FSU Career Center A Strategic Social Media Action Plan A presentation by FSU team: Team Leader Kyle Rausch Elisha Bender, Stephen Dominy and Lyndsey Williams-Mayweather.

FSU Career Center

A Strategic Social Media Action Plan

A presentation by FSU team: Team Leader Kyle RauschElisha Bender, Stephen Dominy and Lyndsey Williams-Mayweather

Why the Career Center?

Social media can be utilized to help with the following three goals as reflected in the mission statement of the Career Center.

*Taken from the Career Center’s Mission Statement: http://www.career.fsu.edu/about/mission.cfm

Goal 1: Provide comprehensive career servicesGoal 2: Disseminate information about life/career services and issues to the university community, the nation, and the worldGoal 3: Impact student and alumni affairs*

Strategic plan based on the following social media platforms:-Hosting virtual career fairs (Unicruit/Inxpo)-Web-based Services (Skype and GoToMeeting )-Twitter, Facebook, YouTube-Blog (Wordpress)

Virtual Career Fairs

•Unicruit and Inxpo are two companies the Career Center could partner with to offer virtual career fairs to FSU students. •Benefits include:

• Convenient for students and employers • Offer more personal networking opportunities• Cut expensive travel costs = more participants• Reach a large audience• Allow students and employers to focus on the

jobs and candidates of most interest when on campus

How to Use Virtual Career Fairs

• Students create an online profile including their resume and search for jobs

• Companies create “booths” to post positions and attract candidates. Interactions can include chat, email, and virtual information sessions.

The asynchronous and distributed format of most virtual conference activities allows busy professionals to participate anytime/anyplace.-Anderson, 1996

Risks/Rewards of Fairs

Rewards

• Candidates and employers can pre-screen areas of interests.

• Candidates develop strong written communication skills.

• Will give Florida State a competitive advantage because not many schools offer this service.

• Virtual Career Fairs could take away from employers coming to campus.

• Students are missing opportunities to develop the personal interaction and networking skills that are formed in real life.

Risks

Web-Based Services

• Why web based services? Products such as GoTo Meeting, GoTo Training, and GoTo Webinar are a growing service amongst businesses and non-profits at little cost.

By using web-based training, the Career Center can provide educational programs, career training, and discussions with just the touch of a mouse.

With the growing demands of online education, students will be able to access these products and services through career.fsu.edu.

Web-Based Services Implementation

• Action PlanIncorporate GoTo Meeting in weekly programs, such as presentation planning, cover letter and resume building, and document review with the desktop sharing feature (participants see what is on your screen!)

Utilize Skype for mock interviews. As most career centers use face-to-face encounters for interviews, students can learn similar techniques from their homes, as well as practice using the technology that they might encounter for future long-distance job and graduate school interviews.

It [can] easily cost $1,000 a pop to fly out job candidates and put them up for the

night…the benefit of video-interviewing… isn't just saved money — it's also saved time.

-Kiviat, 2009

The Disconnect With Web-Based Services

• Broken link… Things to think about with these ideas: 1. Troubleshooting software. Someone will need to be able to work with

students to ensure the use and accuracy of the product.2. Do you see what I see? Be prepared for technology glitches that could occur based on network connection. What you see may not be what the participant sees. 3. Open Access. Some students do not have the abilities to access this type of technology so these resources must be provided in the office setting to ensure equal opportunity for access and training.

The Career Center “Tweets”

• Why be on Twitter? • Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking

sites. There are over 175 million registered users and 95M tweets written everyday (Twitter, 2010).

• Have a way to provide information quickly and in real-time.

• Twitter can be used to give daily career tips, promote career center sponsored events, and/or hold a weekly conversation with students.

Twitteriffic Ideas

• Provide Daily Tips– Give tips on the job market,

interview attire, cover letters, etc.• Promote Events

– Have an event coming up? Let students know about it in 140 characters or less.

• Host Weekly Chat– #C2WChat (College 2 Work

Chat): Host a forum held via Twitter once a week for a given time (ie: Wednesdays from 2-5pm). A career counselor can pose questions for students to answer or vice versa.

Twitter

• Twitter Lingo– Timeline: The listing of tweets that

people you follow have written and/or tweets that you have written given in chronological order

– Hash Tags (#): or the pound symbol. Used to signify a trending topic or a topic that many people have in common

– Trending Topics (TT): A subject that many people on twitter are mentioning in their tweets throughout the day

– @mentions: tweets where you have been “tagged” or talked about or to

– Retweets: someone is literally re-saying or “retweeting” what you’ve already said

– DM (Direct Message): A message between you and a follower that only the two of you can see

- Following: to be able to see someone else’s tweets

- Follower: Allowing someone else to see your tweets

- Lists: created by you or a follower. A list is used to group a person’s followers by commonalities

“Twittiquette”

• Things To Consider:– Who is going to be your regular “tweeter”?

• You would want at least one individual responsible for updating your account, this may be a great job for a graduate assistant.

– To follow or not to follow?…that is the question.• It is not necessary to follow someone back for them to see your updates. If a student

is following you they can see your updates. Sometimes it is in your best interest to not follow every student because you may get updates that you did not want to know. This is a choice that can be made as a staff.

– Market your twitter to gain student followers!• Your Facebook name and Twitter handle should be the same or very similar to make it

easy for students to find you. Consider linking twitter to the homepage of your website and blog using a “twitter button”.

YouTube Channel

• Why a YouTube Channel?– YouTube provides a forum for people to connect,

inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small (YouTube, 2011).

– Provide diverse forms of advertisement.– Answer common questions through video.– Student involvement can be increased through the

implementation of a YouTube channel.

YouTube

• Advertisement– Commercials to

explain Career Center services

• Video How To…– What to wear for an

interview• Student Submissions

– How students have utilized the career center

Before.You.Tube

• Do you have the right equipment and manpower?– Video equipment and editing software can be expensive and time

consuming. However, if done correctly it can be very beneficial. Before creating a YouTube channel consider if you will truly have more than one video to upload.

• How Often are you going to upload videos?– Will you have a new video every month? Or will you have a group of

videos that can stand the test of time?

• Student Involvement?– Turn videos into a student competition to gain student involvement.

Students are very talented and can provide you with very creative videos requiring little time and energy spent on your part.

Improving your Facebook

To establish dialogue, consider implementing:• Discussion Boards:

– Posing questions on your Facebook page can allow students to start a conversation. There should be a moderator to make sure inappropriate comments are removed daily.

• More than a Fan Page:– Turning The Career Center into a “person” can allow one to add and request friends as well

as use the status feature to advertise and give tips to friends.

• The Career Center currently has a good start to their Facebook page. However, the communication is one-sided.

When one-way communications becomes a customer dialogue it changes the enterprise’s

demand creation activities significantly. It enlivens, energizes, and stimulates the value- creation

network. In addition, the efficiency effect—speed, accuracy, and scale—leverages the

communications budget exponentially.

-Hastings and Saperstein, 2010

The Career Center Blog

Why start a blog?The blog can serve as the central hub for all social media outlets, tying together Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and virtual training efforts. The blog can also help expand the weekly Career Center newsletters by providing the ‘social media advantage’ of establishing a dialogue with Career Center patrons.

It’s the perfect opportunity for the Career Center to show that you are the experts!

“Blogging can give you an opportunity to stand out and set you apart as an expert in your field.”-Marko Saric, How To Make My Blog

Blog For Success

• Incorporate the Career Center’s weekly newsletters as blog posts.

• ‘What can you do with your major?’ feature posts. • Relevant blog posts about the job market, career tips, and/or preparation for graduate school.

• Invite successful FSU alumni to write special posts as guest bloggers.

Sample Blog

Blog For Success

• Centralized social media hub connecting Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube pages

Sample Blog

Blogging 101

Helpful hints for starting a new blog:• Post frequently! There’s nothing worse than

stagnant social media. Creating a blogging schedule is the key (ie: weekly/monthly columns or features).

• Designate a resident blogger in the office who can be the Social Media Coordinator since the blog serves as the social media centerpiece.

• Respond to your readers’ comments!

• Post helpful articles with attention-grabbing headlines.

• Utilize blog resources such as polls to provide interaction for your readers.

Blogging 101

Helpful hints for starting a new blog:• Consistency of branding is important. Logos

used on the blog should carry over to other social media platforms.

• When a new blog post is created, spread the word on all social media outlets.

64 percent (of college-bound high school

juniors) have an interest in reading a blog

written by a faculty member.

-Noel-Levitz, 2006

Conclusion

Social Media • Social media can help the Career Center in its

efforts to provide meaningful career and post-college services to students and the greater FSU community by expanding forums for dialogue.

• Students want to form connections using the mediums that they are familiar with. Using social media will help to make these connections more relevant to students and ensure that technology is not passing the Career Center by.

Conclusion

Social Media • Depending upon the manpower and team buy-

in, you can start with one platform and work towards incorporating all platforms suggested as you gain more experience working with social media.

• If choosing to implement all forms, remember to establish a Social Media Coordinator as a point person to organize efforts, to ensure that media is routinely updated, and to keep branding consistent across the board.

• Social media is the present and quickly changing—jump in now or play catch up later!

References Consulted

Anderson, T. (1996). The virtual conference: Extending professional education in cyberspace. International Jl. of Educational Telecommunications, 2, 121-135.

The career center., 2011, from http://career.fsu.edu/

Junco, R., & Cole-Avent, G. A. (2008). An introduction to technologies commonly used by college students. (124), 3-17.

Kiviat, B. (2009, October 20th). How skype is changing the job interview. Time

McCormack, D. (2011). 5 tips to strengthen your Company’s social media voice., 2011, from http://mashable.com/2011/02/07/strengthen-social-media-voice/

Swallow, E. (2011). HOW TO: Optimize your social media budget. Retrieved February 13, 2011, from http://mashable.com/2011/02/10/optimize-social-media-budget/

Twitter. (2011). , 2011, from http://www.twitter.com

YouTube. (2011). , 2011, from http://www.youtube.com