Communications and Marketing

Participate in Social Media

To get started, connect with the college's existing social media efforts and contribute your content. The hub is http://edmondscc.ning.com. Post your photos, events, and discussions here.

Connect with the college online:

EdmondsSphere — read and contribute to the college's blog
Facebook — like our page, post to the wall
LinkedIn — join our professional networking group, add your content
Ning — join our online community, add your content
Twitter — get the news in 140 characters or less, re-tweet
YouTube — watch and favorite our videos

You can also find the college at:

Digg — bookmark and highlight top stories
Flickr — check out our photos
RSS — be the first to get our news
Technorati — favorite the college’s blogs
Wikipedia — read the college history, add to Wikipedia
Yahoo — see our featured upcoming events

Best practices:

Contribute to the college’s existing efforts online rather than setting up new accounts. We want to unify and strengthen our online presence and reduce the management burden i.e. it’d be better to have one Edmonds CC Facebook page with 2,000 fans and 20 administrators than 2,000 Facebook pages each with just a few fans and a few administrators.
Touch base with College Relations before starting a new presence for the college online. Be open to suggestions. Email news@edcc.edu.
Familiarize yourself with the service you’d like to use by trying it out. Start a personal account and get comfortable with the site before you engage on a professional level. Dip your toe in — if it doesn’t feel comfortable get out.
If you do start a new online presence for the college keep it updated, be responsive, and delete it when you are done with it/no longer using it.

Edmondscc.ning — the college's own online community

Useful for: Sharing college news (events, photos, videos etc.) and club groups. Posting your own content. Connecting with people interested in interacting with our college. A low maintenance way to dip into to social networking (College Relations checks in and helps with updating/administration).
Drawback: It requires a separate login and users must be enticed to participate.
Recommendation: Give this a try. There’s untapped potential here and you may find useful tools.
Best practices:

Contribute. Start discussions. Post photos. Start groups.
Invite people to join.
Use the “invite all members” feature to promote events.
Recommend this to student groups/clubs.

Useful for: Professional/alumni networking.
Drawback: Fewer users. They may not be engaged.
Recommendation: Join the college's group, if you use LinkedIn. Start subgroups for your department, if you like.
Best practices:

Start a subgroup for alumni.
Contribute discussions, news, comments to the college's group.
Post volunteer opportunities/open houses/job listings.

Twitter

Useful for: Posting short news items to an interest group frequently.
Drawback: Needs to be updated often. Lots of spammers use it.
Recommendation: Follow the college's feed with your personal account, if you want, and help by retweeting content. Start your own feed only if you have regular content to get to a specific group and follow the best practices.
Best practices:

Follow the college's Twitter feed so we can more easily retweet your items.
If you are no longer using Twitter delete your account.
If your Tweets are for a select user group (a class or club) and may have information the general public doesn't need to know or see, set your Twitter to private.
Tweet no more than 3-5 times per day.
Follow your followers (unless they are spammers).

Blogging

Useful for: Self-publishing your news.
Drawback: Significant time commitment to set up, write and post regularly. Will anyone read the content?
Recommendation: Contribute to the college's blog EdmondsSphere. Email news@edcc.edu for more information. Start a blog if you have time to maintain it and feel it's worthwhile to get the information out.
Best practices:

Be sure to check in with College Relations before blogging in an official capacity.
Update often: at least once a week.
Link back to the college's blog.
Be sure to spell check!
Visit http://accessedcc.blogspot.com/ for a nice example of a department blog.

Facebook

Useful for: Connecting with lots of people casually.
Drawback: They just want to talk to their friends. May get too personal.
Recommendation: Contribute to the college's existing page (you can ask to be an administrator if you want to post content using the college’s avatar. Email news@edcc.edu or send us content to post for you if you’re not on Facebook or not using it professionally). Like the college’s page. Leave comments. Post to the wall.
Best practices:

Use Ning instead.
Send events to news@edcc.edu to post on the college Facebook page.
Advise clubs/student groups to use edmondsccning.com or to post their items to the college Facebook page.

Additional resources

Governor’s Office: New Media Workshop Presentations, Handouts and Videos
http://www.governor.wa.gov/news/media/workshops.aspx

Ning Group: Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education
http://www.classroom20.com/

LinkedIn Group: Web 2.0 for Higher Education
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1221447&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Understanding Consumer Preferences: ExactTarget’s “2009 Channel Preferences Survey”
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007330