Facebook | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Facebook 104: Intro to Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are a great way to gather people with a common interest, and have a common space for them to interact.

There are three basic kinds of groups in Facebook:

Open Groups – Anyone can join these, and they can form on a whim. In fact, as you are categorizing you group, one of the choices in the drop-down menu is “Just for fun – Totally Pointless.” Later in the curriculum (Facebook 120) I will show you just how easy it is to create a group. That doesn’t mean it will have any members, but starting the group is simple. And of course if you’re a SMUGgle you really should join the SMUG Facebook group.

Closed Groups – A limited portion of these groups can be seen by non-members, and they can request to join, but group administrators have to invite new members or approve those requesting access. This, for example, was the group type we used to share video and photos of my new granddaughter, Evelyn Grace. So if you want a moderate level of privacy, a closed group is a good option.

Secret Groups – These are quite private, and are not displayed on any of their members’ profiles. As I said here, don’t store bank account numbers or nuclear launch codes in a secret group, but for a fairly secure way of interacting with a defined group of Facebook users, a secret group can work. These are a little harder to form, in that you have to invite Facebook friends; they can’t request to join because they won’t be able to even have access to make the request. A good way around this is to form the group as closed, but then change it to secret once everyone has joined.

Members of groups don’t need to be “friends” in Facebook, so a group can be a way of allowing people with a common interest to interact. So I established Facebook groups for my daughter’s basketball team last year and her volleyball team this year. We’ll do this again for basketball season. So we can share links to news stories and upload video and photos, all without a bunch of high school students needing to be my “friends.”

If the people who are part of your “target population” are already in Facebook, a group can be a great way to bring them together, as we did for this Mayo Clinic Career Festival group, where we added about 350 members in a single day.

If you’re forming a group entirely made up of people from your workplace, a Yammer Group is a much better option than a Facebook group. But if you need to mix people from your workplace with others outside your company, a Facebook group can be a good solution.

Facebook 303: Career Fairs and Recruitment

Today I had the pleasure of participating in a Mayo Clinic Health Care Career Festival, as part of our Public Affairs/Media Support Services booth.

We had about 700 high school students from across southern Minnesota attending the day-long event, where they got to participate in some classes and also meet people who work for Mayo Clinic in various capacities.

This is a great application for a Facebook group. In our booth, we had eight laptops connected to the Web and with the Mayo Clinic Health Care Career Festival Alumni group set as a “Favorite.” Students could log in to their Facebook and join the group, so they can go back and see the photos and videos we’ve uploaded, including photos of them. (Note: we obtained parent permission and had release forms signed for students to participate.)

Here’s one of those photos that shows our booth:

We’ve uploaded photos and videos from the day to the group, and the students will be able to go back to it and tag themselves, or otherwise interact with each other and with Mayo staff. It also will provide our Human Resources and Education colleagues an opportunity to share updates on internships or course offerings with students who have expressed interest by attending.

As of this writing we have 335 members in the group. Some of them are Mayo staff, but most are students. We also have 7 videos and 136 photos.

If you have any kind of event that involves primarily high school or college students, you definitely could use a group like this to engage participants and to stay in contact with them.

Key Elements for Success

Choose a platform participants are already using. For high school students, Facebook is it. If you have to get people to join the networking site and then join your group, you’ve created a two-step process that’s too complicated. At our event today it took less than a minute for students to join the group.

Have a way for participants to sign up while they’re in your booth. Having the laptops with Internet access right there, so all they had to do was sign in to Facebook and join the group, made it easy. I guarantee that if we would have given them a flyer with the URL we wouldn’t have had 10 percent join the group. As it was, we had about 300 sign up in the first few hours.

Give them a reason to return. For today, having the photos and videos of them (and links to some of our Mayo Clinic social media sites like our Mayo Clinic YouTube Channel, News Blog and Facebook Fan Page was novelty enough. Hopefully they’ll go back to the group when they’re at home, and will tag themselves in photos and videos and will invite friends to join the group. It will be up to our HR team that sponsored the event to continue to make the group interesting and relevant to the students in the longer term.

What do you think of this application of social media in career recruiting? What other ideas do you have for applying Facebook?

Proving I Can Walk and Blog

I’m on the way back from a meeting and snapped this picture.

It is a piece of art on the Mayo Clinic campus.

The iphone makes mobile blogging pretty easy.

Now if I could just chew gum while I walk!

Facebook 130: Facebook Events

The blogging has been light for the past few days for two main reasons:

First, we’re in the middle of volleyball season in Minnesota, and my daughter Rebekah’s team had and all-day tournament last Saturday, a five-game victory Monday night (an away game that was 90 minutes from home) and had another road game last night. You can see the exciting 15-13 Game 5 win over Mankato West in the YouTube video below. Rebekah is the middle hitter who got the final kill that led to the celebration.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwX03upilFs]

And speaking of celebrations, the other limiting factor on my blogging time has been the SMUG Campus Renovation project. It has included cafeteria remodeling (a new kitchen) and a new North Porch on Old Main, creation of a cobblestone campus courtyard and construction of the North Annex.

Much of my spare time over the last few weeks, and all day Wednesday, has been devoted to having the campus renovation completed before this weekend.

Because on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008 we will be holding a dedication and naming ceremony for the North Annex. That and a big family birthday party for Rebekah and her sister, Ruthie, along with some cousins. And a welcoming to Austin of my new granddaughter, Evelyn Grace.

So as I do with much of my life, I’m using this as a way of showing how social media tools, particularly Facebook, can make organizing — “community” or otherwise — easier. I created a Facebook Event in the SMUG group, and I captured its set-up in the video below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RmxGiEPGBg]

I was interrupted at the end so I didn’t get to finish the screencast, and I’m not sure why the video at the beginning has some black streaks, but here’s the Annex Dedication event in the SMUG Facebook group.

All SMUGgles are invited to the 3 p.m. CDT dedication and naming ceremony on Sunday. While your attendance is by no means mandatory (particularly for those whose presence would require air travel), you’re certainly welcome. And if you can’t come, you’ll be able to participate virtually as I upload photos and videos to the Facebook event.

Assignment:

Go to the SMUG Annex Dedication event in Facebook and leave your RSVP.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…or maybe ahead of you. What if you don’t know how to invite a friend?

Key Elements for Success

What do you think of this application of social media in career recruiting? What other ideas do you have for applying Facebook?

Assignment: