{"id":5096,"date":"2014-02-21T08:46:45","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T13:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/?p=5096"},"modified":"2017-04-20T00:26:30","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T04:26:30","slug":"reconsidering-social-media-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/blog\/reconsidering-social-media-hub\/","title":{"rendered":"Reconsidering the Social Media Hub"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hub
All things social reside in the hub. But should they?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of my favorite projects when working at Tufts University was leading the creation of our social media hub<\/a>, a custom-built page which hosted feeds from all of our social media accounts and served as an at-a-glance destination for campus social chatter. I was (and still am) extremely proud of what we built.<\/p>\n

But that was back in 2010. Now, four years later, these types of pages (often called hubs, mashups, or aggregators) are still very common, but I think we\u2019ve gotten better at them. Look at MIT\u2019s Connect<\/a>, which blends highlighted social media posts and accounts with a robust directory; Chapman University\u2019s slick Social.Chapman<\/a> hub; Hamilton College\u2019s robustly curated The Scroll<\/a>; or Vanderbilt<\/a>\u2019s smart use of the RebelMouse<\/a> platform. (RebelMouse is one of several available third-party tools, such as Tintup<\/a>, Tagboard<\/a>, and Pressi<\/a>, that you can use to help create and manage social media hubs.)<\/p>\n

The difference between then and now is that we\u2019ve realized the value of (and achieved easier capability for) moderation and curation as opposed to simple aggregation. We\u2019re also creating better touchpoints for people to follow accounts directly, as well as more effectively enabling smart discovery, be it via search or smartly organized directories.<\/p>\n

But I think there\u2019s still further to go. And that journey may end with the demise of the social media hub.<\/p>\n

Eye on the Prize<\/h2>\n

Is a form of communication as young as social media still capable of yielding an anachronism? Yes, wrote University of Maryland, Baltimore County communications manager Dinah Winnick in a thoughtful CASE blog post<\/a> last year. And the social media directory may be that very anachronism.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the primary goals of social media is to engage directly with current and prospective students, alumni and others where they already hang out,\u201d wrote Winnick. \u201cDoes a phone book-style listing of accounts posted on a university website help achieve that goal?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, curation-based models like The Scroll, wrote Winnick, are attractive but time-intensive. How do we strike a balance? \u201cWe must adapt successful models to fit our institutions\u2019 particular needs and resources, using them to inform creative solutions that are uniquely our own,\u201d she concluded.<\/p>\n

Winnick hit on a lot of critical points in her post. Is a hub\/directory\/mashup the best way to leverage social media content, given the nature of the medium? Are we pursuing hubs and the like because they are strategically prudent, or simply because they have become the default solution for featuring social media content on our website? And with regard to some of the third-party social media aggregation platforms I mentioned, it is always important to make sure that we are utilizing services that we can align with our goals and use effectively with the resources at our disposal.<\/p>\n

As with all things, our goals must drive us. Has the hub become a habit? Is this the best use of our social media content?<\/p>\n

Toward Transparency<\/h2>\n

I really like how Chapman\u2019s interactive marketing specialist Sheri Lehman thinks about the purpose of her university\u2019s social media hub \u2014 not just to collect content from the community, but to use it to reinforce a sense of openness. <\/p>\n

\u201cAggregating posts and collecting user-generated content requires brands to be open, honest, and genuine,\u201d she wrote in an October 2013 blog post<\/a>. \u201cTransparency holds universities accountable for answering questions, addressing concerns, and engaging in every day dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

This idea of transparency is key when it comes to creating powerful social media content, as well as all web content, since transparency reinforces clarity. The less we are perceived to be hiding or obscuring, the more effective we will be at forming meaningful relationships built on trust. <\/p>\n

But let\u2019s expand upon this concept. A social media aggregator may be effective at transparently representing conversations on campus, but our challenge is to take that sense of transparency even further. If tweets by and for alumni are on our aggregator page, but not on our alumni-specific webpages, we may in effect be obscuring information and inhibiting transparency. If our program pages aren\u2019t speckled with tweets from relevant clubs, professors, and even students, we may not be representing these programs as fully as we can (and should) be.<\/p>\n

As social media in higher ed has grown up<\/a>, we\u2019ve come around to the realization that it\u2019s not a separate, special unicorn that needs to reside in an organizational and publishing silo. Rather, social media is just one part of a smart communications strategy, and its true power is best revealed in integration with other platforms and mediums. <\/p>\n

With that in mind, social media is not destined to live contained in a separate hub or aggregator. It is destined to live contextually across our entire website, enhancing more static elements with real-time, personality-driven social content. <\/p>\n