Social Media Outreach Assignment

Social Media Outreach Assignment

Yawen Xu
Rutgers University

Social Media Outreach Assignment

Social Media Outreach Assignment

Thanks to Web 2.0, the rise of social media dramatically decreased the difficulty
of information sharing. To all the Internet users, sharing information and connecting with
others are just a couple of clicks away. This feature makes it much easier for communities
to form, connect, and take group actions abilities which are expanded with the help of
the Internet (Shirky, 2008). With those changes, businesses also start to use social media
to reach the public and try to form positive relationships with the communities. The usage
of social media makes the public more reachable for companies; in todays hyper
connected world, geographical barriers are no longer an issue for community formation
and for companies to reach communities. With the help of social media, companies can
contact communities through their websites and social media accounts despite where the
members of those communities are from. That also allows the companies to reach a much
wider range of communities than before, since the costs of connect with communities
went much lower. Reaching communities through social media makes it easier for
companies to gather relative information from the communities websites and social
medias. By using the information they collected, companies can attack some problems
with the communities together. Like the health care example that was mentioned in the
community relations 2.0 article, medical institutions can gather patients treatment
information from communities like Sermo, and Inspire, and use that information to
customize treatment protocols to match ever more granular sets of patient and disease
characteristics (Kane el al, 2009). Other than that, social media also makes feedback
gathering from the communities much more effective with their interactive friendly

Social Media Outreach Assignment

feature- comment section, bulletin board, etc. This feedback could help the companies
improve their services and products, and also prepare them from a potential crisis and
take action beforehand.
On the other hand, using social media to reach communities also has some
challenges. To start with, due to the fact that social media usually lacks some certain
social cues, when the companies are communicating with the communities, there are
possibilities that the missing social cues will cause miscommunication and
misunderstanding. Therefore, it requires that the discourse between the companies and
communities must be clear and accurate. And also, everything is documented on social
media, which requires the companies must be really careful with every message they ever
send on the Internet. Otherwise the backfire of saying the wrong things on the Internet is
going to hurt the companies hard. Additionally, because social media is so easy to access
for everyone, its hard to know who are you dealing with online. Businesses had far more
time to monitor and respond to community activity before Internet arrived, but now, with
the rise of Internet and social media, this advantage has diminished. Everything changes
so quickly on Internet, and with the immense amount of information online, its so easy
to miss some important information, which might cost companies the opportunities to
identify potential threats and allies.
Application
I used to work in Rutgers University Student Life departments Marketing and
Communication office; they were working on getting more international students
involved on campus. In this situation, the international student is the customer, and in
order to improve the customer relations in this situation, a few plans can be implemented.

Social Media Outreach Assignment

First, gather information about different international student communities clubs and
associations. Usually each student organization will have their own website and various
social medias. Student Lifes social media team should go through those communities
websites and various social media to know them better. This would be helpful for Student
Life to find a common ground with those student organizations to form some
collaborative activities together, which could improve the connections and cultivate trust
between the two parties. Then, the social media team should design a survey to further
understand what are those student organizations usual activities and how involved their
members are on campus activities and programs. After that, the social media team can
start to contact the student leaders of those organizations, and ask them to fill out the
survey and distribute the survey to their members, so we can know what different student
organizations focus are, and how involved they are on campus. After the social media
team gets the results, they can combine the information they gathered online and the
survey results, then start discuss the potential collaborative opportunities with the student
leaders of those organizations. The collaboration between them can start with following
each other on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and helping each other post their upcoming
event and activities could improve the relationship with each other. Every posts and
messages Student Life sends should be appropriate for a school setting. By connecting
with the student organizations, Student Life can also monitor those communities to
identify potential crisis. Google Alerts, Twitter Keyword Monitors, Facebooks Lecicon or
manually, constantly check their social media and websites updates are all effective ways
to monitor. In all the communication process, Student Life must make sure the email,
posts, and message they send out is legal, accurate, transparent, and clearly indicate

Social Media Outreach Assignment

whos responsible for the information. This part should be mandatory for the Student
Lifes media team to avoid misunderstanding, miscommunication, and confusion of
responsibilities. This community outreach plan for Student Life department is a general
plan that organizations and companies can take to improve their relations with
communities; it may not corporates everything, but it represents the crucial parts of the
community outreach plan.

Social Media Outreach Assignment

References
Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without
organizations. Penguin.
Kane, G. C., Fichman, R. G., Gallaugher, J., & Glaser, J. (2009). Community relations

2.0. Harvard Business Review, 87(11), 45-50.