18
The Short Course Social Media What Swiss academia can learn from the @ladygaga Twitter handle and Charlie Bit My Finger YouTube video.
Photography by Orange Photography
19
Sunday, March 18, 2012: Thank you @swissnexSF for this welcome session and dinner! Let’s get some sleep #springstudytour, we’ll need it for sure! —@Gilda_
Gilda is right. She’s one of fourteen people from Swiss higher education who’ve come to San Francisco for a crash course in the Silicon Valley social media scene. Over the next week, each day will be busier than the next as they absorb a blend of intensive learning and non-stop meetings with the Bay Area’s leading universities and social media companies. Most participants on this study tour work in communications for universities and colleges in Switzerland. Like marketing professionals in all sectors, they grapple with how to best put social networking to work for their jobs. They recognize the need to engage online audiences and stay current with new technology. But like most in higher education and research, they face slim budgets and scant human resources with which to support their institution’s reputation and goals. The staff of swissnex San Francisco, who organized the study tour, welcomes the group to their offices on Montgomery Street and introduces the organization’s many facets. This is the second such trip offered as part of a program developed by swissnex. It’s called Swiss Academia and the Social Media Landscape, a two-year curriculum available to all Swiss higher education institutions. That includes federal institutes of technology, universities, universities of applied sciences (equivalent to state schools in the US), national labs, and research institutes. Thirty-eight in total are taking part. The program is a mix of social media monitoring, independent research, online training, study tours like this one, conferences in Switzerland, and more. Funding for it comes from the Gebert Rüf Foundation and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research. The tours themselves are the ultimate field trip, inspiring and motivating participants to jumpstart social media activities within their institutions, and helping them overcome obstacles like misunderstandings about the tools and resistance to change. By the next morning after the welcome session, the group of Swiss visitors will already be communicating about where to meet for coffee in 140 characters or less—the maximum length of a tweet. But as Gilda Schertenleib (@Gilda_) of the University of Lugano in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland points out, it’s time to get some rest before the frenetic week ahead.
Monday, March 19, 2012: Years ago 50% of all the email addresses were in Northern California. introduction to Silicon Valley by Chuck Darrah #springstudytour —@LadiCap
Cultural anthropologist Chuck Darrah, a professor at San Jose State University, characterizes Silicon Valley for his visiting students. Simply put, it is a land of risk-takers, entrepreneurs, and the consummately optimistic. That’s what makes the region’s great successes as well as its epic failures, which by the way are more than acceptable here. Next, everyone packs into passenger vans and heads south to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. In a sleek meeting room with iPads and nametags perfectly placed around a pristine conference table, the iTunes U teams give an equally sleek presentation. And with impressive effect. Participant Daniel Ducommun (@ducom5) represents the student affairs office at the Haute Ecole de la Santé La Source, a nursing school in Lausanne, Switzerland. He likens being on the Apple campus—the touchstone of iconic technology—to a nearly religious experience. Then it’s back in the vans and off to the University of California, Berkeley to meet the school’s social media team. swissnex San Francisco’s @JuliaClaud, dubbed “Queen of the Highway” by the participants, puts pedal to metal and hits the fast lane to get there in time.
20
“Welcome to #Cal campus, @swissnexsf. Looking forward to speaking w/ u & yr guests today about our social media work!” tweets the social media director for @Cal, Christina Sponselli (@sponselli).
“ Social media is called social media because it’s social. It’s all about helping people to engage with one another and form communities and make connections. That’s a basic human drive. We just have different ways of enabling those connections to occur right now.”
Spring study tour participant Ladina Caprez (@LadiCap)
21
There’s no question that Silicon Valley is ground zero for the social media revolution. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn—they’re all here. Naturally, then, universities in the US were among the first to begin experimenting with these new tools for marketing and outreach. Bay Area universities in particular were early adopters. UC Berkeley has more than 100,000 Facebook fans today, while Stanford University has more than 300,000. The @Stanford Twitter account has 68,500 followers as of this writing. Both schools have branded channels on YouTube, company pages on LinkedIn, and a host of other social outlets for sharing news and events, engaging with audiences, and providing an online place to connect. Statistics like these reflect how education and research leaders are integrating social and open channels into their communication practices. Michael Stoner, President of mStoner, a marketing and communications consulting firm that works with schools, colleges, and universities says, “If you look at data from here in America where social media of various kinds are embedded in the daily habits of millions of people, you can really see that if institutions like colleges and universities don’t understand how to use these tools effectively, they’re not going to be very successful at engaging with audiences they really care about—and who also really care about them.” But in 2009 and 2010, when swissnex San Francisco started looking into social media for higher education, it found that the trend hadn’t quite caught on in Switzerland. Its research gave a telling snapshot, revealing that 12 leading world universities were 95 percent more active on social media than the 12 Swiss universities were at that time. Ninety-five percent. When swissnex polled a select number of relevant staff at Swiss universities about their desire to participate in social media as an institution, they responded that they did have an interest but lacked resources and support. That gap was the trigger that inspired swissnex’s communications department and its digital marketing lead, Florencia Prada, to develop the two-year program and secure the necessary funding to move forward.
22
“The use of social media in the higher education sector in Switzerland still has the image of being something not very serious, something for very young people, something which is not really compatible with academia,” remarks Philipp Egger, CEO of the Gebert Rüf Foundation, the program’s largest supporter. “This is a bit of our role [at Gebert Rüf], to enable noble ideas and to try them out, to say ‘Well, give a good idea a chance. You can’t answer a question before you’ve asked it.’ I was quickly convinced that in comparison to other university areas such as California and the US, Switzerland simply doesn’t really exist on the social media map. That’s why we thought, ‘This is an opportunity, this is a chance, this is a gap, let’s try to help fill it. ’”
Tuesday, March 20, 2012: #springstudytour: am even more moved by the power of 140 characters —@anniblu
Annika Glauner (@anniblu) is with Euresearch, the International Research Programs of the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. She tweets the above after the morning’s appropriately lightningfast visit to the offices of Twitter in San Francisco, where Thomas Arend (@techno) receives the group. The Twitter Product Manager explains the company’s beginnings and next steps, such as adapting Twitter for users in different countries. He thanks the visitors, by tweeting of course, for “stopping by the Birdhouse today:)” Later in the afternoon at Stanford University, social media leaders from the medical school, alumni center, and the engineering school share three rules for engaging with audiences. Consider what they care about, tell compelling stories, and put the institution forward as a leader.
“ When I first read the proposal for Swiss Academia and the Social Media Landscape, I was smiling. It was a crazy idea. But after five minutes of studying the proposal, I got it. swissnex had the guts to turn up with this idea. They are able to push novel topics into the sector of higher education.”
23
Swiss higher education is catching on to social media. Since Swiss Academia and the Social Media Landscape launched in early 2011, many schools have established official channels. And perception is changing too. In December 2011, swissnex asked communications departments of Swiss universities and universities of applied sciences whether or not social media was a priority internally. Forty-two percent indicated that it was, compared to just 21 percent in 2010. Seventy-nine percent of Swiss higher education institutions surveyed have official presence(s) on social media today. Sixteen percent are in the midst of establishing official accounts. Only five percent have no managed presence. Ten out of the 12 Swiss universities have a branded Facebook page in 2012, and three of these were created in the last quarter of 2011. The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) leads Swiss universities on Facebook with more than 3,500 likes, while the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne’s page comes in a close second. swissnex San Francisco has been a media consultant for EPFL since 2009. All Swiss universities now have at least one official Twitter account. Social media savvy communicators should take note of this trend and consider checking the job boards at Swiss universities and other academic institutions in the coming months. Forty-two percent of those surveyed say they plan to hire a social media manager in the next 12 months, and 27 percent already have.
“ The tour helped me to do these workshops and convince people to get on the boat, and it helped with discussions around the critical questions that always come up. It is no longer a question if or if not [to do social media], but just a question of how you should use it.”
24
Wednesday, March 21, 2012: Morning @youtube, lunch @facebook, afternoon @LinkedIn—Thanks @swissnexSF #springstudytour —@laracanonica
Zurich University of Applied Sciences study tour participant Lara Canonica summarizes meetings with the social media trifecta. The program has the group a bit giddy. After Arthur Woods of YouTube EDU Partnerships describes how the Google-owned company provides educational access to all, members of the study tour can’t resist a race down the company’s giant red slide separating two floors of the office. @philippe_fabian (Philippe Fabian, also from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences) congratulates the winner. “Well done @manuelnappo http://twitpic.com/8zeic2 #springstudytour” According to Woods, universities are wise to create official YouTube accounts to aggregate their videos, whether the content focuses on research news, course lectures, or campus life. One Swiss university taking full advantage of YouTube’s reach is the University of St. Gallen. Markus Zinsmaier is head of the University of St. Gallen’s corporate publications and web team. He led his university into the social media waters just this year after taking part in the swissnex San Francisco 2011 fall social media study tour to Silicon Valley. When Zinsmaier joined the fall study tour, he and his colleagues in St. Gallen were already in the planning stages of their social media rollout. They had a working concept to create official university profiles on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. They were also planning to open sub accounts that would appeal to their various audiences: prospective students, current students, alumni, and researchers. “For me [the study tour] was quite helpful,” Zinsmaier says. “We were discussing this concept but it was more abstract. Certain people knew we should do this, but others were more difficult to convince. I had quite a few discussions where I tried to show what we wanted to put online. The tour helped me to do these workshops and convince people to get on the boat, and it helped with discussions around the critical questions that always come up. As we heard over and over again on the fall study tour, it is no longer a question if or if not [to do social media], but just a question of how you should use it. In 10 years we won’t even be discussing this.” In December 2011, Zinsmaier took his goals to the next level. To manage the institution’s presence on social media and to coordinate the growing efforts across campus, the communication department of the university hired expert Katja Wenk as social media officer. In January 2012, Zinsmaier and Wenk launched the university’s social presence in a full-court press. They announced the channels in a news release and promoted their social accounts directly on the school’s homepage. The offerings include a blog portal as well. Their most popular social media post so far is a music video from a rock band made up of university professors. Maybe not serious news, but subjects like this engage and contribute to relationship and brand building between the university and its community. Not to mention positioning the institution as a place that’s academically first-rate, but fun, too. “It’s getting better each day because people begin to understand the media more and our followers and fans grow,” Zinsmaier says of the university’s new social presence. “It will be interesting to have this conversation in a year and look back, but the beginning is good.”
25
Thursday, March 22, 2012 “Being a community manager is really a challenge” @mStonerblog #springstudytour — @davidspring
Michael Stoner sweeps into swissnex to discuss how US universities are leveraging social media for marketing and communications and to demonstrate how, despite cultural differences, everyone is trying to figure it out just the same. “Social media is called social media because it’s social,” Stoner remarks. “It’s all about helping people to engage with one another and form communities and make connections. That’s a basic human drive. We just have different ways of enabling those connections to occur right now. Identifying who your audience is, what your audience is interested in, how they want to interact with you, what channels they’re going to use. Those are questions that any good marketer should be asking himself or herself, and I don’t see that it’s a whole lot different in social channels.” Next, the group braves the San Francisco bus system, MUNI, toward verdant Golden Gate Park and the California Academy of Sciences. Marketing manager Amie Wong handles all the social media channels for the science center, which includes a natural history museum, an aquarium, a four-story rainforest, a planetarium, and more. Their Facebook page has nearly 50,000 likes.
Michael Stoner
Spending a week immersed in a place where social media is now a part of everyday life even for universities and museums offers Swiss visitors an added boon. They are free to withhold a certain amount of skepticism; to open up and to learn by example (failures as well as successes) from those who have been at it longer. Face-to-face interactions with innovators and campuses that have years of experience in how to use the tools effectively can help to propel them forward. Philipp Egger, of the Gebert Rüf Foundation, agrees that San Francisco and swissnex are in a special position to nurture enthusiasm for social media and to help Swiss visitors use it within academia. “swissnex is located in the area for showing off social media in academia. Within swissnex, you also have experienced people with a track record that is perfect for teaching social media.” A case in point is swissnex social media program head, Florencia Prada, whose own track record includes working at LinkedIn, where she educated others about the potential of the social network.
“We had the absolute pleasure of hosting Swiss guests doing a social media #springstudytour w/@swissnexSF —thanks for stopping by!” tweets Wong from @CalAcademyofSciences.
Friday, March 23, 2012 “Fail fast or fail forward.” By @physicsdavid #quotes #springstudytour — @philippe_fabian
The final day. Communications consultant David Harris has the group mocking up strategies, identifying audiences, and figuring out how to measure success. There’s a quick walking tour of swissnex’s historic neighborhood, once called the Barbary Coast and infamous during the Gold Rush for gambling and prostitution. Then a last meeting at Blackboard Mobile, maker of iPhone apps for universities. It’s a fitting ending to the sessions and one that lands on a future-forward note: mobile is here and cannot be ignored. What will the study tour group take home from this week of hyperactive tweeting, blogging, Storifying, Instagramming, and checking-in? At the very least, the idea of social media has taken root within Swiss academia. Now the question is, will it flourish thanks to these few individuals and others like them? Each institution will decide what is best and how to adapt to emerging trends. The goal of the Swiss Academia and the Social Media Landscape program and of swissnex San Francisco, however, remains consistent: to report on the latest innovations and to offer up opportunities for leaders in Switzerland to harness their power and accelerate adoption. Spring study tour guest Philippe Fabian is responsible for social media activities and strategy in the online communications department of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur. “I will try to implement my learning and my impressions into a training program for employees at my university,” he says. “I can carry on the spirit of Silicon Valley and bring it back to my university whenever I’m talking to people about social media.” David Spring is a journalist at the University of Lausanne in the communication department. He also thinks that passing on the knowledge he gained on the spring study tour is the ultimate souvenir from Silicon Valley. “We had a tour on the Gold Rush,” he says. “What I have to do now is take all these nuggets and craft gold bars. I’ve received tools, advice, insight, and I know I can rely on the constant help of swissnex to convince my upper management and my colleagues, to make them enthusiastic about social networks. I will plan meetings with colleagues, I will blog everything that I’ve done so that everybody in the university can have everything I saw. And I will create a group on campus… once a month informal meetings to speak about good practices, mistakes we’ve made, and to leverage everything.”
26
Spring study tour participants Philippe Fabian and David Spring
For the funders of the program, time and results will be the ultimate measure of success. Philipp Egger expects a full report once Swiss Academia and the Social Media Landscape wraps up at the end of 2012. If the numbers tell the story and there are true examples of the change within Swiss higher education, then the two years have been beyond worth it. “When I first read the proposal for Swiss Academia and the Social Media Landscape, I was smiling,” Egger says. “It was a crazy idea. But after five minutes of studying the proposal, I got it. swissnex had the guts to turn up with this idea. They are able to push novel topics into the sector of higher education.” Egger adds that he’s already heard feedback from participants of both the fall and spring study tours. “People are just amazed at how swissnex managed to create these contacts, to actually visit the headquarters of these places. It shows that they are connected on a very high level. This brings much more to a topic than theoretical knowledge. It’s authentic, it’s one-to-one. You could never ever experience it anywhere else besides California.”
Saturday, March 24, 2012 : I left “My comfort zone” and went “Where the #awesome happens”. #springstudytour —@manuelnappo
Thank you @swissnexSF for providing us with excellent building blocks. Now we have to create and deliver. http://instagr.am/p/IiCHZLhv7e/” —@herwigdaemon
Thanks to the swissnex social media program and study tours, there’s a growing momentum inside Swiss academia to take advantage of social media’s potential. There’s also now an expanding community of individuals who formed close bonds over the course of the weeklong study tours, and those bonds last long into the future after the individuals return to Switzerland and to their campuses. In an appropriate demonstration of the lessons they learned, the spring study tour set up a Facebook group to keep in touch and share news and tips. They’re also still tweeting using the #springstudytour hashtag. swissnex hopes this legacy will continue; that the individuals keep talking, keep sharing, and keep growing Swiss academia’s social media presence. Who knows, maybe @ladygaga will soon have some rivals. Learn more about swissnex San Francisco’s social media program for Swiss academia: socialmediaswitzerland.org
27