Teaching Social Media at North Carolina Colleges

Posted on September 23, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

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Last week I the opportunity to speak to a group of MBA students at NC State University about Social Media. Since the second half of 2008 I have been asked to either lead session or sit on panel covering various topics such as social networks, video blogging and using social media for journalism at Duke University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC). I have actually spoken at UNC 4 times in the last year and when I was asked to speak at NC State I felt as though I was completing the big 3 Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill) university loop. (past speaking events)

I was asked to join a list of other guest speakers as part of MBA Social Media and Management class. A few of the other guest speakers includes Andy Beal, Joseph Jaffe, Katie Morse, Jeff Cohen and Polly Pearson covering various topics such as Blogging and micro-blogging, social networks, creativity, reputation management and B2B marketing using social media (schedule). My topic was social media etiquette, video and community building. The class was 1:15 long and to prepare I made a content outline and a list of questions to ask. One of the first things I told the students was that I wasn’t going to stand in-front of the class and talk for 1:15 and show them a bunch of slides. Not that there is anything wrong with having a presentation ready but if I’m leading a session on social media we’re going to be social.

A few talking points were:

Why is video important?
Example of video shows
Best practices for creating online video
Why online communities matter
Comparing various communities
Creating valuable content
Conscious content posting

I’m glad I had an outline and was prepared but after an introduction from Professor Claudia Kimbrough, who introduced Chis Moody who then introduced me, I looked into the eyes of the students they all gave me that here comes another boring social media talk look. So then I decided at that moment to switch things up and as they say in the hip-hop world, freestyle it. I wanted to see what was on the students mind, what they have previously covered in social media and what was at the core using social media effectually. Therefore I asked the diverse room of students a series of questions about what happens during a period of time of online conversations between two new individuals using social media. The outcome was a relationship and trust using various tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

Other topics we touched on were the value of location based sites like Brightkite, uses for Linkedin and Facebook fanpages. While discussing Facebook fanpages we talked about brand engagement and why it’s important for companies not to just post / push content but really make an effort to communicate with their fans. Surprisingly we spent very little time focusing on Twitter and more time on social networking etiquette and what role students online content and behavior could affect their future in the job market.

Near the end of the class I suggested they look at creating a social media policy and I did touch briefly on how much it doesn’t cost to launch an online video show. Then I showed the students Jeff Cohen’s daughter new video blog called Grace Talks about Food to where she’s talking about a Hannan Montana Cereal in a video on YouTube. The reason I showed the class the video is because it’s a classic example of how simple it is to create videos about any topic you’re passionate about and how brands should reach out to their customers who are online posting content about their products. In other words, I’m expecting Grace to get an email or comment from Disney soon.

After the class I thanked Professor Kimbrough for having me and Chis Moody for the invite. While I was leaving I was wondering what the students thought of the session and by the way of tweets, I think they enjoyed it. Take a look.

LindsayCrawford: Thanks @waynesutton for an engaging presentation! He knows his stuff!

MacMan34: sitting in class listening to @waynesutton talk about video, social media, & communities.

lshawtter4: @waynesutton Thanks for dropping by NCSU. Informative and energetic presentation!!

Before the class started I did recved a few tweets from Paul Jones @smalljones a professor at UNC about more Social Media classes being taught by him and Fred Stutzman @fstutzman which can be found here and http://ibiblio.org/pjones/jomc449/wordpress/ and that Richward Waters @rdwaters teaches another class on social media at NC State too on Social Media and Public Relations http://ncsupublicrelations.wordpress.com

For more information on the NC State Social Media MBA class, see the links below.
Class syllabus: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~cbk/schedule.html
Class blog: http://ncstatesocialmedia.wordpress.com/
Professor: Claudia Kimbrough @calliekuhn

Again I would to thanks to Professor Kimbrough and Chis Moody for the invitation. Chris also has a blog post with a few notes from my session that can be found here: How to ACE Social Media: Alignment, Control, and Engagement

If you had the opportunity to tell college students one thing about social media what would it be?

Teaching Social Media at North Carolina Colleges Share

NC State launches mobile & Twitter website embracing the social web. NC Colleges Get It.

About the Social Carolina calendar and blog.

Live social media, PR, blogging, journalism & online community building panel with Charlotte’s community leaders on WayneSutton.TV tomorrow

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 9:05 AM and is filed under Events, Featured, North Carolina, Presentations, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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23 Comments

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September 23, 2009

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Jayson said:

Wayne thinking on your feet is a trait most people don’t have, I commend you for thinking out of the box, and trying to give the students something to be excited about. Your always running the streets for the better good of Social Media.

Keep doing what your doing, your helping a community even if you don’t see all the fruit today. People like you are what social media need, someone who cares and really wants to teach us all.
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September 23, 2009

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Andre Blackman said:

Great stuff Wayne! Really glad you are imparting your knowledge with the students (and for the rest of us!). They say the more you do something the better you get and that sounds exactly like what is happening with you and speaking.

Now I just need to get that going :)
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September 23, 2009

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12C4 said:

Teaching Social Media at North Carolina Colleges | Social Wayne, The official blog of Wayne Sutton http://bit.ly/3yrsc2

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September 23, 2009

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Patrick said:

Congrats on the college speaking engagements, Wayne. Cool stuff.
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September 23, 2009

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Wayne Sutton said:

Thanks for the comments and I have learned from each one of you. Maybe we put together a course :)
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September 23, 2009

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Chris Moody said:

Wayne,

Thanks again for all of your time and great information. I’ll be sure to check in with you as things progress and your presentation was definitely well received.

Have a great week.

Chris Moody
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September 23, 2009

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Camden Watts said:

Wayne, so glad the presentation went well! My turn to speak to the same class is coming up soon, and I am so appreciative of your thoughts about how yours went. I know they enjoyed hearing you speak just as much as I do. Your presentation at Ignite Raleigh was top notch! :)
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September 23, 2009

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Claudia Kimbrough said:

So glad you posted on presenting to classes. Gives me another chance to say thank you and awesome job! You are doing some great things in social media and I know the NC State MBA students got a lot out of your presentation. We want this course to continue developing and that you can come back next year to speak to a whole new group.
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September 26, 2009

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Ken Burgin said:

Nice work Wayne – these days any preso about Social Media that’s only done with bullet points will fail to engage. Great that you fired up a YouTube example – there’s a YT video to make just about any point under the sun!
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September 27, 2009

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Krochmal said:

Tks @waynesutton for blog entry on SocMed and edu in NC. http://bit.ly/2nwjVT Now following @smalljones @fstutzman @rdwaters @calliekuhn

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September 28, 2009

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underoak said:

@jeffelder Dunno about organization, but a post by @waynesutton points to some profs and syllabi at end: http://bit.ly/2nwjVT

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October 7, 2009

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Jeff said:

Thanks for the notes, Wayne. Sounds like an interesting discussion. I would just like to clarify that I was not able to make it, and my partner from SocialMediaB2B.com, Kipp Bodnar, took my place.

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October 8, 2009

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Morgan Siem said:

Thanks for the notes, Wayne. Very helpful. I keep hearing what a great meeting it was. For anyone using Sidewiki? You’ll find my comment about Radian6 there.

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October 8, 2009

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MikeHansen said:

You may try this one, also some nice Web Analytics features:

htto://www.debilsoft.de

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October 9, 2009

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Chris Newton said:

Hi Morgan. I read your sidewiki comment, and would love to hear your thoughts on how we might be able to meet your measurement needs better with Radian6.

We are one of the only tools in the industry to attempt actual measurement of social media, including tracking comment counts, view counts, unique commentors, votes, twitter statistics , inclusion of web analytics data and many others.

All of the measurement data can be applied to our widgets… so, unlike most tools, we can provide measurement data beyond simply “# of mentions”. This, combined with infinite deep dive, segmentation and slicing and dicing allow for a ton of flexible measurement capabilities.

I’d love to walk you through these capabilities if you are not already aware of them.

Thanks

Chris

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October 9, 2009

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Amber Naslund said:

Hi Wayne,

Sounds like a really great event. Got a couple questions for you that caught my eye, however:

You say “Free tools are better for monitoring and measuring” and that “Commercials tools do more monitoring than measuring”. I’d love to understand more about what brings you to those conclusions, and what kind of measurement you’ve seen through free tools that you’re not finding in the commercial ones. The Radian6 platform is heavily focused on measurement, metrics, and analytics – helping companies actually track their progress, quantify results, and map their social media engagement clearly to business goals. It’s far more than just aggregation of posts, and our goal is to help companies not just listen, but engage and measure the impact of their efforts.

I’d be happy to explain in more detail, and if you haven’t had a chance to look through some of the measurement and analytics, please check out the Applications section of Radian6.com for some examples. Likewise, I’d be happy to give you a walkthrough of the platform sometimes so we can be sure we’re clearly illustrating the measurement benefits derived from a platform like ours.

My email is below, and I’d love to be helpful if I can.

Best,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra
amber.naslund@radian6.com

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October 9, 2009

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Wayne Sutton said:

Chris and Amber thanks for the comments, I guess I need to put the notes in quotes or add a disclaimer saying these are not my opinions, are all comments taken from the panel member responses and not my thoughts on the questions.

Either way, I highly recommend everyone to try Radian6 and should request a demo before making any assumption or comparing it to other social media measurement and analytics tools.

Wayne

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