We are starting to see faculty/staff jump in to promote their programs and I am quite excited to see them do so.

I am struggling with the idea of establishing a policy. I have aready had an experience where someone started an “official” account for a department but there were some brand issues about the way they used the logo etc. It took me some time to identify who set the account up and track them down. (I was relucatnt to make public comments on their timeline to point out a problem) They were very understanding of the issues that I raised and made the needed changes but it pointed out to me that we need to have a few “ground rules” in place. Listing the social network account with the Community Relations office might be a place to start.

I also worry a bit about their sophistication in dealing with “flaming” conversations. Having a “game plan” available might help resolve this sort of problem without making it worse.

I would love to see if any other schools have established a Best Practices Guide for Social Media.

I tell them that — once they have gone through all the steps you spell out so excellently here — just write up a little proposal if that helps and show it to their immediate boss. Be prepared to do a little show-and-tell if that boss has not yet experienced Facebook or Twitter or others. And then, JUST DO IT!

Make a shared calendar and discuss how often you will perform the various updating/maintenance tasks that will make this whole effort worthwhile.

Social media tools can’t be understood through observation–they need participation.

I also encouraged people to post what they were doing and what the results were so others could get a better sense of how different strategies worked. I was only just beginning to grow this site when I left the university, but something like this, or an Intranet that makes it easy for all to share ideas can be a way for people to share educational resources and case studies.

I was also using my Web Development Blog to share ideas related to Web communications in general so I started sharing my own experiences with social media there.

Like you, when asked directly I tell people to think about their goals and audience. I wrote a blog entry, MKTG 101: Social Media Marketing is still marketing: know your audience to help people think about this, particularly in terms of where your audience is.

On campuses one also needs to think of a mix of open services like Facebook and Twitter and campus specific services such as blogs, discussion boards, wikis, etc. Case also has a daily newsletter distributed as a blog and by e-mail to which readers could submit event and news announcements they wanted to share with the campus community.

Campus Web teams are often early adopters of social media, so it seems logical that they could take a lead role in educating their community about these tools, and they could use these tools to make that education happen.

Now as an independent Web Designer/Strategist I find I’m often discussing social media strategies with clients in or out of academia. Sitting with them one-on-one and showing them examples is a good way to educate, but it’s hard to do that when you’re trying to reach a wider community.

In Cleveland we have an active Social Media Club with a mission to educate businesses and individuals about social media. We just produced an eBook, Welcome to Social Media as a way to help people get started. While some chapters are geared to personal use and others to biz, I think this might also be a very helpful resource for campus communicators new to social media.

Overall I think the key to teaching campus members about social media is to remember that they come from a wide array of backgrounds. They may come to us asking how to promote program X or Y via Facebook, but they may also need a crash course in mktg, pr, communications in addition to specifics regarding social media.