6 Things We've Learned from Social Media Mashups

We've been doing a lot of work in this area with a number of universities at this point, and we've learned a lot. The funny part is that none of what we've learned has to do with how a mashup is managed, designed or created. It all has to do with how it provides VALUE to the university. These 6 things are the biggest factors that affect the success of your mashup.

1. You have to promote them. Like any other page on your university website, if you don't help people get there, they won't. A SMASHUP is no different. You can't create this wonderful interactive page, and not promote it in your website. It just doesn't work that way. You have to TELL people how to get there. Create a cool image like YSU did, and put it in your university website footer. You'll easily promote it from EVERY page!

2. You have to have quality content. Do you care about content that isn't relevant to you? You can't expect students to care either. This kind of goes without saying, so I'll move on to the next one.

3. You have to have a lot of content. It's ok to start small. Maybe you just have a couple official university-wide accounts that are done really well. That's great. But, it can't and won't last forever. Showing that you have a lot of active accounts that provide a lot of content shows that your university is dedicated to social media in a big way. People want and like to see that.

4. You have to have frequent updates. Don't you love Twitter accounts that have a last update of 265 days ago? Me neither. If you're going to do it, do it right and keep those suckers updated. Show how you interact with students. Give away a t-shirt from the department every now and then. Keep people engaged, otherwise, you're doing it wrong.

5. You have to have a plan. Are you going to incorporate more location based social media and have students check in on campus? Are you going to have a Twitter contest? Have an idea of what content works where. For example, maybe for all student organization events, you're going to create the event on Facebook, then use Facebook and Twitter to promote it. But all content does not work in all media. Save the long editorials for blogs. Use photos on Facebook. Use Twitter for quick updates, alerts and reminders. The worst is when schools connect all accounts together, then none are original. Imagine a mashup with a Facebook feed and a Twitter feed on the same page, and all the recent updates are the exact same content. If this is you, you're doing it wrong.

6. You have to have standards. Ever heard of a social media policy? You should have one, especially if your university is one of those that is constantly discovering new rogue accounts from different departments and entities across campus. Some of the schools we work with require all accounts to follow a set of standards before they can be featured on the social media mashup. It's a good way to just set a baseline for acceptable conduct and make sure everyone is on the same page.

What are some of the things you've learned through your social media mashup or just working with social media at the university level in general?

Kent State University Launches SMASHUP

Check it out here: http://social.kent.edu/

KSU will be featuring a monthly account on the homepage - this month, they're featuring the Fashion school, which is one of the top in the U.S.! Also be sure to check out their social media directory - they have more than 100 social media accounts, and are constantly adding more. This is definitely a social media friendly school - and we have loved working on this project with them.

What do you think?

Leave us feedback in the comments - we love reading them!

University of New Haven Launches SMASHUP

I'm so happy to announce that the University of New Haven has announced the official launch of their SMASHUP. I've been anxiously awaiting the unveiling of this website. This is our fifth university SMASHUP to go live. Kent State University will be the next.

See it at http://social.newhaven.edu/

As part of this particular project, we also worked with UNH to develop a new social media policy for all stakeholders to follow, which will promote safe use and best practices in social media.

As part of the SMASHUP website implementation, we worked very closely with UNH to ensure consistent branding in regards to the university website, emphasis on main "official" social media accounts, and integration of all university-wide social media into one interactive hub.

Click here for more about this particular project.

Is your university interested in becoming a part of this elite group of universities that are setting the standard not only for university social media and social media mashups, but social media mashups as a whole for any sector? Send me a note at kbrosious AT allofe.com.

The Latest: Our SMASHUP Partnership with Kent State University

We recently partnered with Kent State University for our latest university SMASHUP project. The SMASHUP will serve as the university's social media hub, giving students, parents, faculty, staff and the community a place to interact with the university through social media.

The Kent State SMASHUP, or social media mashup, will aggregate all of the university's social media accounts in one place, giving all accounts from across the university the exposure they deserve. KSU wanted a way to make its social media more interactive and to bring its online brand to a whole new level. Since the university already uses a lot of social media, this is really a natural progression for it to make what it's already doing a lot more successful and the university's social media will reach a lot more people.

Kent State is the sixth university that has selected SMASHUP as its choice of social media mashup. Kent State joins Youngstown State University, Northern Illinois University, DePaul University, Our Lady of the Lake University and the University of New Haven (launching soon) as AllofE's latest SMASHUP implementation.

You can find out more about the SMASHUP project at http://higheredcms.info/SMASHUP/home or send Katie an email at kbrosious@allofe.com.

Higher Ed Social Media: Help Wanted

It’s no doubt that social media has played a prominent role in higher education within the past few years. As each year passes, institutions have gone from hiking aboard the new “trend” to utilizing social media as a tool for marketing, alumni, and prospective students.

In 2010, a study done by CASE, mStoner, and Slover-Linett Strategies Inc., showcased their findings on if constituents are using their institutions social media, what barriers are keeping institutions from using social media, and most importantly, how is social media success measured?

In March 2011 Slover Linett Strategies Inc., mStoner and CASE conducted the Second Comprehensive Study of Social Media Use by Schools, Colleges and Universities via e-mail to 18,000 representative CASE members, of which 951 replied. The results may not surprise anyone but they do show that universities are realizing the importance of not just using social media but using it in the best way possible to reach their social media goals.

Almost every institution is using it.
Though not too surprising, only 4% of institutions aren’t using it. Almost all institutions have jumped into social media. What arises from all institutions using the same types of social media is a lack of originality and driving competition from each institution to stand out. According to the study, 84% of institutions use social media due to competition from peer institutions. An institution needs to have something different from all the rest of its competitors, they need to be ahead of the curve.

Why they're using it – Alumni & Branding.
While most might think that institutions are using their social media to connect with current students or recruit, the big reasons for using it are Alumni and Branding. The study shows that Alumni ranks first in goals of social media with 30% saying it's “Quite a bit” of their social media goal and a whopping 54% say it's “Extensively” part of it.

Branding falls second to Alumni, 40% quote it as being “Quite a bit” of their goal and 35% say it’s “Extensively" part of it. Branding is also the number one motivator for institutions in using social media. Institutions feel that they need to sustain and protect their brand “Quite a bit” (40%) and “Extensively” (20%).

If sustaining and protecting their brand is so important to institutions, why aren’t they using their social media to its fullest potential? Why get lost in the ordinary, mundane social media sites. By having a centralized hub with all of your social media, branded to an institution's exact site, their brand is not only sustained and protected, but they’re a step above the rest.

Facebook: favored by the majority.
Facebook is the front-runner in social media for institutions. Not only do nearly all institutions use it (96%), but most feel that it’s the best tool to help meet their social media goals (91%) and that it’s the most successful in meeting these goals (87%). Only 43% use Twitter to help meet their goals and only 27% consider it the most successful in meeting these goals. Since Facebook is the most widely-used platform, it would be advantageous to any institution to have all the department’s pages accessible on one main page in some sort of mashup. This would be an easy way for a user to visit a single page to connect, share, and like for every department within an institution.

Main basis for success – number of touches.
The most interesting data from the survey is what institutions are using to measure the success of their social media. Without an easy way to determine an ROI, institutions are using the number of touches (number of friends, click-throughs, participation, etc.) to determine how successful their social media is.

Based on this criteria it’s hard for an institution to be successful if no one is seeing the social media they are putting out there. Many display their main accounts on the main page of their website, but what about different departments? Users often have to search for a social media directory (if there is one) or find the social media themselves.

If all an institution's social media was on one page, users would be engaged, able to see all social media available, and pick which is most useful to them. It would increase the number of click-throughs, likes, and friends, and would engage them to participate in multiple social media accounts by only visiting one page.

Staffing considered barrier to success.
Although many institutions find their social media to be successful, (62%-somewhat successful and 22%-very successful), there are still many barriers that they feel inhibit their overall success. According to the study, the two top barriers institutions encountered were due to staffing. Staffing for day-to-day content management was felt to be the biggest obstacle in being successful with 28% of institutions saying it was “quite a bit” of a barrier and 22% saying it was “extensively” a barrier.

Staffing for site development came in a close second. The same percent of institutions believed it was “quite a bit” of a barrier, but only 16% said it was an “extensive” barrier.

Schools often don’t have the staffing ability to train, create, and manage social media. If an institution does have someone working on social media it’s usually only one person, not a group of people. According to the study 41% of institutions have only one person working on social media at least 25% of the time. Even more disheartening is the fact that 85% have no person whose job is to work on social media 100% of the time. What happens when that one person who works on social media is gone or the person working on social media needs to use 100% of their time on something else, does the social media of the institution stop? In the social media world, nothing ever stops and every day things are changing and moving forward.

What institutions need is a simpler way to manage their social media, something that anyone can learn and use easily.

What social media policy?
Half of all institutions using social media don’t have a social media policy. While not stated in the study it’s easy to assume why. As stated above most institutions don’t have the staffing needed to create a policy. While there are many policies out there that can be borrowed from it’s often difficult to fit it to an institution’s exact needs.

With nearly all institutions using social media, policies need to be enacted to regulate their social media. It is an institution’s voice and it needs to be protected just as much as the institutions brand and image (something nearly all universities have a policy on.)

In Closing
This study shows that institutions are seeing the need for more organized, individualized social media. Not only do they need to use it, but they want to use it to protect and sustain their brand. They want to be successful by the standards they set in their social media goals. They want to be in charge of their social media and not hire out. But they can’t seem to find a way to do all this with limited man-power.

That’s the reason SMASHUP was created. It gives institutions the tools they need to make their social media the best it can be. Institutions have freedom and control over their social media with a little outside help. It creates a place for all an institution's social media, making it easier to interact with and more successful. SMASHUP is easy to use and easy to learn, cutting back on the time and man-power needed to sustain it. It gives an institution a big boost in the right direction, all while protecting their brand.

DePaul Interview About SMASHUP

Recently I had the chance to speak with Kris Gallagher from DePaul University on how their SMASHUP has changed social media for their school. DePaul’s SMASHUP was launched in October and is one of the first live SMASHUP sites. Kris oversees the social media for the school and manages the SMASHUP.

Q: Why did you want a SMASHUP for your university?
Kris: “We had a lot of people doing social media at DePaul. We maintained a directory page but it was not exciting visually. The SMASHUP made a live feed from everything, showed the most recent posts and the video was much more accessible. By displaying content as it is done in SMASHUP someone could immediately say, ‘Yeah, that’s useful to me.'"

Q: What benefits have you experienced from having a SMASHUP?
Kris: “The SMASHUP is a good central place to have all the University’s social media. It has made the maintenance much easier. People really like it. Also with Google Analytics [integrated] on the SMASHUP it’s now easy to track what’s being looked at - how many visitors the site has, which tools are being used the most and where traffic is coming from.”

Q: What do you like most about SMASHUP?
Kris: “It’s easy to update. You log in, put the info in, and you’re ready to go. Even if I’m gone I can turn it over to someone else and they can manage it easily.”

Q: How often do you make changes to the DePaul SMASHUP? How much time would you say you spend on the SMASHUP monthly?
Kris: “We only make changes about once a month. Mostly we just make sporadic changes when we need to add a new group or change the focus on the main page to a different group. On average it only takes about 3 minutes to make a change. “

Q: Are you using your social media sites more frequently because of SMASHUP?
Kris: “No, but we are pushing out the SMASHUP through social media. By using the SMASHUP we are able to gather and promote information faster and more broadly than before. And now people are more aware of our social media sites.”

Q: Have you pushed the SMASHUP out to your students? If so, how have they responded?
Kris: “We’ve pushed it out through Social Media and there have been no complaints. Students are used to seeing things in this way, so no news is good news. They aren’t complaining about how behind the university is. “

Q: What expectations did you have for SMASHUP? Did it meet them? Exceed? etc?
Kris: “One of our biggest expectations was to create more traffic. SMASHUP has exceeded that. We’ve had about 1700 page visits with each person viewing two or more pages, spending an average of 2 or more minutes on each. SMASHUP has increased the exposure rate. Another expectation was to improve on the directory visually and now with a SMASHUP it looks sharp.”

Q: Do you feel that your SMASHUP is unique to your university? Why?
Kris: “It’s unique in a way; there are other universities that have it but it shows how our university is using our social media compared to other universities. The SMASHUP fits well with our website and by working with the design team at AllofE we were able to incorporate our logo and colors to reflect our overall university site.”

Universities Don't 'Get' Social Media....Yet

Well, that got your attention, didn't it? There is so much buzz surrounding the university social media mashup concept, but there is a huge disparity in how universities are actually using social media and promoting those accounts. With all the buzz about social media, many schools make 'Social Media Library' pages or directories, but then do nothing more with them. It's almost as if it's a 'necessary evil.' Glancing at a university site, it often isn’t obvious what, if any, types of social media they use. We know many have some social media, but how much? And are they using it the best way possible?

What is obvious is that more and more universities are opening up to the world of social media. There are a vast array of social media sites that can be used. For example, a university athletics department can simultaneously tweet scores of an athletic game on Twitter, post video of the game on YouTube, and post pictures of the game Flickr. The possibilities of what can be covered, and how it can be used, are endless.

What a university SMASHUP (social media mashup) can do is take this one step further and bring all these forms of social media together. One example is on the DePaul SMASHUP site -- you can check upcoming game times, get updates of basketball scores on Twitter, and view YouTube videos from those games all on one page!



Searching many universities websites to find social media pages is tricky and can become quite frustrating sometimes (especially ones that don't even have a search bar!). But after finding a school has sufficient social media to proceed with, it is very exciting to tell them about SMASHUP. It’s even more exciting when a university already has a social media link page but doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. Imagine what that page would look like within the SMASHUP concept instead!

Finding qualified schools for the SMASHUP project may not be so easy, but once found, I'm not having any problem finding ones that are interested! So far, many schools have shown a ton of interest and I can't wait to see how many more would be willing to join in on this amazing opportunity!

And so the search continues. What universities do you think have great social media? Do any of them have what it takes to become a social media "master" by using SMASHUP?

4 SMASHUPs now LIVE!

The Youngstown State, DePaul, NIU and OLLU SMASHUPs are all now LIVE! Here are the links:

• YSU: http://web.ysu.edu/smashup/home
• DePaul: http://depaul.edu/smashup
• NIU: http://smashup.niu.edu/
• OLLU: http://smashup.ollusa.edu/

These four universities wanted a more effective way to display their social media content, and wanted to set the bar very high, becoming leaders in university social media management. We partnered with these four universities to create a central branded hub for all of their social media activity that displays content in more interactive and interesting ways - pulling in the audience, and keeping them on the university site - instead of sending them to other locations.

This has been a fun project so far and I'm looking forward to working with more universities in the coming months.

NIU SMASHUP goes LIVE!

NIU social media initiatives find common home (via NIU Today)

As the Internet and its applications continue to evolve at a dizzying speed, most websites now offer a veritable smorgasbord of tiny icons that link users to various social media pages.

NIU now has risen above the din of square-shaped logos clamoring for attention.

The university’s Web Communications Team this morning launched smashup.niu.edu, a one-stop shop for all of NIU’s social media initiatives, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and foursquare.

SMASHUP is a social media expansion of the Internet concept of “mashup,” the word for a website that combines data feeds from several sources.

Read the full release from "NIU Today" here.

DePaul University SMASHUP Launches

The DePaul University SMASHUP is now LIVE! Check it out here: http://depaul.edu/smashup.

The university SMASHUP will replace a social media listing of all of DePaul's social media accounts (which can be seen here: http://www.depaul.edu/socialMedia/index.asp).

Pretty cool, huh?

You can click on the picture to the left to see some screenshots of the SMASHUP - or better yet, go to the SMASHUP itself.

Seeing a transformation like this makes me wonder why any university would put stagnant links to their social media accounts on a page. To me, it really defeats the purpose of the dynamic, fluid nature of social media.

Read the Press Release here.

YSU SMASHUP Launch - The First of Four University-Wide SMASHUPs to Launch

Today is the day! Today marks the launch of the Youngstown State University SMASHUP, the first of four university-wide SMASHUP Beta projects that will launch over the next few weeks.


You may view the SMASHUP website at http://web.ysu.edu/smashup/home.

YSU’s SMASHUP site will help increase interaction between the university and current, past and future students and other stakeholders, bring more attention on their university, and catapult them into a leadership position in university social media, said Ross Morrone, YSU's web developer and creative director for new media.

"With so many options out there when it comes to Social Media, it seems redundant to post the same tweet or status over and over. You also need to understand that with so many departments we have several Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube accounts." Morrone said.

"Mashups will allow our users to go to one place a read all university tweets, watch our newest YouTube videos and connect with us on Facebook. It doesn't get much easier or cooler than that."

AllofE Solutions worked to design, code, implement and analyze YSU's social media initiatives to create a customized solution to increase the effectiveness of YSU's social media.

Looking forward, AllofE will be launching three other SMASHUPs for DePaul University, Northern Illinois University and Our Lady of the Lake University over the next few weeks.

For more information about the SMASHUP project, please contact Katie Brosious at kbrosious@allofe.com.

Higher Education and Social Media Mashups

Mashup: a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services (See the Wikipedia article).

Put an emphasis on the social media and out comes the SMASHUP. To us, that means: a branded, customized, and high-end social media site to aggregate all of a university social media activity and accounts into one well-designed central hub.

Its main purpose is content aggregation and social media integration. It displays actual feeds on the site - not just a list of 20 Twitter accounts, 30 Facebook pages, 10 blogs, etc. It keeps users on your site longer, and gives them what they want in a way that forces them to do less work to get there.

A SMASHUP streamlines a university's social media accounts, is more user-friendly and best of all, it sets your university apart. It's completely branded to fit with the university's brand. It's fluid and it's always current. You're already tweeting, facebooking, blogging, YouTube-ing, etc., so why not make those accounts more effective? Why not make it easier for yourself to put it in front of your audience, students, alumni?

Read tweets without going to Twitter. Check out Facebook updates without going to Facebook. Watch YouTube videos without going to YouTube. Look at Flickr photos without going to Flickr. That's what a SMASHUP does. It aggregates everything and puts it in front of your audience. You're already updating these accounts frequently. A mashup makes the deployment easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be launching four university-wide SMASHUPs. We're really excited about it. And you should be too. Stay tuned!

We've Chosen Four Universities to Work with on SMASHUP Beta Projects!

We'll be working with four selected universities on SMASHUP beta projects to create a social media mashup site for each university. The selected universities are Youngstown State University, Our Lady of the Lake University, DePaul University and Northern Illinois University. We selected universities that display attributes that contribute to social media success.

We're excited to work with universities that have a pioneering spirit and a commitment to setting an example in university social media and related best practices. Social Media success has to do with flexibility, openness, enthusiasm and ability to make decisions quickly.

The SMASHUP beta project will create custom high-end social media mashup sites that will be branded consistently with the university website. We will work with the university to analyze, design, code and implement the site that will become the central hub for all university-wide social media initiatives.

For more information about this project and future Social Media Mashup [SMASHUP] Projects, please contact Tracy Kemp at tkemp@allofe.com or send us a Tweet @AllofE_HE.

We'll be releasing links to the SMASHUP sites as they go live over the next few weeks - so stay tuned. We're very excited about this project!

Social Media sites get organized with SMASHUP

by Meagan Smith

Social networking has become increasingly important throughout the 21st century. Social media web pages, known as social sites, have been getting more and more attention universally for their ability to help users gain recognition for individual talents, build important relationships whether for their career or personal life, and help them gain valuable networking resources.

For universities, social media has quickly become the focus for marketing and recruiting purposes and can allow students following their university stream to keep up on recent events, news, and announcements happening around their university. Universities can use social sites like Facebook and YouTube as a free source for marketing themselves and increasing their brand recognition to potential students or employees. For instance, instead of having to go through the expensive process of purchasing and burning DVDs to get your school marketing campaigns out, you can simply upload your videos onto YouTube!

University twitter accounts allow students and employees to find people who are key influential members in their community and follow their tweets. If you or someone from your university is an active member in the community you can get your word out to students who are interested in what you have to say. A university blog can help university members find out what their students are thinking about recent happenings around campus which could be a crucial step in your decision making processes. These are just a few examples of the many types of social media sites that can be beneficial to universities. Needless to say, social media has become a vital tool that should be utilized by universities everywhere and ContentM makes it easy to do just that.

If you are a current user of multiple social media sites then you know first-hand how many separate links and web pages must be opened to view them all simultaneously. Not only does having that many browsers open slow down your system, but it can quickly become an end-users nightmare trying to figure out which web browser belongs to which social media site. AllofE’s ContentM system is built around web 2.0 functionality and makes it simple to store all of your social media needs on one convenient page using our RSS feed panels. ContentM has prebuilt social networking panels that allow you to simply paste your social site link or username in the allotted area, hit submit, and view your content in one clean, organized location. ContentM allows you to have your Facebook fan page, Twitter feed, Blogger feed, Flickr pictures, and much more all neatly organized on one convenient page which allows viewers to spend less time searching for your social sites and more time actually viewing them!

Having a social media initiative isn’t good enough unless it’s organized and easy to get to. Being a beginner with social media sites myself, I know how frustrating it can be when you want people to check out your social pages but can’t find the right link to it or having your web pages be so disorganized that you don’t know which browser houses which social site. Since I’ve started using ContentM for our social media needs I have just one link to share with everyone and they get our most recent blog postings and twitter feeds. It’s just that simple! Check out a couple of our example pages listed below if you’re interested in what ContentM can do for you.

Click Here to See Example Site #1

Click Here to See Example Site #2