"Stop marketing. Start engaging" is the tag line for Scott Stratten's Unmarketing book, blog, presentations and general philosophy. My first exposure to Scott came at the May 2011 PSEWeb conference where he as a keynote speaker. He has left quite an impression on me. Not only have I bought his book and audiobook but I track his blog through Google Reader and I have bought his audiobook for others.
While explaining his philosophy in his keynote he shared a number of tweets that people, typically students, shared about their university or college. He blocked any obvious content which would identify a particular school. One of his examples happened to be of a highly engaged student at my school where she posted a tweet about a major accomplishment. Scott was not shy in making the point that "this school" did not respond and, thus, missed an opportunity to engage this student by sending a simple congratulatory tweet.
From that moment on I have wrestled with whether I should use Twitter to only engage with my professional colleagues or to engage with students or both. Over the past few weeks I have made a concerted effort to increase my time on Twitter largely by making better use of how I use Hootsuite. In one of my feeds I track #uWaterloo tweets. Not surprisingly students will post comments and some relate specifically to residence or housing in general. On a few occasions I have decided to respond.
In one case I surprised, and perhaps creeped out, a couple of students by sending them a tweet because I had never engaged with them before. Despite this challenge I have decided to persevere through the awkwardness that comes from "breaking the ice" so that I can continue to engage with students. One of the costs of gaining responsibilities that comes with moving up the staff hierarchy is less contact with students. I see Twitter as one way I can counteract this trade-off.
When observing other higher education professionals on Twitter it seems that the social networking tool is largely used to engage with peers. While perfectly acceptable I am wondering how my peers feel about engaging students through Twitter.
Do you deliberately choose to engage with your students on Twitter? If so, any tips on how to engage with students effectively?
Image Source: http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/teaching/resources/twitter-best-practices-2012.html
Image Source: http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/teaching/resources/twitter-best-practices-2012.html
My advice is multiple Twitter accounts, avoiding the use my personal account in favor of a course account and recommending that students create a separate classroom Twitter account that I can follow, all of which neatly sidesteps the reedy treehouse effect.
ReplyDeleteGood advice. I have set up other Twitter a/cs but use them little. Set them up to follow other interests like currant affairs, sports and fitness topics. Most of my personal updates go on Facebook.
DeleteI have multiple accounts as well. I actually find that with my personal account I almost never tweet because well I don't think I have that much to say that the world wants to know....My professional account however I have almost 2000 tweets. I use hoot suite seeing who is using our hash tags, and even using the institution name and then snipe them out of no where, providing answers to questions encouragement or congratulations for acceptances etc. By doing this students have followed this account more which sends out tips retweets info for the college and also dabbles in Student Affairs talk as well.
ReplyDeleteIf you've tweeted 2000+ times then you have something to say! Sounds like we use Hootsuite in similar ways. Good advice on how you interact with students.
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