I am amazed how many businesses haven’t yet caught onto the need to implement social media and online marketing strategies.

We are starting to make a lot of headway as far as coverage goes http://tinyurl.com/dcdgrb but the traditional business owner or marketing manager is still resisting.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Craig Wilson’s last blog post..Perfect storm causing traditional media bloodbath

Students today have no idea how much social media can do for them or the amount of tools that are available to them, let alone how to show others in a business setting what it can do for them.

Many students are very savvy at using the few tools they know of to communicate with their friends and that is why they have a great deal of potential as future online marketing / PR professionals, but they they still need the experts like you, Beth, to show them how they can apply their skills to productive business applications.

Dave

David Spinks’s last blog post..When in Doubt, Ask Your Readers!

Thanks for posting.

As a December Villanova grad (COM major with a Biz minor), I can support your statement that students (at least at Villanova) have no idea what social media is (other than Facebook, MySpace, and MAYBE LinkedIn) and how to use it for business.

Villanova students are some of the brightest out there, but in my 3.5 years of COM and BIZ classes, the only recommendation from a prof regarding social media was to join LinkedIn (from Prof. Bill Madway) and I didn’t find out about Twitter until my internship with @AnneBuchanan this past fall. Even Villanova friends that I have tried convincing to join Twitter and get a LinkedIn account have responded with apathy. This is where professors & managers must step in to encourage their students & interns to explore social media and networking online.

As an example, in my PR 101 class this fall semester, we had to interview a PR professional and present what we found to the class. I interviewed @CathyWebSavvyPR, whom I had connected with via Twitter. My professor, also a marketing/PR professional, had barely heard of Twitter.

I don’t think this problem is exclusive to Villanova. Many colleges and professors have yet to adopt social media instruction and students are behind once they graduate as a result. This is not a slight on professors as much as it is a call for professors to expand their own knowledge and begin teaching their students the different uses of social media.

Agreed the missing piece is the strategy. It’s one thing to watch Youtube and build a Facebook group for friends. It’s another one to craft and execute a social media strategy that covers positioning, targeting/segmentation, SWOT …

I would argue that many agencies are still skipping this when selling social media plans/initiatives to their clients.

Most sell the media not the result of a social media marketing project/initiative.

In other words questions like the one below are not always answered:

- what community do you want to influence (if there is no community there is no social marketing),
-who in this community , top influencers, middle magic or using Forrester grid, spectators…
- where will you find them (Blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Video sites…)
- what it is that you have to contribute to this community (SWOT, Differentiators),
- what content do you plan to develop
- what is the expected effect you want to see (awareness, purchase, recommendation, clicks)
- how much do you plan to spend (and the most part is usually time)
– how are you going to measure.

Best

Just because the students know how to use FB and iTunes on a personal level doesn’t mean they know how to translate that for a business.

It takes experienced marketers to show them how to leverage it. They may be more willing to jump in with the guidance.

In my classes I am teaching my students about social media. I’m impressing on PR students that they must be looking at how information is being passed around online. Marketing students are writing Internet Marketing Recommendations Plans that must include Anaytics, SEO, Cost-per Click, e-mail marketing, blogging, social networking, Twitter, Virtual Worlds, Advergaming and digital signage. We are also addresing Mobile.

The challenge in the classroom is to connect the importance of the traditional methods that work (like Target Market, SWOT, etc) and get students thinking about social media as a series of media channels that MUST be considered when looking at their overall communication strategy.

When I showed my seniors Twitter last week, only a few of them in the class jumped on. This week we talked about it more and more are getting on. And yet, I have several who resist and don’t see the value.

That’s my job — helping them to see the value in new tools and how to integrate them into marketing planning.

Dr. Elaine Young
Associate Professor, Marketing and e-Business Management
Champlain College

Elaine Young’s last blog post..Real School Choice