Social media and mktg – Real-world experience

This is a bit of an orphan post — it’s mostly about social media and marketing, but also about conferences, ed tech, professional development, peer learning, and PLNs. While not strictly about open ed, it does pertain to my P2PU course and ed tech in general so I’m posting it here.

Over the last four months, I’ve been doing a project to use social media to promote a regional ed tech conference. This work has taught me a lot about social media and marketing and also made me a real believer in the power of personal learning networks. I’m going to summarize my findings here.

Strategy and Goals

The overall goals of this project were to 1) Market NCCE and its conference, 2) Make the conference experience richer for those who attend (help them build their PLN with NCCE as a part of it), and 3) Extend the conference experience to those who can’t attend f2f.

To further these goals, a lot of social media work was done in the months before the conference. (I got involved Dec. 1. The conference was March 1-4.) To coordinate and guide the activities, a social media calendar was developed early on to coordinate with other marketing activities. Messaging and various social media activities and goals were planned out week by week.

Tools Used (in approximate order of importance/usefulness)

  • Content repository – Conference wiki
    For this conference, we set up a wiki that would include a page for each of the workshops and sessions presented at the conference. (This is not a particularly unique thing to do, but this organization had not done it before and it’s something that I think is hugely useful to both attendees and presenters.) We also used this wiki as a sort of hub for all social media activity.
    We used a private-label installation of Wikispaces for this. One of the first things I did was to get a custom URL for this (as opposed to yournamegoeshere.wikispaces.com); we chose www.ncceconnect.org. “NCCE Connect” became a kind of brand for all the organization’s social media initiatives.
    I like Wikispaces for several reasons. First, it’s easy for beginners to use. This was a consideration since we planned to have all the presenters upload their materials. (In reality, this ended up being much harder and more time consuming than expected.) Wikispaces also allows for content to be embedded which is advantageous.
    We set up the wiki to be visible to everyone but editable only by pre-approved folks (staff, presenters). When the conference began, we were flooded by “join” requests from participants, and so turned off the “join” button. (Participants had no need to be able to edit, and I was a little worried about spam or unintentional damaging edits. In fact, we had no problem with this.) We did allow anyone to post on the discussion tabs as well as in chat areas.
    On each session page, we embedded a chat client to facilitate backchannel discussions. (We used Zoho for this.) This was something that some people were pretty concerned about, so we kept a close eye on it during the conference. I’m happy to say that we had no problems and people put it to good use.
    The wiki was definitely well-used by participants at the conference and others who could not attend. One interesting anecdote is that we heard requests/complaints from almost every session that did not have materials posted on the wiki (which was a small number).
  • Social networks
    • “Connectors” – Part of our whole push on social media was “build your personal learning network,” a big trend in ed tech these days. To encourage this (and help our marketing), we enlisted the help of some “official” connector people to help tweet and post about the conference. These were mostly early adopter-types already using social media and also “friends” of NCCE. We had a total of 12 of these, and about half contributed significantly. Interestingly, the strongest contributor was not actually at the conference but off-site. This person has a strong national following in ed tech social media and dramatically helped to expand the reach of the conference.
    • Twitter
      Other than the wiki, Twitter was the most successful tool we used. In one day alone at the conference, we had over 1,000 tweets tagged #ncce2011. (Identifying a tag early on and promoting it heavily was a key to success.)
      Not only was this a valuable networking tool for those who were at the conference, but it was used by many who were not able to attend. In fact, the National Teachers Alliance even picked up our feed and commented on its strength.
      I did all the “official” conference tweets myself. In the months leading up the conference, we did an average of 10 tweets per week. The week of the conference this number went into the hundreds. I used TweetDeck to preschedule and manage it all. I also used TweetDeck to monitor the buzz around the conference, answer questions, etc. The archived stream of tweets is an invaluable market research tool for future events as well.
    • Facebook
      We used Facebook as well, though to me, the marketing use of this tool is less intuitive than with other tools. While FB has an undeniably huge base of users, the marketing uses I’ve seen of it don’t have a lot of “value add.” Leading up to the conference, we used FB to post special event details, market the conference, post workshop “trailer” teasers, etc.
      We also did a couple special FB-only promotions. One was a giveaway of an interactive whiteboard from a sponsor. In order to be eligible, you had to “like” NCCE on FB and sign a card at the sponsor’s booth on the exhibit hall floor. I would say this promo had limited effect in terms of increasing our FB following since about half of people who submitted cards for the drawing never “liked” us on FB. (This may also have been due to poor signage.)
      The most successful promo we did on FB was a “Where do you love NCCE?” photo contest. This was a weekly contest in which people were invited to take a picture of themselves with an “I love NCCE” sign and post it on FB. The weekly prize was a $25 gift certificate, which was upped to $100 the week of the conference. We got some really cute photos of people for this, which were also projected at the conference keynote. This sparked good participation, was fun, and also produced some great crowd-sourced marketing material for future use.

      Interestingly, neither our Twitter or FB numbers grew significantly during the conference. I had expected them to skyrocket. This was probably due to lack of adequate promotion during the conference and people being consumed with the conference itself.
  • Curated content feed – Qrait
    We wanted to have a live feed of conference-related content (tweets, photos, videos, blog posts, etc.) but wanted to be able to curate it so we could hand pick particularly relevant content and to avoid any off-topic, inappropriate, or particularly negative comments. We evaluated several of the new content curation tools and ultimately selected Qrait, which we were very happy with. We projected the content feed on a big screen (using the undocumented /slideshow feature) and also embedded the feed on the front page of the wiki.
  • Photos – Flickr
    We used Flickr for photo sharing, setting up an account for our own photos and also a group for sharing.
    Some conference attendees also shared photos on Facebook.
  • Video
    We selected a few key sessions to video record for posting to the wiki. Some were live streamed as well. We also did some exhibit hall interviews with sponsors. We were able to use high school kids to capture the video. (Mixed results on this.) Again, this content will also be able to be used to promote in future years.

    • Ustream – We used Ustream for the sessions we live streamed and also archived those in Ustream. I had not used this tool much before and really loved it. I will use this more in the future.
    • Other – We also video’d some sessions that weren’t live streamed. I’d planned to put them in YouTube, but wasn’t aware of the 15 minute limit, so that didn’t work. We did use YouTube for the vendor videos and for some pre-conference promo videos. For the longer session videos, we ended up hosting them ourselves on our PHP Motion site and embedding on the wiki. I would rethink how I did this in the future (possibly UStreaming everything; in addition to being easy, it eliminates the need to do any post-production).
    • Hardware – I used the Logitech C905 webcam for UStreaming. I’m also using this for webinars and love it. For the non-streamed videos, we used Flip cameras which you can’t beat for ease of use. For converting MP4s to AVIs for easier editing, I used MPEG Streamclip, which I really like. Other than that, tripods are a must-have.
  • QR codes
    While not really “social media” per se, we used QR codes in several ways for this conference. We chose to do this not only because of their inherent usefulness but also because of their “cool” factor. For an ed tech conference in particular, they let us differentiate ourselves as being “ahead of the curve,” something that was commented on by several “early adopter” presenters and attendees.
    First we posted a QR code outside every session and workshop room with a link to the wiki page for that session.

    QR codes were also printed in the conference program.
    We also made t-shirts with QR codes to “follow us on Twitter” and “like us on Facebook.”

    We had additional ideas for QR codes (make-your-own-QR-code-business-card, scavenger hunt, etc.) that weren’t implemented because of staff time constraints.

Conclusions

Here are some big picture conclusions I took away from this project.

  1. All of this was a lot more work than I thought. Correspondingly, the positive buzz it created was great than I expected.
  2. Good organization is critical. If I didn’t have good systems for tracking and organizing stuff, file management, session numbering, etc., this would have been completely unmanageable.
  3. Communications with the rest of the team are an important part of social media. Everything an organization does is a social media opportunity, but if the person who’s doing social media isn’t in those conversations, the value will be lost. The social media person needs to have good timely information, and everyone else in the org needs to know what’s going on in social media.
  4. If you are an organization that focuses on a few key events (like a conference), the ability to use social media to have more of a 365-day-a-year presence is huge.
  5. As with all marketing, the key to successful social media is ADDING VALUE to your constituents (not promoting yourself).
  6. Personal learning networks are real and powerful.
  7. The future potential for social media is tremendous. My mind is buzzing with new ideas!

The peer thing

As a part of my working with P2PU, I have thought a lot about the peer aspect of learning and how to facilitate peer learning. Having been a more traditional “teacher” for many years, it requires some restraint on my part not to “teach,” but instead to be a peer learner (and sometimes teacher) with the others.

One thing I didn’t anticipate is that some of the participants in the course expect more traditional “teaching.” I’ve had conversations with several who have said that they value the expertise of the teacher and expected that in this course. I have been unsure of how to respond other than to try to reinforce the values of peer learning in this environment.

I need to come up with more ideas to foster peer learning. Our course participants have a wealth of experiences that I’d like to tap into more effectively. One thought is to ask participants to volunteer to lead a chat on a specific topic.

I’ve also had a couple suggestions to try some kind of team assignments. I think this could help the peer learning process, but I need more guidance on what this would look like. Because this course is very focused on marketing for each participant’s own business or enterprise, I have a hard time conceptualizing how this would work. (Also, frankly, the experiences I’ve had with team projects, from elementary to grad school, have mostly resulted in one person doing the work.)

I’ve also talked about the self-paced course idea with several people and have had varying responses. Basically, they fall into two camps: those who think it’s a great idea and those who are concerned that if there is no schedule, participants will lose motivation and structure and few will actually finish as a result. (I worry about this.)

One participant wrote to me this week (just past mid-way in the course) to ask if we could start the whole class over! I know that this was meant as a constructive suggestion and as a positive expression of dedication to the course, but it was also a little discouraging to me personally.

Another person suggested that the course be run on several tracks — one faster and one slower.

With both of these suggestions and a self-paced course in general, a big question I have is what role does the facilitator play in such a class. Any variety of these would seem to involve more work for the facilitator (and frankly as a volunteer gig, I am close to maxed out on how much time I have to spend on it as is. I am hoping that for future iterations of the course that others might offer to facilitate different “forks.”)

I suppose another option is to focus the facilitation on setting up the course and kicking it off, then spending little or no time ushering folks through their many and varied learning courses. I’m not sure that would be very successful though. I’ve participated in online courses where the facilitators greatly diminished their presence as the course progressed, and it wasn’t a very satisfying experience. But maybe that’s just the “teacher” in me needing to be involved. :)

Pacing yourself in online learning

There is a disturbing trend in U.S. education toward rigid pacing — “every student will be on page x on day y” — with a goal of controlling the “fidelity to the curriculum” and somehow ensuring quality. I think that’s a terrible idea and antithetical to learning, especially in terms of differentiating instruction for individual learner needs.

In my P2PU Entrepreneurial Marketing course, as with most other online courses I’ve participated in, I’m seeing that even less rigid pacing isn’t working well. The further we get into the course (we are now in week 4), the more the group is in different places. (This also happened in David Wiley’s first open ed class, where at some point the class revolted and insisted that we slow down to have more processing and reflection time.)

Like most online classes, my marketing course is organized by week. I’m wondering though what would happen if you organized a course like this by topic instead of week and just let everyone go at the pace that made sense for them.

My usual concern would be that doing so would make meaningful collaboration and peer learning very difficult. How can participants discuss a given topic if everyone’s at a different place? However, with the number of enthusiastic participants I have in this course, I don’t think that would be a problem. (Even now, people are still posting on week 1 forum assignments.)

Another concern I might have is that without the tension of a schedule to maintain, the course might lose momentum altogether with no one reaching the end. Again, this is less of a concern with the course I’m teaching now, but I think this may be a somewhat unique situation.

So my question for you — would a P2PU course organized by topic and not week and with total flexibility in terms of schedule work? What would be the advantages? What would be the disadvantages? Could this work?

Anyone want to try it?

End of week 3 in P2PU course

It’s the end of week 3 in our P2PU Entrepreneurial Marketing course.

Some things have gone better than expected; others less so.

First (and foremost to me :), I’ve learned a ton. Not only about open ed and peer learning, but also about marketing. It’s been a great experience.

At the onset of the course, I was a little concerned that the group was taking a more technical (less marketing) focus than I would hve chosen.  Of course, it’s a peer class so it’s really their choice, but the course seemed at risk of turning into a web dev class (of which there are many great ones on P2PU). This is something I’ve seen in other open ed environments — they tend to attract a “techie” crowd and so learning often leans that way. No problem with that except for folks who aren’t so inclined whom I’ve sometimes seen scared away as a result. At any rate, after an initial burst of that in the first week, it’s leveled off, and now we’re mostly talking about marketing stuff.

Participation has still been strong, but there was a noticeable drop-off between weeks 2 and 3. My theories about this are:

  • Most online courses drop off at this point. This course has done so less than others I’ve been involved with. Not sure of a way to prevent or slow this.
  • This course had an assignment for week 2 that was big and challenging and may have been a barrier. In the future, I have ideas about how to scale this assignment to be more manageable.
  • Communications have been a huge challenge. Several folks in the course have told me that they have turned off all notifications. And, I suppose, out of sight is out of mind. In the future, I would make an email address a requirement of the application and use that for broadcast (facilitator) messages instead of the built-in messaging, which frankly is not usable. (Yes, I know this is being reworked. Thank you.)

The one thing that I have been really disappointed in is any attempt at synchronous chats. Many have told me that this is important and is what makes other P2PU experiences work. It has not worked for most of our class. I have scheduled six chats now and have never had more than a few people (typically 2-3) on them (out of 40 in the class). I’ve tried different times, letting participants’ suggest times, tweeting, etc. with no better results. I think is in part a result of the general communication issues described above, as well as the general busyness of everyone’s lives….I don’t know what else. One thing I think I’d do in the future is to have a standard time every week (I’ve been trying different times), though that will be challenging for me with my travel schedule. I don’t have to be there though. I’m not sure.

Any suggestions on any of the above are much appreciated.

In general, I remain excited about P2PU and the broader application of peer learning combined with open content. My mind is spinning out lots of other course ideas. (I’m doing another project on teaching online that I will retain and open license the rights to. Would love to put it on P2PU though I might look to someone else to facilitate or co-facilitate.) There is so much potential to this model. And money to fund it too.

End of wk one in P2PU Mktg course

With week 1 of the Entrepreneurial Marketing course coming to a close, I thought I’d summarize some observations.

– Participation has been strong. A week before the course even started (just after notifying folks who were enrolled), people started posting and even setting up new forums for week 1 assignments and other topics.

– At the end of week 1, there have been 227 forum posts. Wow. Pretty much too many for me to keep up with.

– By my rough count, over 80% of the participants have posted something in week 1. That’s considerably higher than any other online learning experience I’ve been involved in the past. (Only one person dropped out before the start, which I invited if folks didn’t think they could commit to the whole course.)

– Communications, for me at least, have been a bit haphazard. The internal messaging system in P2PU is difficult for me to use/track (no archives, etc.), and I don’t have participant email addresses. (I asked for them but didn’t get enough to use them instead of the system messaging.) This has been difficult.

– I also suspect that with the large number of system notifications going out, folks are missing the broadcast messages. To try to address this, I’ve set up a “Course admin messages” thread in the forum. We’ll see if that helps.

– The synchronous chats didn’t work very well because of scheduling. There were no times when everyone or even a majority of folks could make it, so I picked two times that a good number of people said worked for them. The first session had only 2 participants (though it was a lively and valuable conversation). The second session I messed up the time on, but don’t think anyone else was there either. (If so, I humbly apologize for the mixup.) Apparently, many missed the message about the chat times. (See above.)

We’re trying the chat thing again for next week. (This time I did a sign-up in advance to see if we can get a critical mass.) We also had a suggestion to try an audio and/or video Skype session, which we may do.

I made the chat sessions optional so it’s also possible that there just isn’t a lot of interest in them. I’m not sure.

– I am feeling like the number of folks in the course is, as I suspected, too many. But maybe that’s just a reflection of my need to be “on top of” everything, which may not be important in a class like this. I guess we’ll have to wait to the end and see how everyone else feels. :)

Anyway, I’ve learned a lot already and hope others have too. Stay tuned for more reflections.