Week 13 - Crisis Communication

Social media can be a key component to an organization’s crisis communication plan.  Because news has become a 24-7 cycle, the need to control information has become more and more prevalent.  Social media allows organizations to control what information is out there for the public to see as well as to frame the issue in ways that benefit the organization and its publics.

In sport, the most recent example of a need for crisis communication is the Penn State scandal that occurred a little more than one year ago.  The athletic administrators were forced to deal with the crisis immediately because ESPN and other news outlets quickly responded to the scene and were demanding information and interviews.  The administrators tried to frame the issue as an isolated incident, but further information was unearthed that caused the university to change its crisis communication plan.

I think social media can be integral to an organization’s crisis communication strategy.  Getting the word out on their own terms and controlling information are desirable for all organizations, and social media allows this to happen. With the number of people on Twitter and other social media sites, the news cycle has changed and companies have had to adapt to this.

Week 11 - Metrics

Metrics are a very important part of social media for organizations.  They help companies measure specific things like which of their publics are being reached, how many hits their different social media platforms are receiving, and what specific types of social media seem to be the most effective.  It is crucial for organizations that desire to use social media to interact with their constituents to use metrics because they will have little to no idea who they are reaching and how effective their social media plan is.

In my case with working in sports media relations, Pacific’s athletics website has their own built-in metrics system.  This system measures which pages are being viewed the most, and that can be narrowed down to days, weeks, or months depending on what kind of information is being searched for.  The website also measures which pages people exit the website from as well as which links are the most popular (i.e.: weekly releases, game recaps, special features).  I know this has helped me define what kinds of content to post for my sports.  For example, I decided to include links to both the men’s water polo Facebook and Twitter accounts because I saw that people who visited the website often clicked on the social media links on the sidebar of the sport’s main page.  I figured they would also want to visit these sites if I provided the links within each release I wrote.

I also use HootSuite for the social media accounts for my sports, which provides metric data.  However, since I use the free version, I am unable to access the metric features, but I have looked at the different types of data they offer and it looks like it would be extremely helpful.  I may push for our department to sign up with HootSuite or TweetDeck full time in order to get more accurate metrics that would help our marketing and connecting with our fans.

Live-Tweeting Assignment

Here is the link to my Storify post for our live tweeting assignment. Enjoy!

Week Ten - Content Curation

I must admit, the concept of content curation is one I was unfamiliar with prior to our class discussion last Thursday.  I now understand content curation to be the process by which content generated on social media websites is placed together based on the subject matter of said content.  For example, tonight’s election is going to generate millions of tweets and Facebook posts, among other things.  The organization of this particular content into one specific location is how content curation works.

After learning about the concept of content curation, I now understand what Storify is meant to do and why it is such a useful tool for us to use to present our live tweets.  Storify allows tweets to be organized around a specific subject determined by the creator of that particular Storify entry.  In our case, we will be using the content curation tool to group all of our live tweets, along with those tweets that interacted with us during our live tweeting session, into one “story.”  Now that I know the idea behind Storify, I must admit I am more excited to use it than I was before.  It will be neat to see all of my tweets about a specific topic neatly organized, as well as those tweets that interacted with me.

This project will be my first interaction with content curation.  I had certainly seen groups of tweets that revolved around the same subject posted together, but I did not think of it as a form of curation until now.  I really find the concept very interesting because I think it speaks to where we are now as a society in that each individual on social media creates their own content, and we connect with one another based on our shared interests.  The fact that this concept grew out of the content that we are responsible for is very cool in my opinion.