SMUG | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Why SMUG?

So how do you choose what to name a new institution of higher learning?

Stanford University was named after a former California governor’s son, who had died of typhoid fever at age 15.
Yale University, which was founded to train ministers and was called Collegiate School, was eventually named after benefactor Elihu Yale.
Harvard University likewise was named after an early benefactor.

When choosing a name for a new on-line University providing social media education, I didn’t have any benefactors to consider. (Not that I’d be above selling the naming rights!) Social Media University, Global was the first name that popped into my head. But I did a little brainstorming and identified some other options, including:

Social Media University – Technical (SMUT)
Social Network Institute of Practical Education (SNIPE)
Public Relations Institute for Social Media (PRISM)

The first one’s an obvious non-starter, and though the second reflects the hands-on nature of the proposed curriculum, somehow the acronym doesn’t quite fit. And while social media definitely have public relations applications, the third name’s focus on PR is too narrow.

SMUG seems to fit because the curriculum will be covering social media in all its varieties, from blogs to social networking sites to microblogging to YouTube and everything in between. And seeing as I’ve made friends in Facebook from across the U.S. and as far away as Singapore, Egypt, Australia, Norway, Panama and Thailand (and that it is a world-wide web), the “Global” part isn’t an overstatement, either.

I’m open to other suggestions: it’s not like I’ve printed a bunch of letterhead or put a lot of work into the school logo. And considering that SMUG was established about 15 hours ago, we don’t have an entrenched history to overcome. Renaming wouldn’t be a problem.

But meanwhile, if anyone has an artistic bent and would like to design an official SMUG seal, I’d love to see what you can do. I’m thinking something like an old English crest or a round seal would be neat, with the following text elements and suitable graphics:

Social Media University — Global * SMUG * Established 2008

Whoever designs the winning logo gets a 50 percent tuition discount. Then again, 50 percent of free is…

Social Media University, Global

In December, I had the pleasure of presenting a workshop at the Association Forum of Chicagoland, as part of that organization’s Knowledge Lab. I called the course Facebook 101. There were lots of great questions and comments, far beyond what we could get to in that brief session. For several of the questions, I joked that they would be covered in the Facebook 201 course.

I’ve also found that some of my most popular posts have been those that offer practical advice on how to get started in social media. My 12-Step Program for PR Pros has even been edited and repackaged for Association Executives and veterinarians. I reflected on this as I traveled to Phoenix for the Frost & Sullivan conference, after having said I was planning a series of how-to, step-by-step posts about using Facebook for qualitative research, I changed my mind. It seemed it was time to develop a more structured approach to these tutorials. If a 12-step introduction to the social media field has been helpful to many, perhaps a thorough, detailed exploration of particular subjects would be even better.

So to have a little fun with this I’ve decided — in keeping with my family’s homeschooling experience and the disruptive nature of Facebook, blogs and social media — to establish a new online institution of higher education. I’m calling it:

Social Media University, Global

(or SMUG, for short.)

In some future posts we’ll cover:

Why SMUG? How is it different?
Administration
Applying for Admission
Advanced Placement
Accreditation
Curriculum
Faculty
Tuition and Financial Aid
Attendance Policies
Auditing Classes
Majors and Minors
Graduation

I’ll be mixing those posts about SMUG’s structure with some actual coursework. And the very next post will be Facebook 101: Introduction to Facebook.

12-Step Social Media Program for PR Pros

NOTE: With the founding of Social Media University, Global (SMUG), this post has been incorporated into the curriculum as Social Media 101. Click the link above to learn more.

The Arthur W. Page Society annual conference this week was certainly eye-opening for me. I wrote here about how much I was anticipating this conference, and if anything it exceeded my expectations.

The feedback on our social media panel was positive, too, and it’s been great having several of the Page members “friend” me in Facebook and also join the Page Society group.

One thing I said during our panel was that

for communications professionals, being unfamiliar with social media tools borders on malpractice.

Think about it: Technorati tracks about 100 million non-spam blogs, and MySpace has more than 100 million active users. That’s also roughly the number of video streams served by YouTube each day. And Facebook, with 41 million members, has added a million a week, every week this year. This is mainstream activity in our society for ordinary people; we who communicate for a living on behalf of our organizations certainly need to understand the implications of these media. Far from “costing our employers dear” by involvement in Facebook, we actually cost them much more if we don’t know about all of the new means of communicating; not just “getting our message out” but actually engaging in conversations with customers, suppliers and employees.

Please note that you can take every one of these steps without spending a dime and without involving your IT department. Procrastination is your chief enemy. Take one step each day (starting by reading the rest of this post as step 1), and within two weeks you will have a good preliminary familiarity with social media. Then you’ll be able to start thinking creatively about how social media can be used on behalf of your company or clients. And you’ll be aware of how those with agendas contrary to your organization’s may be using social media.

So, with apologies to 12-step programs in which people have banded together to battle addictions, here is my 12-step social media program public relations professionals can join.

Admit that you have a problem. See above. Unfamiliarity with social media is a serious gap for PR professionals.
Browse some blogs, both to get a feel for the blog culture and to learn how blogs work. This backgrounder in Wikipedia will be helpful. As for blogs you should explore, any of those listed in my blogroll (at right) are good places to start.
Check out TheNewPR/Wiki. This is a great resource for white papers, lists of CEO blogs, sample corporate blogging policies, blog directories, business podcast listings, and much more.
Go watch three “Plain English” videos: RSS in Plain English, Wikis in Plain English and Social Networking in Plain English. These will be among the best few minutes you’ll invest in your social media education.
Get an RSS reader/aggregator. If you use Safari for Macintosh or Internet Explorer 7 for Windows, you have an RSS reader built into your browser already. Google Reader is a great free online RSS aggregator. If you have a laptop and would like to be able to read your feeds when you’re not connected to the Net (like when you’re on the bus), you might want to get a standalone reader like NetNewswire (Mac) or NewsGator (Windows), or one of the Attensa products (they’re free).
Subscribe to some blogs. You can subscribe to mine here, or as you are checking out others, look for the RSS or XML links, or for the universal feed logo.
Get a free Gmail or Yahoo! email account. You’re about to start actively engaging in social media as you follow the next steps in the AAse program, and using a non-work email for blogging and commenting is a good practice.
Over 90 percent of blog readers are “lurkers” and aren’t contributing to the conversation. That’s fine, but your next step is to comment in some blogs. If you find the information on a blog post helpful, say so in the comments. If you don’t understand something or have questions, ask them in the comments.
Get a Facebook account and a MySpace profile. I’ve devoted a whole section of this blog to business-related uses for Facebook. I expect I will be writing a bunch more in the future. If you subscribe to my blog by RSS you’ll get these sent directly to your reader automatically. Or if you follow me on Twitter (see below) you’ll get more cryptic alerts. If you friend me, you’ll see some of the Facebook groups I’ve joined, or if you join my Professional Contacts group we can have conversations about social media within Facebook, and I can use that group to send special alerts to you through the Message All Members function. Once you’re in Facebook, spend some time exploring applications. Find high school and college classmates. Upload some photos and videos, and tag yourself and some friends in them. Then watch your News Feed and your mini-feed, and begin to see some of the networking power. I much prefer Facebook over MySpace, but I still need to spend some time with MySpace because so many other people do. It’s too big to ignore. And especially if you work for a company that needs to reach a younger demographic, it’s too big for you to ignore, too. Explore a variety of social networking sites like this so you understand their similarities and differences.
As Sylvester’s prey would say, “Twy Twitter.” Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that lets you follow the actions of others and lets them follow you. Posts are limited to 140 characters. You can get alerts on your cell phone by text message, through your Twitter home page, or both. And you can send “Tweets” by cell phone, too. Here’s my Twitter account. As I’ve said previously, Twitter could be a great way to activate a crisis communications group.
Share videos and photos with the broader world. YouTube and Flickr are the market leaders in these areas. In Facebook you can share photos and video with just your friends. YouTube and Flickr make it possible for anyone to access and share these digital resources.
Get your own blog. WordPress.com is free. So is Blogger. I prefer the former, and use it for this blog. One of the main benefits of WordPress is the Akismet spam protection; I’ve been protected from more than 18,000 spam comments in the last year. You can incorporate your YouTube videos (as well as others you find interesting) in your blog, and likewise can embed photos, like this one of my family at my in-laws’ 50th anniversary:

And in WordPress.com you can make your blog private if you want, and not available for search engines or even visible without your permission. So you can experiment without worrying about other people seeing your blog, if you just want to explore.

But if you follow step 12 and create a public blog you will be doing the social media equivalent of the 12th step of Alcoholics Anonymous:

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I’m not promising spiritual awakening as a result of getting involved in social media, although here’s a blog with spiritual awakening potential. But as you learn about social media and its implications for PR and corporate communications, engagement in the discussion through your blog, or by inviting your co-workers to join social networking sites like Facebook, is a way to”carry this message” about social media to other professional communicators. As the cutesy cliché puts it, this is how you can “pay it forward.”
Members of addiction-fighting 12-step programs find it necessary to meet regularly to support, encourage and challenge each other to stay sober. By following the 12 steps of the AAse Social Media Program for PR Pros you will have this built-in support network for continued learning and growth.

But you may find you need a new kind of 12-step group to help with your Facebook addiction.