I’m always looking for innovative practices to showcase on this blog.
This past week I exchanged a few emails with Phil de Haan, director of media relations at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. We talked about how we use social networking websites such as Facebook and Linkedin.
In his email, Phil explained how he uses Facebook in his daily work. Since there’s no reason why I should be the only one to find out about this interesting practice, I asked Phil the permission to publish his comments along with a screenshot of his Facebook profile.
How do you use facebook in your daily work as a media relations professional?
[In]various ways.
For example I’ll add stories from other websites to my Facebook profile and include a Calvin connection.
Also, all of my news releases now have a share widget on the page [Karine's note: scroll down to the bottom of this press release to see the widget - find out more about Facebook Share Links on this previous post] which includes a way to share the story via Facebook.
So I share many of my own news releases with other people on campus via Facebook, and I also post a link to the release on my own Facebook profile.
In addition I’ll do searches on Facebook for topics that are in my news releases and then message those people to let them know about a release that matches their interests.
And, of course, Facebook is the first place I go now when I need contact info for a student, a picture of a student, etc.
Do you use facebook, myspace, blogs, podcasts, wikis or any other new tools in your daily job as a Web, marketing or PR professional?
Let us know by posting a comment below or sending an email at karine@collegewebeditor.com. I would love to showcase other best practices.
Related posts:
- Live from the CASE Conference in Philadelphia: 4 tips to get PR and communication professionals started with blogger relations
- Why and how college students use social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace
- Karine to speak about new media and crisis communication at the CASE Annual Conference for Senior Communications and Marketing Professionals in Philadephia, September 13-15
- 7 components of highly effective media relations university web pages
- Interested about the Facebook Phenomenon? Join the group on Facebook!
Lin Larson on 
Julie on 
Our company, Innovation Ads, has not used facebook as a means to promote our sites, one of which is Careers and Education, but I will mention it to them and see how they feel about it.
I have now convinced several departments to start and use Flickr for all those images that can’t be put onto the web site for space reasons.
Have a look at:
Centre for Midwifery, Child and Family Health
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7148311@N05/
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
http://www.flickr.com/photos/86948959@N00/
and Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7560237@N06/
We’ve had good feedback from staff, suggesting that it is a nice internal communication tool. In the next few months, we will try to push more pictures of events into these spaces, to give prospective students a feel of what it’s like to be a student at our institution. We’ll see how that goes :-)