from Charles Hardy, who said that “groups need watering”. Online conversations take place between a number of people, so if you’re relying on one person opening the door to a group once a week and shouting into an empty room, you’re doing it wrong.

You can start a conversation from nothing, by involving a few people. So ask a question, prod people, and see what you can get moving. Someone raised a really good point about discussion groups: what can we offer our alumni through those groups, that benefits us and them in a mutually beneficial way? If you can answer that, your groups will suddenly become hives of activity and outcomes.

Eric Stoller suggested trying ‘ask me anything’ style Q&As with careers teams in groups. We’ll definitely give this a try.

Engaging stakeholders

This theme was originally about engaging academics, but was extended to ‘stakeholders’ after the morning’s workshops.

There was some discussion of employer engagement through Company Pages (as well as groups), but my biggest takeaway was around blogging. We talked about encouraging academics to blog on LinkedIn’s Pulse platform, but what about careers teams? Alumni relations teams?

If HE professionals start blogging on LinkedIn, University Pages can use that content to engage alumni, and group-owners can use those blogs to start conversations.

Another lightbulb moment: get your VC to blog on Pulse.

Also, hashtags work in Pulse. Seriously. Go try it now: search in ‘Posts’ for a hashtag and see what comes up. You’ll be amazed.

Employer engagement

Another theme that morphed and merged throughout the day, fitting into the ‘Engaging stakeholders’ breakout session in the afternoon. I’ll be honest, I don’t have much experience of doing this, and there was very little discussion in the sessions I was in of how to do it.

I’d probably do this through groups, as well as our Company Page, which is currently used more for employer brand stuff.

LinkedIn features

Charles Hardy was good enough to invite critical feedback from delegates on what they want from LinkedIn, and what features they’d want to see in the future. He also broke the news of LinkedIn’s new student app, which launched in the US this week.

I asked for a Pages Manager app. Pretty please, with sugar on top. We want notifications, a better interface, and to get away from our desks.

Native video is happening, although we don’t have an idea of when. But metrics and analytics are on the way, according to Charles. And Company and University Pages will soon be merged, making our lives easier.

So lots of good things on the horizon for HE professionals using LinkedIn, and it’s encouraging that they’re so keen to reach out to a very engaged audience, talk to them and listen to feedback.

If anything in the post resonates with you, let me know in the comments. Especially if you’re doing anything a bit different and interesting with groups.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

#SocMedHE15: starting the conversation about social media for learning

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Long post alert! This post originally appeared in the University’s showcase magazine, Review, as a full-length feature of about 800 words. But it’s a really interesting piece about a fantastic social media conference, and it’s worth sharing here.

In December, a team of educational developers from Sheffield Hallam organised the first ever conference on the use of social media for learning in higher education.

The Social Media for Learning in Higher Education 2015 Conference featured over 60 speakers from eight different countries, and from 35 different higher education institutions, and other digital learning organisations.

Helen Rodger, senior lecturer in digital capability, was part of the conference organising committee. She says there was a clear need for a sector-wide conversation about the impact and application of social media on the global learning landscape. And the team were confident that Sheffield Hallam was the right institution to start this conversation.

She says: “The boundaries of social media are changing all the time. More tools and opportunities are emerging, and behaviours are adapting. It’s important that educators recognise and engage with the impact that social literacies have on business and society, learn to harness the power of social media, while remaining mindful of the wider challenges.

“We had three major themes for the conference: the changing learning landscape, the applied use of social media in teaching and learning, and the challenges faced by individuals and institutions in responding to changes. But, in the end, what really mattered was that people, who were all desperate to talk about it, came together to share their experiences of social media in learning, to become a community and begin the conversation.”

Education consultant and Inside Higher Ed blogger Eric Stoller delivered the opening keynote, offering his predictions for ways that UK universities could harness the power of social media tools.

A conference visitor using virtual reality technology

A conference visitor trying out Samsung’s virtual reality technology

Eric says: “Social media will continue to be used by universities for marketing and communications in 2016. However, an emphasis on the student experience will drive more use of social media by areas like student services, academic advising, career development, financial literacy, and mental health.

“The greatest areas of impact will be in career development – using social media to enhance employability – and as part of a digital identity component of a university’s digital capability scheme.

“I think there are going to be more individual administrators who start to use social media for student success and engagement. Marketing, communications, and PR are already using digital channels, but the real breakthrough will be when student services operations work in tandem via social media to support the student journey once on campus.

“In the US, there are scores of institutions using social media to enhance teaching and learning. In the UK, it’s a bit less consistent. I know that Sue Beckingham at Sheffield Hallam has done a lot of work with digital identity and LinkedIn for teaching and learning.

“Social media adoption in higher education has been much slower than in the business world. When universities realised that social media could be used for engagement, support, teaching, learning, and community-building, that’s when things started to change. Digital channels enhance the work of academics and educators, and in 2015 and beyond, today’s student needs to be fluent in using social media for the purposes of employability and career development.”

Helen agrees that things are moving quickly for higher education institutions, and that staff also need to be digitally fluent, but also to be flexible and responsive.

She says: “As practitioners, we’re surfing a very large wave at the moment, and it’s one that can change direction at any time. Sharing best practice and learning from each other are central to us adapting to the opportunity.

“The thing that really came across from the 2015 conference was the focus on the development of digital capabilities, particularly in the area of managing professional identities in digital spaces.”

Based on last year’s success, and the need to keep up with the constantly changing landscapes of education and social media, the 2016 conference is already shaping up to be bigger and more focused, to pick up on the significant related issues faced by higher education.

“We’ve had a huge amount of positive feedback from presenters and delegates,” Helen says. “Including lots of feedback from Sheffield Hallam staff who were involved. Overwhelmingly, the message was how great it was to be a part of this leading edge discussion, and how it made them feel proud to be a part of this University. The next step for us is to evaluate the conference to understand more about what why social media for learning is important, and this focus informs our strategies for the future.

“The conference had a huge impact in terms of reputation. Sheffield Hallam University is beginning to be known internationally for leading a critical discourse about the use of social media for learning in higher education. And that’s something everyone at Sheffield Hallam can have a role in.”

Want to get involved in #SocMedHE16? Submissions are now being accepted for the 2016 Social Media for Learning in Higher Education conference. And you can follow @SocMedHE on Twitter for more information.

Joe Field, social media manager

Graduation 2015: a strategic approach to social

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People sometimes ask me about our ‘social media strategy’. The truth is that we don’t have one – nor do we need one.

We do have a communications strategy which covers the strategic use of social media to raise profile and manage reputation.

And that’s the right approach. We don’t have a ‘telephone strategy’, or an ’email strategy’. When it comes to social media, we have content strategies, guidelines and a range of different functions that we provide with social media tools.

What we do with social media directly supports our communications strategy. I’ll use the example of our Graduation 2015 campaign to illustrate how.

For two weeks in November, our students took to the stage in Sheffield’s City Hall, shaking hands with Professor Robert Winston and picking up their certificates.

#throwback #graduation #shugrad #proud #sheffield #sheffieldhallam

A photo posted by Camille (@camilleb236) on

It’s a key milestone in the student experience, and a real opportunity to demonstrate the sense of belonging – or brand affinity – among our student and alumni communities. And, by involving those communities in our social media campaign, we had the opportunity to show how vibrant the sense of belonging among students and alumni is to a range of external audiences.

We also wanted to use social media to enhance the experience of graduates during the fortnight of celebrations. So, working with graduate Tom Stayte and his innovative SquareShare social printing service, we gave them a reason to engage with it. By posting their photos to Twitter or Instagram, and tagging them ‘#SHUgrad’, they could get free printed copies, with details of our Alumni Connect service on each print.

On our own channels, we focused on the graduates themselves, ‘doorstepping’ them at the City Hall, and asking them what they loved most about their time at Sheffield Hallam.

As well as promoting engagement with #SHUgrad at the City Hall, we interacted with social media users in real time, offering personalised responses with a view to deepening engagement as conversations developed.

One of the key themes in our communications strategy is our role in the city region. We hold our graduation ceremonies in Sheffield’s City Hall, right in the heart of the city centre. By focusing on visual, student-led content, in and around the City Hall, we demonstrated our civic pride, and our role in providing education, skills and employability in the region.

Liam and my graduation on Friday the 20th! Had such an amazing day and we were so proud of one another 🙂 #shugrad

A photo posted by Kirsty O'Brien (@obrien_marie) on

Lastly, we communicated the University’s values around equality, diversity, and inclusion, by including a diverse range of students – from a range of backgrounds and academic areas – in the campaign.

The #SHUgrad campaign is a great example of a university using social media for community management. Teams from the university’s marketing, communications and alumni functions worked with students from the start, involving them in the campaign (by getting them to create the graduation video) and interacting with them throughout graduation fortnight.

That approach is fundamental to social media at Hallam: we want to show our audiences that we use social media to talk to, listen to, and get feedback from, student and alumni communities. And, by encouraging social media users to post about graduation from their own accounts (and share our posts) we reached new audiences.

Here are the stats: conversations about#SHUgrad led to 6,871,453 brand impressions, and 11,339 engagements with the @sheffhallamuni Twitter account alone. And the #SHUgrad hashtag trended in Sheffield every day for the whole two weeks.

On a personal level, it was also a really good example of teams from across the University working together, with students, on a key bit of University business. And it’s opened the door to even more collaborative, engaging approaches to social media at Hallam.

Joe Field, social media manager

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