What’s Your Social Media Doomsday Scenario?

Recently, the Wyoming legislature debated a Doomsday scenario bill which in the event of a collapse of the U.S. political system would’ve given the state legislature to form a task force that could’ve created a Wyoming armed forces, a statewide currency and other absurdities. While the intentions and merits of the bill are curious at best, it led me to consider my own doomsday scenario in regards to social media. What happens when Facebook goes away?

I read a lot of insights from smart people who make generally compelling pitches for the whys and hows of using social media to extend your brand. In the higher ed space, we spend a lot of time talking about tactics to reach prospective students, engage alumni and use these tools at our disposal to boost enrollments and raise tons of cash.

The conversation I hear less (as in, never) is what happens when they go away. The obvious answer is “something else will replace it” but that negates the time and energy it takes to invest in those networks in the first place and how all of that gets lost when the network dies. Those of us who’ve been doing this for a while joke about AOL or Friendster or Myspace (what? you’re still using it?!)  and bygone niche social networks that burst onto the scene like Pinterest. Facebook is a panacea today and Twitter is a modern miracle for a bevy of diverse activities.

Of course, the telegraph was once the most advanced piece of technology on the planet. It all goes in cycles I guess. Where I’m going with this is less an admonishment and more of a set of broader questions about priorities, resources and time.

In a situation where there’s limited resources (read: staff) and a lack of institutional dexterity, does it make sense to drive precious energy towards social media? Answer: People are already doing it anyway. So there becomes a need to corral what’s happening and find a way to contain that rather than allow a wild west approach.

There was a conversation a few weeks ago on HigherEdLive about social media and whether there should be consolidated social media presence or whether schools ought to have targeted social media for different departments/colleges/programs and so forth. There were no outliers who argued — even on twitter — for a consolidated strategy.  This owes to size and scope, though.

When you’re an engaged digital denizen, working with others who are similarly inclined it’s easier to advocate for the “smart” strategy. When you’re in a more constrained situation (for example: there’s one or two people wearing the less defined hats of an entire website) this becomes a bit more unwieldy. These one-size fits all answers don’t work for small, niche institutions (tiny colleges with no web marketing plan, community colleges serving a small target area) where it might make a ton of sense to have one page with 1,000 likes and a centralized repository of information rather than five or six different pages that are not curated as well and heavily dependent on the individual who might be in that job at that particular time only to be abandoned by a future person based on their skill, interest, etc.

But back to my original question, I’d argue that it’s counterproductive to invest significant amounts of institutional resources trying to woo constituents through external networks when your own presence fails to engage them. It’s akin to fishing with a lure and no hook.

To tweet or not to tweet

Life in the hinterland is different. While my colleagues in the Twitterverse bandy about this metric and that strategy on their blogs, the issues I contemplate and deal with day to day are far less complicated than that. 

As I contemplate the merits of social media tools, the first question always ends up with “should we bother with that?” Understanding your audience is a critical component of this and if I know that few students are tweeting, is there a rush to get on Twitter?

Twitter is the big example because it’s an otherwise relatively large part of my social media existence. Our conversations are always about more, pushing the envelope and helping people use more of what’s out there to supposedly make things easier. But what if investing time, energy and money isn’t worth it at all? So much of our business is vendor driven and so, it makes sense that no one is out writing longform blog posts about austerity or that one time when they said “no, we’re not going to cut a check on a particular project because we can’t.”

I like these situations, though. As much as I enjoy being in the room discussing big ideas and implementing them as I have in the past, it’s here in the trenches that you really earn your money. People in rural communities, at small colleges where innovators often fear to tread don’t get the same attention that bigger places get. There are lots of reasons for this and I don’t need to explore them here. 

It’s just a different environment. Years ago, it was just something to be online at all. Now? We watch the world around us go at breakneck speed and wonder what it all means. I feel wedged between the realities of the landscape and a need to push forward in spite of the various challenges. So much so, that it’s often strange to blog about it until many of the decisions are made. Then we can discuss how we got there.

So no, we don’t tweet yet. But I did create a Twitter placeholder on my 2nd day almost two months ago for the day when we’re able to. Our Facebook presence will undergo a bit of a facelift in the coming months and so will our various web sites. It’s an exciting time to be part of laying a foundation that sorely needs to be laid down. This type of role is a sweet spot for me, in part because I’ve done it so many times before in recent history and because it’s sorely needed.

There’s more where this came from.