• Does this cover the topic of interactive (digital, social media, etc.) news journalism today?
• Are the assignments relevant and support the course objectives?
• Does the course seem to be too little, too intense or just right for one semester?
• Any miscellaneous thoughts or recommendations?

Before you dive in to the PDF of the syllabus to review it, here are the course summary and goals. You may want to read these over first, and then decide if you want to spend the time reviewing the complete syllabus.

Technology has created a paradigm shift in the way we communicate with one another. Now, people interact with one another across the globe, sharing information with complete strangers; traditional media outlets are no longer the primary source of news; and information travels instantaneously.  Thus, the journalists of today and tomorrow must know how to leverage technology to gather, develop and distribute stories, identify and engage key influencers, and participate in two-way conversations with a variety of audiences.

The objective of this course is to introduce you to online tools and resources that will help you:

• Utilize the web to research news stories.
• Write and edit for the web and social media.
• Use technology to develop content, including digital photography, videos, blogs and social media.
• Identify and engage key influencers.
• Build and maintain the online reputation for you and your organization.

These skills will prepare you to work as an entry-level content producer at traditional and digital media outlets.

Please provide your feedback by commenting on this blog post by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, November 16. Thank you!

Their history and heritage are still a vital part of who they are. It’s included in their speeches, emails, facilities, conversations, etc. They celebrate heritage days annually.

Mayo Clinic is an integrated healthcare provider. They have electronic medical records that are shared between their physicians, sites, etc.

They’ve never done any national advertising. Instead they rely on word-of-mouth, stories in the media, physician recommendations, followed by advertising, Internet and others.

When they do advertise, they use patient stories and employee profiles to continue the “word-of-mouth” strategy. Their campaign is called “My Answer.”

Their primary value: the needs of the patient come first. Focus on how each employee reflects mission and value.

Posters showing their satisfaction scores are posted on their campuses.

They include a photo in their employee e-newsletter every week. Instead of just the written employee message, they now record their leadership on video and broadcast it.

The strategic plan campaign is called The Mayo Effect. They created a YouTube style video (below) that communicates the messages they had in their written version, but in a visually stimulating way.

They created an opt-in every-other-daily email communication that seems to be popular. About 4,000 out of 56,000 employees have signed up for it.

The Cowans video (below) was captured by a visitor at one of their hospitals and posted it to YouTube. When they heard about it, they tracked it down and cross-promoted it.

They post their social media policies for the public to see. And their staff can access Facebook, Twitter, etc. at work. Fortunately, they haven’t had to fire anyone for social media issues.

And here I am, almost three years and three months later, with 13,337 tweets, 1,159 followers and 1,541 people I follow on my personal Twitter account. My “professional” account has only 469 followers; I follow 647 people and have tweeted 845 times (846 when this post is published). But enough of that small glimpse in time, let’s take a look at the fruits of my labor over the past several years: 6 Tenets of Social Media.

These tenets are grounded in professional experience of developing social media strategies and managing the accounts for institutions of higher learning, non-profit organizations, medical/healthcare organizations and a financial services industry. They are the result of the lessons learned there, as well as the knowledge gleaned from countless blogs, email newsletters, thought leaders, workshops, webinars, conferences, discussions and even academic research.

I invite your feedback and comments. These tenets are just that–guidelines–not laws to obey, but principles to use when making your decisions, formulating your strategy and implementing your tactics. They may change over time, as the technology changes, as the paradigm of social media changes, and as human behavior continues to evolve. But for now, I believe them to be fairly relevant…and hopefully, useful.

• Be conversational and friendly.
• Be responsible; own up to your mistakes.
• Develop a persona; have a consistent voice if possible.
• Ask questions and engage your followers.
• Be playful, but professional, matching your brand’s communication style.
• Be transparent; don’t lie.
• Give credit where credit is due.
• Be unique.

• Explore the mediums; one may work better than another.
• Get to know your audience.
• Set goals and measure results.
• Align social strategy with marketing and business objectives.
• Know your tools and services.
• Stay current on trends.
• Have a plan for handling negative comments or crisis situations.

• Stay on topic.
• Speak (and listen) to your followers.
• Avoid automation.
• Use appropriate conventions.
• Don’t just regurgitate; add value.
• Measure successes and failures.
• Stick to your area of expertise.
• Be a (thought) leader.

• Thank people.
• Mention others.
• Promote discourse.
• Be creative and create excitement.
• Be smart.

• Respond quickly and accurately.
• If acknowledging, less than an hour.
• If the response requires research, acknowledge, then provide the full answer within one business day.
• Post when appropriate.
• Build buzz.

• Moderate the community with fairness.
• Do not spam or inundate your followers.
• Acknowledge positive and negative feedback.
• Share opinions, but avoid speculation.
• Respect privacy.
• Disagree respectfully.
• Think twice before posting.

47% of the online immunity now uses social networking sites.

Facebook has more than 500 million active users worldwide.

Facebook states that 50% of active users log in daily.

More than 200 million Facebook users access their site via mobile devices.

70% of local businesses use Facebook.

More than 30 billion pieces of content shared monthly on Facebook.

Twitter has 200 million registered accounts (56 million are active).

110 million tweets are sent daily.

LinkedIn has 100 million members.

Flickr hosts more than 500 billion images.

200 million views of YouTube videos are via mobile devices each day.

Expected spend of $3.08 billion on social ads in 2011, a 55% increase over 2010.

65% of U.S. adults that use social media say they have received a positive benefit.

Presentation: Social Media for Small Business (Adobe PDF)

Handout: Social Media Resources (Adobe PDF)

Additional resources:

• Competitive analysis tool: Viralheat … great for keeping track of mentions of your business and others on the web
• Twitter analytics tools: Klout and Twitalyzer … excellent way to see how you’re doing in the Twitterverse, as well as compare yourself to others
• Monitoring services: Google Alerts and Socialmention … find out where people are talking about your business or other topics on the web
• Brainstorming/idea tracker tool: Thoughtboxes … a free service that helps you put your thoughts down electronically and access them from anywhere like sticky notes
• How to manage a Facebook wall: A blog post about how to manage positive and negative conversations on your Facebook wall … perfect resource for any Facebook page administrator
• Social media measurement: Another blog post targeted at Google Analytics users who want to measure social media

It’s my hope that the Washington State Higher Education Coordinating Board can use this as a resource as they develop their portal for citizens of Washington who are interested in pursuing a college degree. And much of the information can also be used for any academic institution, company/organization interested in communicating with Millennials, or just general social media marketers and public relations professionals.

Enjoy and please feel free to share your thoughts with me.

The audience suggested that some of the biggest changes in MarCom/PR is technology/digital communication, two-way (or even “all-way”) communication, the ability to communicate more directly with your audience, measurement tools, immediacy of the conversation, the “sheer amount of crap our audiences have to sift through,” and the need to think about the way things look (the visual display of information; not just written content). J.D. followed up to posit that some things never change. New media is not a strategy by itself, it’s a platform that is a component of your overall strategy. You can utilize it as part of the regular marketing mix. It’s also another tool that helps you understand and better know/identify your audience. He suggests that specifically for new media, you should target your “typical” audience and develop your profile for that group.

J.D. moved on to developing new media marketing plans. Lesson number one, he says, is that you must learn to give up control. People are talking about your organization’s products, services and brands whenever and however they want–both positive and negative. In other words, as I have always said with social media, you can not control the conversation, instead, you can only engage, guide and create it. So how do you get started? He suggests creating a scenario and thinking about how you would have dealt with it five years ago. Start defining your goals: what is success?

Several tactics he recommended bringing into your mix: email marketing, social media marketing and print/broadcast advertising.

Why do some small businesses feel that their social media marketing plans didn’t meet expectations? because it used more time than expected, they lost money and they opened themselves up to criticism. This was based on a survey conducted by Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com/smallbusiness/wp-content/files/Network_Solutions_Small_Business_Success_Index.pdf). In other words, he says, if you’re putting your foot in the water, make sure you have realistic expectations. (And make sure you have the resources to get involved.)

Step two: choose your metrics that you’ll track. There are a lot of networks out there to monitor. Key performance indicators include: expanded reach to new audiences, influencer sharing behavior and conversion/monetization. Take a look at your goals and then weight the indicators.

Step three: build accounts and create. Get familiar with the platforms (those that are both traditional and emerging). Make branding decisions about the “face of the company.” Pay attention to visual aesthetic. Create launch promotion (remember to include social media in your overall marketing mix–it doesn’t always take off on its own). Pre-load a fan base (use that “suggest to a friend” link). Let others operate pre-launch (test them for user-friendliness, search for glitches, etc.). Develop a content team (change it up). Create posting/content policies and standards. (Note: I suggest checking out Intel’s Social Media Guidelines: http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_us/social-media.htm).

Step four: listen to your audience. Find out how they are making their decisions, who your influencers are, what topics are the hot buttons, who your competitors are and what they are doing, and gauge your demographic information. (Note: if you’re using Facebook, utilize Facebook’s Insights feature to analyze your fan base demographics.) J.D. suggested checking out the profiles of your fans. Personally, I think you can spend a little time doing this, but it may not be worth the effort–you can’t necessarily see all of their information, updates, behaviors, etc. He further suggested grouping your followers (more specifically on Twitter) based on how they started following you (contests, promotions, blog posts, questions, etc.). A great reminder, though, that J.D. pointed out is that your demographic base on social media can really only be applied to that channel, not necessarily your entire company’s audience demographic (yes, that’s right, not everyone is using social media, and it’s still mostly used by certain age groups, etc.).

Step five: adjust/respond to concerns. (I’ll admit, I got distracted at this point, so I don’t have any additional notes on this step.)

Step six: provide valuable content. Have fun and remember that most new media is social. Share your advice, discounts and information–anything that could potentially benefit your audience. Content can include: video, blogs, podcasts, message boards, product reviews, photos, press releases and promotions. Don’t limit yourself to sales-focused content (remember folks, it’s about the conversation). Foster viral sharing with incentives. Bi-directional rewards perform twice as well: reward your influencer for inviting friends and reward their friends for acceptance.

Here’s a neat exercise J.D. suggested: put together a list of all the marketing tactics that you use. Next to each of those, try adding a new media tactic to it (for example, next to speaking engagements, add live video feeds, podcasts or a tweetup).

Step seven: expanded reach (number of followers), influencer behavior (posts/comments/shares) and conversion (web traffic).

Step eight: repeat the process. Change is the only constant. New formats and features are introduced frequently, as does your audience and how they behave/interact. It may go in a new direction that you didn’t anticipate. Be sure to adjust your goals and metrics along the way.

A couple of case studies that he shared with us included: Summit 54, The Creme Brûlée Man, Joie De Vivre, Stone Korean Kitchen, Dr. Irena Vaksman (dentist), Levi’s (did you know they were one of the first brands to be on Facebook as well as implement the “like” feature on their products), and Starbucks (they do geo-location very well).

His closing thoughts: your audience is still people…they aren’t just fans, followers, likes, etc. (A good point indeed!)

Presentation: Marketing tips for small businesses. (Microsoft PowerPoint)

Handout: 20 simple marketing tips. (Microsoft Word)

Presentation: Social media for small businesses. (Adobe PDF)

Handout: Social media resources for small businesses. (Microsoft Word)