I’m actually in one of the three Social Media classes being taught on campus this semester (for the Tech Comm MS program) and though I’m proud we made the list i wish we could do more. I certainly don’t think social media is going anywhere but in the end that almost doesn’t matter. Can we find a tool that will provide information, collect feedback and facilitate positive change? Whether it’s via Facebook, Twitter, email or postcard- if we demonstrate that this is an open channel, folks will use it. To that end we better also make sure someone is on the other end of that channel, listening. Or all we’re going to do is alienate folks.

As others have said here, we can certainly aggregate campus blogs but we may have a hard time finding people willing to go “on the record”. The penalty for “bad” postings can be harsh. We also have to balance the sharing of timely information with appropriate or “approved” information, which can be especially difficult with so many people contributing to the conversation. Situations like the early announcement of the chancellors confirmation show how volatile, and powerful, social networking can be.

We need to ask ourselves some pretty pointed questions. What are our goals for the Facebook page? What benefit are we providing to the end user who visits the page? What incentive do they have to return? Can they already get this information somewhere else? Why should they come here for it? What sort of return are we hoping to gain for ourselves by creating this presence?

I think the most successful social media implementations are one’s that leverage the technology to create a two-way conversation with their end users. I would love to see Facebook leveraged as a way to gather students feedback. If the page comes across as ‘official’ and they know we are listening, they will talk.
Imagine if we gave them the opportunity to post suggestions for improvements to their everyday gripes (the my pack portal, parking, etc)…
Just imagine the kind of innovation that could come from it.

With Facebook I think there is a lot that we can do besides just merging groups or starting one central one. There are some really neat companies out there these days that are creating some cool applications that takes Facebook to the next level and in some cases even merge what we are already doing into one place.

They already let you link facebook and twitter to so many things and now it is becoming even more popular to use Facebook Connect as a single login for many sites and programs.

I have been working with a company for a while that has a SnapCMS platform on which they intergrate our current databases into Facebook and allow for some pretty cool stuff. If you have seen the Pink Ribbon application on FB, these are the same guys.

I think we really have to start thinking out of the box on how to take social media to the next level and capitalize on what is next to come. I think we are just getting started as more and more companies are moving to Web 2.0 technology.

Things are happening here at NCSU!

I think making our Facebook page more dynamic, and adding our new research blog, will help in continuing to build our social media presence – not just in higher ed, but beyond.