I sat down with the Admissions team at TLU and The Liberal Arts and Science Academy (Austin, TX) earlier this week to discuss their social-media strategy. It was a lively conversation and lots of great ideas were batted around. Here’s a synopsis of our talking points.

1. Conversations about your institution are happening with or without you.
2. Develop new protocols and strategies for dealing with positive and negative social media publicity.
3. It is important to be a thought leader about your brand in the social media space
4. Traditional marketing rules don’t fit…this is not about projecting a single public ‘image’, this is about developing authenticity around your brand
5. Authenticity = you are what you say you are
6. This is about participation.
7. Social media doesn’t mean ad-hoc.
8. Social media strategy is both about technology and people.
9. We are all for advanced social media products but you don’t need a custom CMS to get started
10. An effective social media strategy consists of (a) educating your staff on the basic technology and legal issues (b) developing basic vocabulary and skills (c) dedicating resources to the exercise (d) having an integrated approach with the use social media apps and tools.
11. It is not about structure or no-structure, it is about the right structure.
12. Student-workers are a great resource, quit wasting their time and press them into ’service’.
13. Social media is a “job” but it should not be a chore.
14. Blogging matters but blogging for the sake of blogging is counter productive (see #5).
15. Social media and SEO are interrelated. SEO is not dead, and social media can help you reach your SEO goals naturally.
16. Look up your school with http://search.twitter.com – think about what that means for your admissions profile.