Stephanie Hatch Leishman
Former MIT Social Media Strategist
MIT Commencement 2013
June 12, 2013
This year, Commencement was as great as ever, although the weather was wetter than usual. Hundreds of people posted about Commencement to different social media networks to share their experiences. I compiled the best tweets, photo, video, links, etc. on Storify: Are You Ready for Commencement? Doctoral Hooding...
Read the PostWhy Use Images?
May 17, 2013
I'll tell you why. People process visual information faster. Some concepts are better explained by an image than by text. Posts with images usually get more engagement. Images generally take up more space in the news feed. Images interrupt long passages of text in a good way. Pages on your website that don't have...
Read the PostBlended RSS Feeds
April 29, 2013
"RSS" is published online content shown a standardized web feed format. An RSS feed syndicates content in such a way that it is readable by "RSS readers," such as Google Reader (which will be discontinued in July, so get your Feedly now). Let's say you have a lot of RSS feeds for your department. For example, the...
Read the PostCurated content about curated content
March 1, 2013
Curation is an effective and unique content type. Pawan Deshpande says content curation is "the process of finding, organizing and sharing online content." In its very basic definition, curation is using your expertise in a field to gather great content around a specific theme and present that content in a way that...
Read the PostReporting On Your Social Media Analytics
February 6, 2013
If you manage social media accounts for your department or school, you should be regularly and consistently looking at your analytics. Pull and file reports so you can evaluate changes over time. How often should I pull reports? How often you pull reports should depend upon how often you meet with your supervisor/team...
Read the Post37 Ways MIT Uses Yammer
January 22, 2013
Yammer is an enterprise social platform being used by a few thousand employees at MIT for networking, project management, faculty-student collaboration, teamwork, onboarding, learning, talent management, team formation, and more. Here is a list of actions we take on Yammer. Word of advice: Yammer is as awesome as you...
Read the PostPersonal vs. Department Identity in Social Media
January 15, 2013
A few days ago I received an email from a colleague who manages social media for an MIT program. She wrote, "One thing that really confuses me is how to brand myself in relationship to [the program]. People reach me more than others via [the program's] social media accounts. Sometimes people ask 'Who is behind this...
Read the PostSnip.it
January 7, 2013
Update (7/17/14): Snip.it is no longer an available service. The URL redirects to the Yahoo Tech news home page. Have you found a network similar to Snip.it, as described in the post below? Share in the comments! Update (1/24/13): Snip.it is joining forces with Yahoo. Profiles are not accessible during this...
Read the Post"Meltdown": A Twitter Case Study
December 20, 2012
"Meltdown," a post written in October on the MIT Admissions blog, evoked a lot of responses via social media. One benefit of social media is the data they provide on reactions and thoughts about a piece of news. It's like listening in on what people are saying to each other about a particular topic. Between October...
Read the PostRepurposing Content for Social Media
December 10, 2012
Academic departments produce a lot of content. Faculty members are always writing and teaching, academic departments are producing communications materials in various print and digital formats, and campus services have marketing materials on hand. A lot of the content you are already producing can be posted to social...
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