Our first meeting in our new location- Java Break- featured Annie Noll, social media specialist at Ottawa University, presenting to a packed room of Social Media Club members.

Annie started her job at Ottawa in September, 2009. The position of social media specialist was newly created, so she started with nothing: no Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media sites for Ottawa existed, other than rogue sites created by fans. Since there was no social media precedent for her to follow, her motto has been "live and learn" as she has built up their social media strategy.

Annie's vision is to turn Ottawa into its own "media company." One of her strategic goals is to integrate social media into everything the brand does so that social media can help with conversion- actually getting interested students to come to the school.  She also believes that social media can assist with loyalty and advocacy.

For those aren't familiar with Ottawa University, it's a small, non-profit university with a traditional main campus in Ottawa, Kansas, that was founded in 1865. Today, the school serves over 7,000 students through this campus, adult/professional studies campuses in Kansas City; Phoenix, Chandler and Surprise, Ariz., Jeffersonville, Indiana; and Brookfield, Wisc.;  along with an online program.

Annie is currently working to train social media reps at the various campuses to help manage individual campus social media initiatives. She mentioned that originally she thought Ottawa should only have one Facebook page for all students; however, after working in her position for awhile she discovered having separate pages that targeted different audiences at Ottawa was a better strategy.

Ottawa has social media accounts with "the big four"- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Annie spends the majority of her time managing the Facebook page, which garners the most interaction among Ottawa's social media followers.

One of Annie's big initiatives, and one of the most popular, is Braves TV- a student-generated video series that has turned into a one credit hour course. She believes it is their most popular content because it's created by students, and she is hoping to incorporate e-mail and text messaging campaigns to help promote it.

Annie is also setting up a blog, which will include student bloggers, and testing new social media sites such as Formspring, where users can ask questions anonymously, and SCVNGR, a location-based social networking gaming platform that encourages users to complete "treks" and win prizes.

Annie closed her presentation by explaining how she measures Ottawa's Facebook statistics. She keeps spreadsheets for each page and updates them weekly with information such as number of average weekly active users, total number of updates and total impressions. She plans to post a description of this on her blog and will provide a link to it when it's available.

Thank you to Annie for a very informative presentation!

We gave away door prizes at the end of the meeting. Thank you to the prize donors: Rejuvene Salon & Spa, Social:IRL, Kansas Underground Salt Museum and The Sandbar. Congratulations to the winners: Dave Greenbaum, Lisa Ramler, Joe Davis, Andy Bracciano, Charlie Bryan, Sarah Scoular and Josh Davis. Thank you also to Sandbar Subs for providing gift cards for free sandwiches to everyone in attendance.

Join us next week for a solutions meeting with the Douglas County Dental Clinic.

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