100 Best Professors Who Blog | Online College Tips - Online Coll. Academic Commons. 100 Serious Twitter Tips for Academics | Best Colleges Online. EDU. Brian Mathews, The Ubiquitous Librarian: Who else is using Twitt. There has been a growing interest in Twitter by librarians—actually by people in general.
Over the past two months I’ve noticed a surge in new people joining the service. It was reported at ACRL 2009 that “only librarians are using Twitter” in the context that students were not. I must humbly disagree. This is a perfect example of the problem of over generalization (which I am guilty of all the time!) And the need to keep it local. I counted over two hundred GT student accounts. Perhaps that is considered small compared to a population of 18,000 but 200+ people using a still-emerging technology is huge. Libraries & Twitter: that’s an old conversation. I like the idea that you can get all these little news blurbs from different people on campus.
One of the things I plan to do at UCSB is to see where these different campus units are in terms of emerging tech and then trying to lend a hand in helping them become better communicators. The main problem with university social media branding strategy is this: There is no strategy. Universities have not caught up yet. They are unaware of the benefits that a university-wide, coherent social media strategy can bring. A latin phrase, some colored logos, and Newsweek rankings seem to be the extent of the .edu’s marketing and community plan.
Here’s the current situation: Each department finds their own time, staff and money to design online social networking platforms their current students and alumni are requesting. If they don’t construct something (however haphazardly), students take it upon themselves to construct a Facebook group or a Ning for the department. No thought is applied to coherent design interdepartmentally or globally. At barcampphilly this fall I sat in on a talk given by Geoff DiMasi of P’unk Avenue . {*style:<b> Ten Social Media Brand Strategies for The Ivory Tower </b>*} . Don’t leave the departments out in the cold. .