Tech Strategy

Ed Tech in Action with the Live Healthy, Live Well Team

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to attend a Live Healthy, Live Well program team meeting. This FCS group has done a wonderful job of including technology and social
media into their program – and it’s now an OSUE Signature Program. Live Healthy, Live Well is a nutrition challenge during which participants receive e-mail newsletters, and follow the program’s blog and Facebook page. Both the blog and Facebook page are updated regularly, even outside of the program’s challenge dates, which helps to drive more potential participants to the program’s information.

During this meeting I shared and discussed the following resources with the team:

Time was also spent discussing their current format for the Live Healthy, Live Well e-mail newsletters, which they felt were in need of an upgrade. I shared a couple examples with the team (see the OSU Buckeyes image below – screen captured from their Facebook page).

Of course, Live Healthy, Live Well digital newsletters won’t be sharing the same information as the OSU football Facebook page. So we chatted about how we could transform the e-newsletters become a bit more visual and not as information-dense while still getting needed info to participants. The key here can be links, links, and more links – all complimented by a very visual template. This also will drive more traffic to their blog and Facebook page, which is a goal they’ve decided needs to be part of their overall social media strategy. E-newsletters are beginning to look more and more like a page in a magazine as the appeal of seeing information in visual form and in short snippets crosses over from Facebook (see other examples below).

As a result of the meeting, the Live Healthy, Live Well team is considering experimenting with paid promotions on their Facebook page to reach more potential program participants. I’ll also be working closely with them to communicate how they can best show and report their impact via the technological components of the program (in RiV in particular) – which is an issue we’ve been struggling with in Extension for years. This will be a major focus of our next Ed Tech meeting this Wednesday and we hope to have this information posted and ready for the organization in December – just in time for all the RiV procrastinators out there! (I can say this because I’m one of them.)

In the meantime, please consider inviting an Ed Tech (or more than one…) to an upcoming project or program team meeting to help your group think through some of the issues, concerns, ideas, and aspirations of technology use in Extension. We are here to help. I feel that in just the past few short months, we’ve already gained a lot of ground.

~Jamie

 

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~ Teresa

Social Media: Who is Using What?

As a follow-up to my post on the POST method of strategically planning tech or social media integration, I wanted to share a recently discovered Pew Research Center articl

The landscape of social media userse on a study they published nearly a year ago. Yeah, even Ed Techs can be behind the 8 ball… or behind the “Pew” in this case. In the study, they depicted which demographics were using which social media tool, an invaluable resource for anyone looking to firm up their social media strategy. See the full report of the Demographics of Social Media use here.

Items worth noting for Extension:

    • The majority of social media users are still on Facebook.
    • The majority of those using Twitter are between the ages of 18-29.
    • 15% of social media users are on Pinterest, and most of them are women.
    • Only 13% of social media users are using Instagram, and they’re in the same age range as Twitter users

So how can you use this info as an Extension professional? After you decide who your target audience is going to be for any social media endeavor, use this study’s results to
see what social media sites your demographic is using. If you’re targeting males, you are not going to want to use Pinterest – but depending upon the age range,

Twitter might be a good choice. It also matters what they’re using these sites for. Pinterest is a wonderful tool to share recipes and home decorating ideas, but it is not a good place to house helpful links (you’re better off having a website or webpage for that purpose).

The image at the left has made it’s way around the inter-webs over the past few years and is a good tool to use when thinking about how different social media sites are utilized by their users and how you would post information on a specific topic to each site.

What social media sites have you been actively using? What has been working for you, or what do you feel isn’t working?

~Jamie

 

How to use the POST method to determine which technologies and social media tools to include in your programmatic efforts.

I went through several different versions of a title for this blog post, and that was the best I could come up with. At any rate, we Ed Techs have been very busy working with program teams and curriculum development committees to assist in helping them determine which technology tools or social media sites would be most beneficial to include in their programmatic efforts. This is a bit of a switch from our usual “mode of operation” when it comes to tech inclusion in Extension programming. Our way of thinking for many years has been to grab a hold of the technology first, and then figure out how we’re going to actually use it… or if it’s worth using at all. One of our goals as Ed Techs over the next year is to work with Extension folks to rework and rethink this trend. By thinking strategically about how tech can be most effectively integrated into Extension programming, we will achieve much greater results. The POST method is a great tool for such planning. It’s broken down below:

  • P – “People”: assess your customer or audience’s social activities. What are they using? Are they on Facebook? Or are they on Instagram? Would they appreciate the
    inclusion of a Wordle on your promo items for a program, or not really?
  • O – “Objectives”: decide what you want to accomplish. What are your goals for the curriculum, program, activity, etc? What do you want to accomplish by using technology as a part of your efforts?
  • S – “Strategy”: plan for relationship-building. Currently, relationships can be created online and then enriched in-person. What tech or social media tools would help you build relationships in an online or hybrid environment.
  • T – “Technology”: this is your end point after working through the above steps. End with the technology piece; try not to be tempted to start with it! (Even though that can be difficult sometimes!)

For those interested, there is a more in-depth explanation of POST here. (It’s an interesting read if you have 5 minutes to spare.)

As we continue our work over the next few months, you’ll continue to hear about this method. Have you used the POST method before in program planning? What has been your experience with it? What benefits could you see from Extension professionals using this method as part of their program planning?

~Jamie