Using Social Media and Social Tools as Part of Your Course

Social media and tools – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Meetups and other channels – are effective methods for promoting your course, driving registrations, engaging students during the course, and ultimately building a community of advocates that learn together. ‘Being social’ is about generating word-of-mouth awareness for courses and enabling peer-to-peer interactions that deepen learning and improve student performance.

The way you use these offerings will differ from course to course and university to university. Before we get into specific tactics for successful social media campaigns, let’s take a step back to understand the available tools, as well as the resources and goals we should take into consideration.

Social Media BasicsFacebookFacebook continues to be the most popular social networking site, with over one billion users and 3.2 billion interactions every day. Facebook’s newsfeed, “like,” and commenting features make it an excellent forum for broadcasting information and driving enrollments.

Whether you’re posting on your personal page, on one of your university’s Facebook pages, or working with us to post on the edX Facebook page, there are some general guidelines that will make the posts more likely to be shared with others and help spread word-of-mouth awareness for your course.

- Creating Successful Postso Use photos and interesting videos. Posts featuring a photo receive 53% more likes and

104% more comments than simply text. They are more likely to be seen and shared by a student.

o Keep the text in your posts under 250 characters. Anything more than that takes too long to process.

o Thursdays and Fridays are the best days to post (but that doesn’t mean only post on those days, just that you should save your big posts for those days).

o Ask questions and be provocative. Engage your followers in a dialogue about topics that pertain to your course. Ask them what they are most interested/excited to learn. People on Facebook want to talk and be heard.

- Posts two to three times per week.

TwitterTwitter is a microblogging and social networking site that enables users to send and read short messages of 140 characters or less. With over 200 million active users (and an increasing popularity with Generation Z and Millennials), Twitter is an effective way to share and group relevant content for your course.

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Whether you decide to create a Twitter account for your course (http://twitter.com/mcb80x), as a professor (http://twitter.com/eric_lander), or as a university (http://twitter.com/delftx) there are best practices and tactics you can employ to generate early word-of-mouth awareness for your course.

o Twitter Basics Twitter Handle – your username. @ - Used to call out and link to a specific user’s profile. (e.g. @edxonline) # - Hashtag – a hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol # that

provides a means of grouping these media messages. For example, your tweets tagged #mooc will also be grouped with all tweets from around the world that are tagged #mooc).

Tweets – message containing 140 characters or less, but best at 100 characters

Google+Google+ is the relatively new social networking service from internet and search powerhouse Google. In a short period of time it has registered over 500 million users. Google+ also seamlessly integrates with other Google products, including Search. Used in a similar manner to Facebook, Google+ has the added benefit of being able to display posted content when someone searches Google for your course or university which can help to drive higher course conversion and awareness.

OthersThere are several other social networking sites available that you may want to consider. LinkedIn is used by 225 million people to manage and engage with professional contacts, as well as to connect with others who share interests. If you are interested in developing a greater international presence consider Weibo and Renren for China, and Vkontake for Russia and Eastern Europe. In most cases, we recommend you engage with Facebook, Google+ and Twitter before embracing other tools.

Additional Platforms and ToolsIn addition to social media there are a few other platforms and tools that we think you should know about and possibly employ.

MeetupsMeetup.com enables students to easily find and connect in person with friends and neighbors to form study groups and discussion sections around your course. Our early research has shown that working with others in person can help improve retention and test scores. See our Meetup Community and Google Hangouts companion document for more information.

Google HangoutsGoogle Hangouts is more than just a video conferencing tool from Google. Google Hangouts offers innovative and truly engaging ways for you to communicate directly with your students. With a Google Hangout you can conduct a virtual Q & A session, broadcast a live interview or panel discussion to your students, or even live stream an event. Used in conjunction with Meetups, Google Hangouts can make the MOOC experience feel more intimate, like a traditional classroom setting.

HashtagsYou may be familiar with Twitter’s use of hashtags, but in case you’re not here’s a quick overview. Hashtags like #mooc, allow you to quickly categorize content for your own reference and to group

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content for your audience to help build word-of-mouth interest in your course. They allow users from all over the world to asynchronously access and contribute to a conversation. Although originally only for use on Twitter, the hashtag has made its way into use on both Facebook and Google+. We’ll tell you more about using hashtags in your course a bit later.

ResourcesBefore we dive in to start using these tools and platforms, it is important to consider the resources you and your course team will have available and your overarching goals.

Many universities have specific policies regarding social media. We encourage you to contact your university communications team to review any guidelines or best practices they may provide. Several of our xConsortium members have created brands and social channels around their UniversityX MOOC offerings, rather than for individual courses. For example, UC Berkeley created this Facebook BerkeleyX page.

When planning your social media strategy, it is also important to consider whether you or your university plan on rerunning your course in the future. This will help you determine the appropriate resources to allocate, as well as influence how you can activate course alumni to promote the next rerun of your course.

Most importantly, successfully executing a social media strategy requires a significant time commitment, particularly if you choose to leverage all of the tools and channels available.

Goals & Tactics Whether you’ve decided to create your own course Facebook and Google+ pages and Twitter account, or work with your university to create UniversityX channels, or some combination of the two, there are several tactics that can help you achieve your goals.

Getting Started and Driving Enrollments - Facebook

Whether you’re posting to your personal Facebook page or on one of your university’s pages, it is important to start generating content and posting well before your course start date. If this is the first time your course is running, time your Facebook posts to the registration opening on edX.org. If there is a long lead-time between when your course is announced and when it starts, just make sure you have enough content in the early days to post two times a week.

o Leveraging your University and Alumni Pages Your University and Alumni Facebook pages are great ways to start building

awareness for your course. Current students and alumni are already engaged with your university and are likely to become early supporters of your course. Asking the administrators of these pages to post about your course or to share the link to your page will help you develop a strong base and kickoff the word-of-mouth awareness for your course.

o What to Post See promotional examples on page 6 Ask your audience which topics they are most excited to learn about Share interesting behind-the-scenes footage of the making of your course

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Share a welcome video from your professors, course staff, and TAs This is a way for your audience to get to know you and start building a

relationship

- TwitterAs with Facebook it is important to consider the period from your course announcement date to your course launch date. Twitter is a fantastic medium for building awareness for your course by participating in related discussions and connecting with people interested in your field. Here are some ideas on what to Tweet from your personal account, the course account or your university’s account to initially build awareness for your course and drive people to register.

o What to Tweet Link to the registration page with course start date and time, either as a stand

alone Tweet once a week or integrated into the Tweet below Links to articles that relate to topics you will cover in your course Links to videos introducing the professor or TAs for your course Behind-the-scenes images of the course creation process Blog posts or articles written by professors or course staff News articles written about the professors or course

o Using Twitter at Events or Conferences Chances are any event or conference you or a member of your course team may

attend has a Twitter Handle and a Hashtag to allow attendees to share the conversation. These events are great opportunities for you to gain early followers that you can ultimately let know about your course at a later date.

o Leverage Alumni and University Twitter Feedso Leverage “friend” networks. We all know professors and course team members are well

connected. Make sure to reach out to your network and have them post information on their social channels about your course.

- Google+ Much like Facebook, Google+ is an excellent tool for broadcasting information to potential students. An important consideration with Google+ is that your content will display next to your website in a search result.

Engagement During Your CourseDiscussion forums on the edX platform are a great way for you to keep students informed about your course. We recommend that you also keep your students connected, engaged and motivated through social media. Here are a few suggestions and examples of how to do that:

- TwitterTwitter is an excellent tool for staying engaged with your students outside of the discussion forums.

o Twitter Chats Twitter Chats are real-time events that take place via Twitter where users

submit questions and you respond. It really is as easy as it sounds. This is where

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using a Hashtag to categorize your content and responses becomes important. Now even those not enrolled in your course, but who maybe have an interest in the topic are exposed to you, your course and your current students.

- Google+ and Google Hangouts With Google+ and Google Hangouts you can use live or recorded video to easily reach your students and start a conversation.

o Google Hangout On Air You can stream a Google Hangout live directly to your Google+ Account, on your YouTube Channel and on Your Website. Up to 10 different parties can participate in the Hangout, but it can be broadcast live to anyone anywhere.

Live TA Q&A Sessions. You can ask your students to submit questions ahead of time, pick the

ones you think will be most helpful to the whole class (or better yet let them vote) and then invite the winning submission to join you and broadcast the conversation to everyone.

Google Hangout with Questions While a typical Google Hangout has a ten person limit, a Google

Hangout with Questions allows users to submit text questions that you can then respond to via video. There is no limit to the number of people who can join to submit text questions.

Take advantage of cohorts If you have broken your course learners into cohorts, you could have

multiple Google hangouts where you or TA’s can engage learners in different ways and with different content.

While offline Meetups are great, Google Hangouts are one of the best ways of connecting with and engaging students, in a rich, visual and meaningful way - on a global scale.

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Some Examples for Your Consideration

Getting Started and Driving Enrollments UC Berkeley’s CS191 Quantum Mechanics & Quantum Computing (FB post)

MITx’s 7.00x Introduction to Biology: The Secret of Life. (FB post)

MITx’s 8.01x Classical Mechanics

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MITx: 8.01x Classical Mechanics (FB post)

HarvardX CB22.1x: The Ancient Greek Hero. (Twitter)

UTAustinX: UT.1.01x Energy 101 (Twitter)

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DelftX (Twitter)

MITx: 7.00x Introduction to Biology - Eric Lander. (Twitter)

Fostering Engagement During Your Course

UTAustinX: Age of GlobalizationTwitter Chat on October 16. See entire chat at http://twitter.com/AgeofGlobal

HarvardX: Justice (Twitter)

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Additional Guides & Resources

Twitter: https://support.twitter.com/groups/50-welcome-to-twitter Twitter Glossary: https://support.twitter.com/groups/50-welcome-to-twitter/topics/204-the-

basics/articles/166337-the-twitter-glossary http://www.hubspot.com/twitter http://offers.hubspot.com/twitter-for-business-marketing-kit

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/facebookforbusiness/basics Creating An Account: https://www.facebook.com/help/345121355559712/ http://offers.hubspot.com/facebook-for-business http://offers.hubspot.com/how-to-master-facebook-marketing-in-10-days

Google+ https://support.google.com/plus/?hl=en#topic=3049661 http://offers.hubspot.com/how-to-use-google-plus-for-business http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/28665/How-to-Optimize-Your-Google-Business-

Page-Free-Ebook.aspx

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