Social Media Curriculum

I got a little antsy in social media class today, and decided to revamp the curriculum. IMHO, this is what the class should have covered (none of which it currently does). To give a little context, the class meets twice a week, for 1 hour 20 minutes at a time, has about 40 MBA students, and lasts for 14 weeks. In the below curriculum, each numbered topic (plus intro and wrap up days) would be covered in one class period. The overall goal of the class would be to introduce future managers to the current state of the social media field, and prepare them to create and execute social media strategy successfully.

Social Media Class Curriculum
INTRO: SOCIAL MEDIA OVERVIEW
Discuss current state of the industry, social network theory, and class overview

SECTION 1: PLATFORMS
For each platform, review in class: user demographics, history of dominant platform, value proposition, what success looks like, selected relevant topics. Assignment: Select one platform and build a prototype profile based on a person, product, service, project, or policy (see Section 3 for examples). Fill that profile with applicable content and post a link to the class wiki. Be prepared to discuss your profile on its relevant class day.

1. Symmetric Social Networks: Facebook

• Newsfeed
• Profile
• Facebook Ads
• Facebook Causes
• Facebook Connect

1. Asymmetric Social Networks: Twitter

• Search
• Stream
• 3rd Party Platforms
• Twitter Lists
• @anywhere
• @ad Platform

1. Video: YouTube

• Commenting system
• Top viewed videos
• Flashmobs

1. Location: Foursquare

• Digital v analog
• Game mechanics
• Push notifications
• Yelp & Groupon

1. Collaboration: Wave & Skype

• Challenges when working across time and space

1. Blogs: Gawker

• Cultivating snark
• Commenting systems

1. Email: Gmail & Xobni

• Benchmark open & click through rates
• NYT most forwarded emails

1. Bookmarks: Delicious

• Bit.ly
• Packrati.us

1. News Aggregators: Digg

• Wisdom of crowds

1. Customer Reviews: Amazon

• Star system
• Motivations of reviewers

1. Social Gaming: Zynga

• Virtual currency

1. Mobile: iPhone app store

• Open source
• How mobile changes things

1. Website Design

• Calls to action
• Search engine optimization
• AdWords

SECTION 2: STRATEGY
Review the nuts and bolts of creating a social media strategy, specific to what makes social media different from traditional media. Assignment: Using the profile you’ve created, design a social media campaign strategy, touching upon each of the class topics below.

1. Creating a Workplan

• Competitor benchmarks
• Goals
• A/B Testing

1. Copywriting

• Different voices for different platforms

1. Measuring Success

• Free and paid services
• Are metrics predictive?
• Engagement versus sales

1. Organizational Culture

• Social Media Policy
• Training your staff
• Overcoming fears

1. Legal & Ethical Considerations

• Privacy

SECTION 3: CASE STUDIES
Focus will be on class discussion about how to use social media in various contexts, and within different industries. You should make yourself familiar with the social media presence of each of the following brands/situations. Assignment: Write a (digital) case study about a social media decision that the person/organization/situation you’ve been working on is currently facing, using all of the material you’ve created/found.

1. Marketing

• JetBlue
• TV show Chuck

1. Customer Service

• H&R Block
• Zappos

1. Fundraising

• @drew
• Charity Water

1. Crowdsourcing

• Haiti Crisis Camp
• #2amt

1. Thought Leadership

• CNN
• Chris Brogan

1. Politics & Policy

• Blue State Digital Obama’s 2008 campaign
• World Wildlife Fund

1. Personal Branding

• LinkedIn
• SXSW

1. Collaboration

• SalesForce’s Chatter
• Threadless

WRAP UP: FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Discuss portable social graphs, smart ads, and push recommendations.

Reading List (based on class #)
Selected passages will be chosen from each of the following books, relevant to each of the classes.

1. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler (2009)
2. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich (2009)
3. How to Twitter (www.mashable.com)
4. The Cult of the Amateur: how today’s internet is killing our culture by Andrew Keen (2007)
5. Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (2008)
6. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (2008)
7. Say Everything: How blogging began, why it matters, what it’s becoming by Scott Rosenberg (2009)
8. The Google Way: How One Company Is Revolutionizing Management as We Know It by Bernard Girard (2009)
9. Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Erik Qualman (2009)
10. We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People by Dan Gillmor (2006)
11. The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki (2004)
12. Smartbomb: the quest for art, entertainment, and big bucks in the video game revolution by heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby (2006)
13. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson (2006)
14. Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik (2007)
15. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott (2007)
16. Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan (2009)
17. Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity by Avinash Kaushik (2009)
18. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2010)
19. Free: How Today’s Smartest Businesses Profit by Giving Something for Nothing by Chris Anderson (2009)
20. Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki (2008)
21. Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel (2006)
22. The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine (2010)
23. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky (2006)
24. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin (2010)
25. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by Heilemann (2010)
26. Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuck (2009)
27. Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves by Adam Penenberg (2009)

RSS Subscriptions or Follow on Twitter

• www.altitudebranding.com
• beth.typepad.com
• blog.guykawasaki.com
• www.chrisbrogan.com
• www.copyblogger.com
• www.fastcompany.com
• www.gigom.com
• www.kaushik.net
• www.mashable.com
• www.readwriteweb.com
• www.techcrunch.com
• www.toprankblog.com

Class Expectations

• Actively participate in class discussions
• Come prepared to bring your opinion and professional experience into the conversation
• Provide counter arguments
• Use Google Wave to collaboratively take classroom notes
• Feel free to tweet during class, provided that it is relevant and constructive to the current discussion. Note that tweet stream will be monitored by the TA.
• Post your assignments to the class wiki. Note that you are expected to provide linked content throughout, and constructively comment on each others work.

— — — — — —

So clearly it’s way more content than one class could actually cover, and the teacher would really have to bust their ass to pull together this much content, but it was an interesting exercise (for me at least). What am I missing? What am I trying to cover that’s not actually relevent? Know of a better book/blog? Totally bored by this post?