The simplicity and the power of the new online social media opportunity is astonishing. Students that are currently enrolled in higher education are a generation raised with much skill in regard to using, navigating and sometimes completely relying on the Internet. What’s even more astonishing? The fact that more academic institutions are not taking the necessary steps needed to evolve to this new medium and solidify their establishment’s name. Here at AgencyNext we’ve just uploaded a new whitepaper entitled Social Media Opportunities for Colleges and Universities: The Untapped Power of the New Media Era, in an attempt to help clarify some common questions.

The piece touches on the following subjects:

When is it time to consider an online community?

Defining the online relationship.

How social media can distinguish your reputation.

Getting involved in the current conversation.

Who can help?

[Download PDF]

Conversation? Yes, because today’s online generation has little interest in a highly-polished institutional website broadcast sanctioned after much review by lawyers and public relations people. They prefer interactivity, fresh and timely content, a chance to hear from their peers whom they trust most (even when they don’t know the people in the peer group personally). Would be students seeking answers online are looking for online communities where they can dialogue… ask questions, leave comments, read and respond to online impressions offered by peers and others.

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Uber blogger Steve Rubel featured a link today to this Yahoo News item from InformationWeek. It's another splendid piece by Sharon Gaudin. The headline: Younger Workers Demanding Web 2.0 Tech on the Job.

The bottom line is simply this… there's no gate, turnstile, body search, pat down, sniffer dog, X-ray machine or other security measure that will protect corporations from the viral infestation of the workplace of these new technologies. The most stunning bit of news in this report comes from a combination of things said by Dennis Moore, a general manager at SAP and Susan Feldman of IDC:

Moore… put up some IDC research numbers showing that 45% of companies have workers blogging, 43% use RSS feeds, and 35% of companies have employees using wikis.

What's interesting about that, according to Susan Feldman, VP of content technologies at IDC, is that the study also showed that IT managers and executives largely didn't know any of this was going on…

Oops! An old saying comes to mind right about now and it is for all old school corporate traditionalists: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

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