Social Media for Cooperative Extension

One of my areas of thought and inquiry lately has been around the role of social media in developing and reaching extension audiences.  Extension has long prided itself on the relationships formed between the clientele and extension professional in the field.  Most of these relationships were face-to-face and I know I've talked about this in previous posts.  In "face-to-face" we have best opportunity for building those high quality relationships that build on the regular interaction, ability to "really see" what someone is talking about and ability to read body language and facial expressions that clue us into the importance of what is being discussed.  As extension professionals we have access to a wealth of valuable, research-based information that can be interpreted and implemented for local situations.  How do we do that from a distance now that we have to cover larger geographical areas to reach the same number of clients?  And better yet, how do we measure success?

The July 28 issue of Inside Higher Ed featured a story, Tweeting by Faith that reports that universities as a whole believe social media is a valuable tool but are ineffective in measuring what the tool is contributing to the organization.  They remain caught up in measuring number of friends, likes, followers, etc. which indicate people are available to hear and possibly listening, but don't really indicate that our message is getting across and used.

I previously reviewed a slide presentation from "Information Management" on the 9 Challenges with Social Media Metrics and share with you now what they identified as challenges and some of my thoughts on how they relate to Extension. 

1.  Response Tracking - This goes back to what we are measuring.  And to go beyond likes, retweets and shares we have to know who is using the content so we can later identify what change the information inspired.  This would require some type of "registration" which is a turn-off to many people when they are surfing.  Personally, if I see it and its not a site I already value, I'm not likely to register.  Someone could go in and make lists of those initial respondents perhaps and message them later to get follow-up information realted to how they used the information.
2. Audience - Are we successful in reaching the desired audience?  Of course this also assumes we sat down initially in planning our campaign and identified our audience.  In this we also need to know whether our message is going out at the proper level for the intended audience.  The message will be different for a beginning versus an advanced client.
3. Monitoring - Are we using social media to listen to how well we are performing.  What are our clients saying about us when we aren't directing the conversation.  This week there has been a great outpouring of support for Cooperative Extension related to our horticulture resources on the #CoopExt tag.  It's refreshing to see that, but who is watching.  And we can sit back and smile now, but if the message were negative would we be prepared to respond effectively and quickly?
4. Content analysis - We need to be sure that what we are producing is of the highest quality and usefulness to the intended audience.  Also, when we retweet or share other's messages we need to be sure it meets our quality requirements.
5. Connections - The article recommends some software that can be used to measure the strength of the connections that are being made on behalf of your social media presence.
6. Traffic analysis - What kind of interactions are taking place as a result of those connections?  Are they improving our reputation and reliability and helping to spread the intended message?
7. Influence - Klout has made us all aware that different people are on different levels of the influence chart.  We need to know how many people/companies of influence are supporting our programs through connections, messages sent, retransmission, links and comments.  I've always felt our messages were much stronger when someone else from the outside shared them as our message.  (Which emphasizes need for our clarity in delivering the intended message to the intended audience.)
8. Case Management - Do we follow-up with issues and challenges that are identified in a timely manner?
9. Cross-platform identities - How do we manage our identities for different forms of media to best utilize the attributes of that media?  Audiences often differ by media as do limitations and types of information that are appropriate to be shared.

How is your cooperative extension program measuring impact through social media?  Do you include it in your regular reports?  Does today's evaluation influence planning for future educational efforts?  And finally, how are you monitoring your message?  I look forward to hearing from you.