EDIT: Thanks to collegebound.net for covering the story!
On December 3rd, 2009 Emerson College experienced what can only be categorized as a power social media storm. The President of Emerson College Jackie Liebergott sent out an email message to students that read as follows
MEMORANDUM
TO: Faculty, Staff and Students
DT: 12/2/09
RE: Important Announcement from President LiebergottPresident Liebergott will make an important announcement concerning the future of the College at 2 p.m. today in the Semel Theatre. All faculty, staff and students are invited to attend.
The only issue was… most of the student body was not receiving email at the time due to a networking issue at the college. I was on campus, and able to retrieve my email, when I did I tweeted the following
Emersonians: liebergohtt is making an important announcement concerning the future of the college at 2pm today in the Semel. RT!
Soon the Emerson Twitterati was abuzz with what the announcement could be. The memo sent to students was so vague and no one was expecting any sort of announcement. Soon Laura Kinson, a fellow marketing major at Emerson, jumped into the conversation and suggested that those who wanted to discuss this topic use the twitter hashtag #jackiessecret. #jackiessecret set off a firestorm of social media action that was unheard of for such a small college (only about 5,000 students total, including graduate and continuing ed) students from both the Boston & Los Angeles campuses were guessing at what #jackiessecret could possibly be. Soon alumni became involved, which lead to followers of alumni to ask what #jackiessecret was, and well, who Jackie was!
As the morning progressed, we learned that The Emerson Channel, one of the nation’s best student TV networks, was going to be carrying the announcement, 2 hours after its completion! The Emerson community clearly demonstrated that they wanted to know what #jackiessecret was in REAL TIME! Noticing this, I personally attended the event and streamed the event live online using Ustream. There were over 400 viewers of the stream! Many of these “viewers” represented entire classrooms at Emerson watching. I later found out through contacts at Emerson College that The Emerson Channel did not want to carry the message live because they wanted to offer an exclusive to a Boston based paper.
There are a few important points to take away from this experience
- News happens in real time, and is reported in real time. You simply can’t offer “exclusives” to events like this one.
- An ominous two sentence email regarding an “important announcement” sent during a networking outage instantly = bad news. If they had good news to share, why would they not want the college to know more about it?
- Emerson College’s total lack of presence on twitter left Emerson unable to respond to #jackiessecret tweets.
- Those who are stake holders will react as such. They will not sit there quietly and wait for hours for news. If you don’t give it to them, they will start inventing it.
- Video distribution to the masses no longer is for the geeks. Anyone with an iPhone can do it.
It should also be pointed out that Laura Kinson and I effectively scooped every other form of media on campus. Emerson is known for its strong broadcast programs, including the nations #1 college radio station, yet… two Marketing Communications majors were the ones that grew the story to what it was. The old rules of media no longer apply.
It should be noted that Laura Kinson and I are both members of Zach Braiker’s Social Media Marketing class at Emerson College.
You definitely bring up some excellent points – especially when discussing the idea that all news effectively occurs and is reported in real-time (I would have loved to see the event live-streamed too).
Twitter is obviously a great tool for broadcasting this real-time news, but I’d like to just raise a couple points.
You’re right — @EmersonCollege was not actively tweeting yet (but will be in January ’10) but I’m unclear as to how it could have effectively responded to #jackiessecret tweets. Staff was actively following the tweets all day, but to engage in a student-created meme would seem invasive, no? You can probably understand that there would be hesitation by any office, especially Public Affairs, to begin tweeting about or responding to a humorous meme about the president of the college. I think even if @EmersonCollege was actively tweeting, the response would have been to deliver news and updates, but avoid (and at the same time respect) the #jackiessecret tag.
When it comes to releasing the information via social media channels, our @EmersonAlumni account quickly released the text version of the speech (with clearance) within 30 mins of the conclusion. http://twitter.com/EmersonAlumni/status/6279346711. While the official accounts by Emerson (on Facebook and Twitter) are developing a bit slow, other on-campus offices are doing great things on several social media platforms.
Once again, great post, and I always appreciate the feedback from students when it comes to how Emerson should engage its students, whether it’s through social media, the web in general, or just face-to-face interaction. I think you and the other students in Zach Braiker’s class have raised some great points all semeter long.
Mike,
Thank you for the reply! I am happy to hear that @EmersonCollege will start tweeting once the new year begins!
I personally would have felt better if @EmersonCollege let us know that the announcement was not really bad news.