Here is guest blog post from a colleague in the field who was one of the early adopters of social media.  Sarah, or @srah, was one of the first people to really start actively using Twitter for both personal as well as International Education purposes.

Here is what she had to say about how social media.

How does social media influence your international education job?

I use social media to communicate with students and with colleagues on campus and around the world.  Social media is the type of web technology that fosters interaction and conversation, which is helpful in a lot of different aspects of my work: getting information about study abroad programs, sharing it with students, answering students’ questions and collaborating with colleagues on projects.

How did you get into social media?

My master’s degree is in Information, with a specialization in Human-Computer Interaction (this has to do with making websites and other information systems user-friendly so that people have straightforward access to the information they’re seeking).  In my graduate school environment, I was surrounded by early adopters, testing out and evaluating the latest social media trends.  I decided to follow a different career path than any of my graduate school classmates did, but many of them are working in the Internet/social media industry and continue to be a great resource to find out about the latest hot gadgets, widgets, apps and platforms.  It was from these friends that I first learned about Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and most of the other social media systems that I use today.

What is one thing you wish you knew about social media that would have made getting involved with it easier?

For people who are hesitant about trying out social media, I think the most valuable thing to know is that it’s okay to participate passively, or “lurk” for as long as you want before jumping in yourself.  You can start a Twitter account, for example, and follow other Twitter feeds to see what other people are saying.  Click on some things and see what they do!  A lot of social media (and new technology in general) is best learned by trying and tinkering.  You’ll probably feel more involved and more interested in continuing this once there’s a two-way conversation going on, but it’s fine to just hang around and observe until there’s something you want to contribute. 

If you’re looking for people to follow or things to learn, check out the #studyabroad or #nafsa11 hashtags to see what people are saying on those topics.

What is one social media tool you cannot live without now?

Twitter is great and Facebook is pretty darn essential, but in the past month or so, I’ve also gotten hooked on the microblogging platform Tumblr.  If I had to describe Tumblr, it would be a cross between LiveJournal and Twitter.  It can be used for keeping a blog, or just for sharing short thoughts, images and videos.  It also has a “reblogging” feature analogous to a “retweet” so that you can share interesting things you find, and posts have an opportunity to go viral. 

The Tumblr community has a pretty young demographic, so I’ve found a lot of posts from students who are preparing to study abroad, currently abroad, or dealing with re-entry issues.  I’ve been doing my own Tumblr about study abroad and international travel, including series on famous people and fictional characters who studied abroad.

Why do you continue to use social media?

Using social media is about meeting students where they are.  Young people are very likely to try out and use new media.  And increasingly, it is about meeting our colleagues where they are, too.  I’ve made all kinds of connections and discovered new things by communicating with study abroad colleagues through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. 

It’s also a way to get quick updates on things happening around the world.  I’ve found that I’m likely to get important breaking news updates through Twitter or Facebook before I get them through any traditional news sources.  It’s not just useful for sharing professional information or promoting study abroad to students, but – as we’ve seen in various emergency and protest situations around the world - could be useful for individuals’ and organizations’ health, safety and well-being.

What do you think social media's biggest impact has been on international education?

I think tools like Twitter and LinkedIn have been very useful for meeting and collaborating with my colleagues in international education around the world.  Social media is, of course, useful for communicating with students, but I think that what I enjoy most is the camaraderie of the online NAFSA communities.  There are many people in this field that I’ve gotten to know quite well before even meeting them face-to-face.  Conferences come once a year (or twice or three or four times…) but these are tools we can use year-round.

Sarah McNitt is a study abroad advisor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.  She enjoys guiding students through international opportunities, fiddling with new technology, watching musical theatre, drinking tea and collecting trivia.  If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with her via:  Twitter | LinkedIn | Tumblr | Email | Website

If you are interested in being a guest blogger please email me at mandy@mandysmashups.com

This is the first post in what I hope will be a continuous series of posts by guest bloggers within the field of international education.  I have asked all of them the same questions in the hopes of offering more information on how social media actually does impact the field of international education as a profession and impacts the professional.  I also hope you will be able to discover how easy it is to get started with social media and some new tools you might be able to use.

My first guest blogger is Frank Merendino.  Here is part one of his guest blog.


How does social media influence your international education job?

I would say there are two main ways that social media impacts my job as an international educator—networking and staying informed. I’ll start with networking. LinkedIn and Twitter have become tools I don’t think I could live without anymore….ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but they really do make networking so much easier and more accessible for me. LinkedIn is great for keeping all of my contacts in the cloud instead of worrying about business cards (full disclosure: I am old school and have several Rolodex folders filled with business cards, so I haven’t completely abandoned older methods of staying in contact with people). Don’t believe me or think that LinkedIn and Twitter aren’t great ways to network? Let me share a real-life example to illustrate one way these tools worked for me.

At last year’s NAFSA conference in Kansas City I met several people at the Tweet-up who I had been following and interacting with online via Twitter. The Tweet-up was great—I was able to put faces to Twitter handles of other international educators I follow. A short while later, I was looking for potential community colleges to partner with and stumbled across a community college that fit the profile I was looking for and just so happened to be the place of employment of someone I met at the Tweet-up. I reached out directly to my “Twitter colleague” who worked at the school, and ultimately a partnership was formed. I believe the level of comfort that Twitter allowed us to have strengthened the relationship that I wouldn’t even have had if it weren’t for connecting via Twitter. This partnership may have been possible without social media, but the amount of time that was cut out from initially developing a relationship via Twitter cannot be discounted.  


How did you get into social media?

I was loath to join Facebook at first, but eventually caved after it became apparent there was no way to avoid it. I still don’t use Facebook very much. It did however introduce me to the general idea of connecting with people virtually and was very much the gateway for other social media platforms like LinkedIn and twitter, which I use more frequently today. I have been using LinkedIn for a while, but in the past three years it has become a site I find myself on at least once a day. As I mentioned above, I use it as a networking tool and as a “digital rolodex”. LinkedIn has also become a way for me to chart my career path. By connecting with other international educators, I have been able to see their previous and current positions, the path they took, and what skills they have developed to help them move down that path. With the background information LinkedIn provides, I have had topics to talk about when I meet people in the real world.

Example

Me: “So, what school did you like attending more, Wisconsin or Ohio State?”

Colleague: “Wow! You really did your homework!”

Me: (thinking this but not saying it out loud) “Yes…I quickly looked at your LinkedIn profile on my mobile about 15 minutes before meeting with you.”

I’ve also had instances where colleagues reach out to me via LinkedIn or I was able to contact them to ask a question. Sure, I could send an email, but I don’t always have their email and it’s nice being able to manage all of your contacts digitally in one place. 

As far as getting started with Twitter, I can specifically point to three reasons why I jumped on the bandwagon and started tweeting: 1) I watched the Social Media Revolution video by Erik Qualman and it gave me chills, 2) I worked with @srah in a previous position (if you are an international educator on Twitter and don’t follow @srah you really should), and 3) I experienced the excitement of “live-tweeting” last year at NAFSA’s Advocacy Day. The video got me interested, @srah gave me a crash course and showed me the ropes on best utilizing Twitter, and my live-tweeting during Advocacy Day showed me a very practical application for Twitter. To see more about how I used Twitter during Advocacy Day, please see the guest blog I wrote for David Comp’s IHEC Blog here.

A comment made during a conversation I was having with a colleague at the Tweet-up in Kansas City last year really put Twitter into perspective for me. The comment he made was this, "Twitter is whatever I want it to be and that’s why it’s so useful.” I couldn’t agree more. The ability to craft Twitter into what you want it to be makes it more versatile than some other social media formats.


End of Part One - More from Frank in the coming weeks!


Frank Merendino is the Sr. Admissions Officer for International Partnerships at the University of Cincinnati. He has presented or volunteered at NAFSA: Association of International Educators since 2007. He currently serves as the Region VI State Rep for Ohio and nationally as a member of the Leadership Development Committee. Frank holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Master's degree in Higher Education Administration from The University of Akron.  You can follow him on Twitter at @Frankie_James.

If you are interested in being a guest blogger please email me at mandy@mandysmashups.com