We have been busy putting together plans for the second year of our program and have a few announcements to make.
Top news of the week posts
Learn what’s happening in social media, new tools, and practical tips from the best sources out there. Look out for our weekly posts or subscribe to receive our blog posts via email.
Upcoming events
SAVE THE DATE! May 16, 2012 - 2nd Social Media Program Meeting in Zurich.
Nearly a year after we first met in Bern, we will hold our second program wide meeting at facilities generously offered by Swiss International Air Lines in Kloten, by the Zurich Airport. We will share the overall social media status of Swiss Academia in social media, keynote presentations from social media leaders from Swiss International Air Lines and others (to be confirmed!), and workshops. Per your feedback received in 2011, we will hold parallel sessions according to knowledge levels and interest, and case studies from Swiss institutions.
Reports
Radian6 reports for January 2012 have been posted. Please visit your landing page to find out who has been talking about your institution.
Presence reports. We have been working compiling the status of social media for our participants for Q4 2011, and we are near completion. Expect notification in the next 7 days! Read more about these reports.
Spring 2012 Study Tour
We are less than 30 days away from our Spring Study Tour. We are excited to receive a diverse group of participants. As in our Fall 2011 Study Tour, expect a lot of news, stories, and reflections from the group during their stay in the Bay Area. You can follow the group on Twitter using the hashtag #springstudytour or by following the study tour Twitter list. In addition, expect daily blog posts, photos, and more.
Webinars
February 29, 2012 – LinkedIn 101 via webex
I will lead this webinar and it will be recorded for future reference. We need your feedback regarding the time of this webinar. Have a say below. Please respond by Tuesday, February 21, 2012.
This week we share top news and a short write-up on SFAMA‘s event with Charlene Li that took place at ING Direct Cafe in SF.
News that caught our eye this week:
5 Essential Spreadsheets for Social Media Analytics (Mashable). These spreadsheets are great. Specially if you are keeping tags on a number of pages. Bookmark! HINT: You must make a copy of the file to use it.
Obama Shows Further Mastery of Social by Tweeting Spotify Campaign Playlist (Venture Beat) This made get a spofity account. Georgy Cohen mentioned in a webinar how a Tufts University Alumni had put together a playlist for incoming freshmen. Perhaps we should put one together for the Spring Study Tour?
HSG Embraces Social Media. We are so proud of HSG for such professional and successful launch. Can’t wait to see HSG make strides in social media!
In addition, we attended the SFAMA event with Charlene Li on the Future of Social Networks. Throughout this program, we have referenced Charlene’s work and thoughts related to the importance of social media for organizations. If you have not yet read her books Groundswell and Open Leadership, make sure to put them on your reading list.
Charlene first delved into the past to take stock of the speed of the developments that have taken place in the social media sphere. Some milestones to remember:
January 2007: The iPhone debuted
May 2007: Facebook opened its platform to outside developers
January 2010, Android phones appear in the market
April 2010: the Ipad is released
Now to the Future of Social Networks. Three main points:
Social media wil be like air: It’s everywhere and hard to avoid. It will permeate all of our activities.
People want to be known: Consumers will expect a better consumer experience when they shop. After all information from social media accounts provide merchants with the interests and likes. One interesting factoid caught my attention: check-ins constitute 40% of social media conversations for big retailers such as Safeway (grocery store)
Connected employees will create a culture of sharing: Employees speak about your brand/organization so empower then via training but also provide them with social media guidelines.
It’s time to get serious about social media: All of the above points to the importance of having a coherent plan, a triage, and response plan for social media. A quick show of hands at the event, still showed that very of us present have all of these in place.
I have been lucky to hear Charlene present three times so a lot of what she mentioned resonated with me and reminded me of the recommendations she made in her previous publications. After listening to her, my main conclusion is that there are some fundamentals that we all need to tackle: plan, plan, and prioritize!
NOTE: Of course, I wanted to find what’s HOT so I asked her about Pinterest and what makes it so special. “It shows a very emotional side of people that other networks can’t really show.” The real question is how can brands and organizations leverage it. I have seen some great examples (Oberlin College) that have inspired me to create an account for swissnex San Francisco. Check us out. on: http://pinterest.com/swissnexsf/.
The big story of the week was without any doubt the Facebook IPO. In addition to that story and other worthy items below, find a useful presentation including recent social media statistics that you can incorporate into your own. Happy reading!
Reading and sharing news is a big part of my daily job (thanks Google Reader!) Since I spend so much time keeping up with news and top trends in social media, I thought I may as well share a selected few that could be useful to you all. Below find the stories that made my top news list this week:
In December 2011, we asked for your feedback and you responded! We are pleased to share some of the highlights of all the suggestions and recommendations you provided.
According to 65% of survey respondents, social media is a priority at their institution.
Most of you agree (83%) and/or strongly agree that the program has helped you advance your social media efforts.
In addition, the program has helped you network with peers at other institutions in Switzerland (57%) and connect with social media experts (64%).
Of the different components of the program, you found the social media presence reports (79%), webinars (45%), Radian6 reports (43%), and kick-off event in May 2011 (70%), and online library (60%) to be useful and/or very useful.
Many of you (32%) indicated time as the major obstacle to attending our webinars at the end of your work day. We will schedule them earlier so that more of you can attend.
We were also glad to see that many of you find the library (70%) and monthly (60%) and quarterly reports (80%) useful.
We were very excited to learn that 80% of you would be willing to participate in an all-day event in Switzerland consisting of workshops, a keynote session with a high-level speaker, and case studies from Swiss institutions. Please save the date for an event on the week of May 21, 2012. We will confirm the date and location very soon.
And as promised, a respondent was randomly selected to win a free one-hour consultation with Michael Stoner. And the winner is…
The social media presence reports for the third quarter (Q3) of 2011 are out and can be downloaded on your personal landing page. We will take a closer look at indicators like Facebook and Twitter and whether or not institutions feature social media icons on their homepage and show you the progress made since the last report. For more information about the second quarter (Q2) report, please read our previous blog posts.
The overall picture of all social media tools across all participating institutions doesn’t show big surprises for Q3. The ranking at the end of this quarter is almost identical to the ranking at the end of the second quarter of 2011. Most institutions have an increased presence on Facebook, mostly due to more community pages as reported in the last quarter.
Social media presence for all institutions on all social media channels for Q3 2011
While there are no big shifts in terms of official Facebook and Twitter presence, there is some movement when it comes to including social media icons on the homepage. The percentage of institutions that feature at least one social media icon on their homepage has gone up from 26% to 34%.
Facebook According to our research, participating institutions have not created any new official Facebook pages. This is the breakdown for each of the four groups participating in the program:
Federal institutes of technology: EPFL is the only one of the two institutes with an official Facebook presence and leads in terms of Facebook likes amongst all institutions.
Universities: Eight of the 10 Swiss universities are present on Facebook, while HSG and UNIL have no presence.
Universities of applied sciences: Out of the 15 participating universities of applied sciences, 10 have an official presence on Facebook*.
Research institutes and other public institutions: Three out of the 11 participating institutions have an official Facebook presence and ZBUZH comes in fifth overall in terms of likes for Q3.
Twitter Sixty percent of participating institutions have an official Facebook account and 50% have an official Twitter account:
Federal institutes of technology: The most followed Twitter accounts are EPFL and ETH Zurich. EPFL has accounts in English and French and a combined number of 2396 followers. ETHZ also has two accounts, one in English and one in German, and has a total of 1220 followers.
Universities: Eight out of 10 universities have an official Twitter account. The only two universities without a Twitter account are HSG and UZH.
Universities of applied sciences: Eight of the 15 participating universities of applied sciences have an official Twitter account.
Research institutes and other public institutions: The research institutes and other public institutions are not using Twitter for outreach. ZBUZH is the only member of this group that tweets with an official account.
Social Media Icons on Homepage As mentioned in the last blog post, we take the social media icons on the homepage of the institutions as an indicator for the integration of social media in the institution’s communications efforts. At the end of the second quarter of 2011, nine institutions featured at least one social media icon on their homepage with a link to the official account (26% of the participating institutions). At this point 13 of the participating institutions have social media icons on their homepage, which equals 34%.
The table below provides an overview of Facebook and Twitter presence of all participating institutions in comparison with use of social media icons on their homepage. Institutions in bold have both an official Twitter and Facebook account and feature at least one social media icon on their homepage:
Institution
Has official Twitter account
Has official Facebook page
Featured social media icon on homepage in Q2**
Featured social media icon on homepage in Q3**
BFH
Yes
Yes
Yes
CRUS
DODIS
Yes
n/a ***
Yes
EAWAG
EHL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ELS
Yes
EMPA
EPFL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ETHRAT
ETHZ
Yes
EURESEARCH
FFHS
Yes
Yes
Yes
FHNW
FHS
HEIGVD
Yes
HESSO
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
HSG
HSLU
Yes
Yes
HWZ
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
PHZH
Yes
Yes
PSI
SSS
n/a ***
SUPSI
Switch
UNIBAS
Yes
Yes
Yes
UNIBE
Yes
Yes
UNIFR
Yes
Yes
UNIGE
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
UNIL
Yes
UNILI
Yes
Yes
Yes
UNILU
Yes
Yes
Yes
UNINE
Yes
Yes
Yes
USI
Yes
Yes
UZH
Yes
WSL
Yes
Yes
Yes
ZBUZH
yes
Yes
n/a **
Yes
ZHAW
Yes
ZHDK
yes
Yes
A majority of the participants have an official presence on Twitter or Facebook:
Sixty-eight percent of the participating institutions have either an official Facebook page or a Twitter account, but only 50% of these institutions actually feature a social media icon on their homepage with a link to their official presence on social media.
Only five institutions have a Facebook and Twitter presence and feature at least one social media icon on their homepage.
The majority of these five institutions are from the French part of Switzerland.
HWZ is the only German institution to be active on Facebook and Twitter and feature the icons on their homepage. Data for ZBUZH is not available for Q2, which makes it impossible to identify them as a frontrunner.
Please note that we have only taken into account official Facebook pages and official Twitter accounts managed by the umbrella organization. A large number of participants have very active departments, but no social media presence as an organization as a whole.
Please let us know if any of your social media accounts are missing.
For a list of participating institutions go to this page.
____________________
* Our research for universities of applied sciences is limited to the universities participating in the program. Depending on the structure and nature of the institutions, they either participate as a whole (like BFH or HSLU) or as subschools (e.g. most of the subschools of the university of applied sciences in Zurich participate, such as the HWZ or ZHAW).
**icon has to link to their official presence
*** joined the program after Q2 and data for that quarter is therefore not available
A couple of weeks have passed since the fall study tour participants left the swissnex San Francisco building and flew away from the Golden Gate. We’re still talking (and tweeting) about it. #fallstudytour
Fall Study Tour crew (most of them) at the swissnex San Francisco event, Robot Revolution.
The final day of the study tour was full of meetings and new ideas, as was each day before it. But something occurred to me on day five. Our little group had become a community of friends as well as colleagues, making the study tour a wild success in many ways.
Sure, the week was well planned. Of course, the meetings were informative and motivating. We promised they would be. But the participants (you, if you’re reading) played the biggest role in this victory. The group was inquisitive, professional, thoughtful, and really really nice. It’s hard to emphasize that enough. Reeeeealllllly nice.
On day five, it truly felt as though lasting connections had been made not only between the swissnex San Francisco staff and the study tour participants, but among the participants as well. This was evident in the banter and conversations between meetings, in the tweets, goodbye toasts, final presentations (silly and sincere), and certainly at the North Beach beatnik bar Vesuvio.
This kind of camaraderie is all we at swissnex could have hoped for. The spirit of social media is, well, social. Without that element, without sharing, it’s hard to grasp the full potential of the tools let alone successfully practice them to benefit a university. The supportive environment that was fostered here during the study tour will allow the participants to help each other as they lift their individual institutions into a new era of communications. The benefits will likely help promote the excellence of Swiss higher education globally.
Lessons from Day 5 David Harris doesn’t believe in a social media strategy. Period. It sounded shocking at first. “What? But, but,” we were tempted to interject.
“Social media is a tool,” he continued. “You should have a communications strategy, but social media is just one of the tools that you use to achieve those goals.”
Harris also covered how to measure success with social media tools, from general awareness to engagement and investment. He led an exercise in strategic planning (complete with little red workbooks), where participants were encouraged to outline goals, define audiences, and suggest reasonable metrics to measure success.
Gold Rush City
Our walking tour of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast took us back to 1850s San Francisco, when life along then named Yerba Buena Cove was lurid and wild. Strangely enough, the swissnex San Francisco building was a lone bastion of civilized culture back in those days: it housed the Golden Era literary magazine, which Mark Twain and Bret Harte wrote for.
Mobilize
The walking tour ended on Gold Street directly in front of Blackboard Mobile. If anyone doubted the power or influence of mobile technologies, this meeting with the company’s “Mobile Evangelist” David Small probably changed his or her mind.
Blackboard Mobile began as a small start-up of Stanford University students who built an app for the school. They were acquired by the e-learning giant Blackboard and have been steadily growing since. Our final company visit of the study tour, Blackboard Mobile’s presentation drove home how important mobile is for the future of university communications. It’s not enough to think about the website and social media channels. Forward-looking leaders within the institution should be staring at the smartphone.
Goodbye for now, but stay in touch
The study tour ended officially with a goodbye dinner at Fog City Diner. Some returned to swissnex San Francisco for an event on Swiss university spin-off companies working in the robotics field. And some explored the city after that, even using social media to find the group when lost (you know who you are).
All that was learned and thought throughout the week will never really fade thanks to social media. There’s this blog, for one. There’s the Paper.li, Social Media Study Tour Daily (check the archive editions to see what was captured September 26-30, 2011), and our Storify. Multiple participants made videos, webdocs, and contributed to the Flickr album. And many of the presentations and materials from the week are accessible in the library on this very website.
For the 11 fall study tour participants reading this, we’re quite far from a goodbye—we are actually planning a hello. Our conference call on October 31st will give us the chance to check in with everyone, ask follow-up questions, share ideas and progress, and generally re-energize. Fill in the Google document to help define the agenda and stay tuned for the exact time.
Until then!
Goodbye dinner for Fall Study Tour at Fog City Diner.
On Tuesday, October 18, Pete Forsyth will lead a webinar on the importance of wikipedia for your institution. Through examples, recommendations, and practical ideas, participants will learn how to improve their wikipedia presence.
In preparation for the webinar, Pete has designed a short exercise.
Preparation for wikipedia presentation
The assignment below will help you understand the range of quality in Wikipedia coverage of universities, and how articles grow on Wikipedia. Please email me your responses by the end of the day Monday, October 17.
Name of your university
Name of university whose Featured Article you chose
Identify 3-5 areas in which your university’s article could use improvement.
Write 1-3 sentences about the Featured Article discussion. Do you believe the concepts discussed were important components of an article on a university?
Pete Forsyth is a longtime leader in the volunteer Wikipedia editorial community. As a consultant, he designs and implements partnerships that bring academics and professionals together with Wikipedians to build encyclopedia content together and learn from one another.
Pete began writing Wikipedia articles in 2006, focusing on the history of his home state of Oregon; his work covers topics like the Columbia River, political elections, and historical figures. He founded WikiProject Oregon, a dynamic group of Wikipedians which coordinates collaborative projects and engages with local institutions.
As the Wikimedia Foundation’s first Public Outreach Officer from 2009–2011, Pete was a key architect of the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative. This broadly acclaimed project introduces the academic world to the Wikipedia production process; increasingly driven by volunteers, this model is now being replicated around the world. Smaller projects include helping small businesses effectively and ethically improve their coverage on Wikipedia.
Eleven Swiss university representatives visit the San Francisco Bay Area to learn how local universities are leveraging social media and scout news trends in Silicon Valley.
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@retosiffert Welcome to San Francisco! # fallstudytour
Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Show off your favorite photos and videos to the world, securely and privately show content to your friends and family, or blog the photos and videos you take with a cameraphone.
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RT @SwissEdSocial: 16% of new twitter users sign up on a mobile device. #fallstudytour
You're so very welcome. You inspire us! RT @CyberlearnSanF: End 1st Day. Busy tiring but rich & interesting! Tx again! http://yfrog.com/kgd79nvj Photo by swissnexSF on twitter
September 27, 2011 by meganmansell Day 1 of the study tour included a few words about swissnex San Francisco from Executive Director and Founder, Christian Simm, and some specifics on our work with universities as described by Vanessa Drigo.
RT @JuliaClaud: And here is the proof! Who can spot it? RT @SwissEdSocial We just saw @SwissAirLines fly over @Stanford #fallstudytour http://j.mp/rdLUKO
webdoc is a social platform empowering people to express themselves and interact with others online in ways that haven”t been possible until now. It”s a place where social conversation is rich and happens just like it does in real life: spontaneously around people, events and topics.
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@ webdoc really interesting tool, can’t wait to start using it. Thanks for the presentation! #fallstudytour
webdoc is a social platform empowering people to express themselves and interact with others online in ways that haven”t been possible until now. It”s a place where social conversation is rich and happens just like it does in real life: spontaneously around people, events and topics.
“
RT @SwissEdSocial: Social Media Study Tour Daily! http://t.co/KA49HRAq ▸ @epfl @guillaumeconne @meganmansell @ucberkeleynews #fallstudytour
RT @meganmansell: I 2nd that. Good to meet the neighbors, too! RT @SwissEdSocial: Thank u @mblevangelist for a great @blackboard presentation. #fallstudytour
Thursday was a city day, complete with the realities of San Francisco in the summer: sunshine one minute, fog the next. Sandrine Wenger, Alumni Network Coordinator for the University of Lausanne, was kind enough to create a delightful little photo montage of day four of the study tour. She documents our workshop at swissnex San Francisco with Michael Stoner, lunch at the ferry building, the subsequent bus (MUNI) ride, followed by an afternoon at UCSF’s Laurel Heights campus, where we met with Lena Shaw, the university’s social media marketing manager, and Sarah Paris, Director of Communications for the UCSF School of Medicine.
Markus Zinsmaier, Web Editor-in-Chief of the University of St. Gallen (HSG), gives us these reflective thoughts on day four as we near the end of the study tour:
It’s time to get real about social media
By Markus Zinsmaier
The communications landscape is changing. Institutions have lost control of the message as electronic channels and social media enable individuals to communicate rapidly with each other. Everything nowadays is connected to each other, says Michael Stoner in a workshop morning session @swissnexSF. It’s Day 4 of the swissnex Study Tour and it slowly feels like home.
Have you ever thought about multi-channel strategies, targeting multiple audiences and measuring success in social media? Sure you did, but Michael Stoner brings it all together and shows possible ways of organizing these strategies. After days of visiting the big shots in the Silicon Valley, hearing PR driven statements – but also discovering the spirit of the Bay Area, of the universities and companies – it’s refreshing to break social media down to its essential: realism, not hype.
To try it and to start with social media activities is actually a good starting point for any sort of engagement. But sometimes it’s also important to pick up a phone and make a call, says Stoner. Social Media is not a one-way street. Having a Facebook page is not a social media strategy. We know all this. We’ve heard it before. But using these tools, discovering new tools
(scvngr.com for instance), discussing problems on our way, we get closer to our own strategy. There’s no other way than doing it. Right on!
Swiss start-up Webdoc, which we learned about on day three, seems to have struck a chord. Here, study tour participant Guillaume Conne, Responsible for Information at the University of Lausanne, creates an engaging webdoc to summarize Lena Shaw’s presentation at UCSF. Remember to click on the webdoc below for the live version.
We have been busy putting together plans for the second year of our program and have a few announcements to make.
Pete Forsyth is a longtime leader in the volunteer Wikipedia editorial community. As a consultant, he designs and implements partnerships that bring academics and professionals together with Wikipedians to build encyclopedia content together and learn from one another.
#fallstudytour
#fallstudytour #citytour
