I am working with Tanya Joosten to prepare our social media preconference workshop for the annual EDUCAUSE conference being held October 12-15, 2010 in Anaheim, CA.

Our pre-conference session will focus on social media and its uses in higher education. If you are using social media – at all – in any way – and are faculty, staff, or a student at a higher education institution – we want to hear from you! It’ll be easy, we promise! You don’t even have to study!

Here’s what we’d like you to do:
1. Make a short (less than three minute) video telling us why and how you use social media
2. Upload your video to YouTube and tag it with #edusocmedia
3. Give us a heads-up on twitter so you can be part of our conversation at EDUCAUSE! (@micala and @tjoosten)

See. Told you. Easy.

Please spread the word, we’d love to show as many different perspectives as possible and create a conversation that starts now and carries through to our pre-conference session at EDUCAUSE where the use of the #edusocmedia hashtag will allow all of you to participate in the session as well.

So get out there, spread the word, fire up those cameras, and let’s hear your story! Deadline for videos is September 7, 2010.

I’ve seen some conversation this afternoon about “logo tweets” on twitter that’s gotten me all ramped up and questioning how I feel about this topic. “Logo tweets” represent tweets from a brand/company/organization on twitter that has a photo of their logo instead of a personal photo of the person tweeting as that account. The uproar against these tweets seems to be that we can’t connect personally with that brand/company/organization because we don’t have an actual person to relate to or trust. The idea is that this isn’t authentic and doesn’t serve to build strong relationships.

I think I disagree.

I think it’s about the audience and what they expect from you. I think you can be just as open and authentic as an organization as you can if you are tweeting as an individual.

Let’s look at some examples.

1. @Gowalla – This account has over 20,000 followers and is still very ‘real’ and authentic and … here’s the key I think…. *valuable*. Gowalla is providing updates about their service to people that expect to hear about the service. People follow Gowalla because they expect to see tweets related to that service, not chit-chat conversation. Now, on a more personal level, there’s @jw, the co-founder and CEO of Gowalla who tweets personal things, conversations, AND information about Gowalla itself. I follow both of these accounts because I find them both valuable.

2. @Foursquare -  This account has over 98,000 followers and again – has tweets related to their service. I follow @foursquare because I get information about this service and they tweet what I expect them to tweet. It’s truth in advertising. Having a logo there and tweeting as the company doesn’t make me trust them any less – in fact, I think I trust it more.

3. @Twitter – This account has….. over three MILLION followers. As a company. With a logo. Tweeting relevant information – as their followers expect.

4. @OhioState - A higher ed account. Using a logo, tweeting as the university and the brand, with over 4,700 followers. It’s official and it makes me trust those tweets more. If Ohio State replaced their logo with a person’s face would I trust that more or less? I think I’d trust it less.

I could go on.

I think that as people who are passionate about social media, who use it on a daily basis, and who *know* the benefits of these interactions, we need to be a little less sweeping in our generalizations and put down our pitchforks for just a few minutes while we actually stop… and think.  I thought for quite a while about this, going back and forth about the benefits of separate accounts vs. the benefits of just one account. I asked myself why I follow official twitter accounts, and whether or not I’d feel more or less connected to those accounts if a photo of a person replaced their logo. I thought about why I follow *anyone* on twitter, and what it is that makes following them valuable for me.

I don’t think we can immediately dismiss the value of “logo tweets” because it’s not that simple. The beauty of twitter is that the entire service is opt-in. You choose who to follow, you decide what you want to see (this reminds me a quote from Pretty Woman that I know some of you will enjoy – “I say WHO, I say WHEN, I say….. WHO!!” – ok, back to our topic…) – twitter is *exactly* like that. You choose, you decide, you know what you find valuable and why.

If I’m following a company or organization because I expect to see tweets specifically related to that organization and then they start filling my twitter stream with comments about going to lunch, or what kind of morning they had – I am immediately turned off because I’m not getting what I expect to get.

I think what this boils down to is that it’s GOOD to have a personal connection to a business, organization, brand…. or school. It’s great to feel like you know a “real” person working there. It’s cool to feel like you know the inside scoop and the real story. I completely get that, and I support that 100%. I think many companies are doing that well, sometimes in conjunction with their logo/branded accounts and I think it works.

I have recently started a new position with the Penn State School of Theatre where I’ll be working exclusively with prospective students, and managing their social media presence including Facebook and twitter. We do have an official “logo” twitter account (@psutheatre), but I also have a personal twitter account (@callbackgirl) related to my position in the school and I will be managing both of those accounts. Both accounts reference the other, allowing people to choose if they want to follow the other account but at the same time being as authentic as possible about what you can expect if you follow that account. If someone follows me as @micala then they likely expect to hear things related to my personal life, social media, Second Life, or other completely random things that happen. If I started tweeting things related to the School of Theatre on that account, I don’t think that people would unfollow, but I think it’s rude to expect that anyone interested in theatre would be ok to be subjected to all the other random nonsense I chat about all day long. I don’t *like* separate accounts. My world would be perfect if I could just manage one twitter account and say absolutely everything I want to say right there and have people shower me with glitter and dance around like pixies – but it doesn’t work that way.

It’s not about us.

If I’m following a twitter account with a logo, I’m doing so because I expect to get “official” or “professional” tweets related to their organization. Personal photos immediately make me expect that I’ll get personal tweets and more conversation. Both of these are great, and I don’t think one is more valuable than the other, it’s just about expectations.

We need to remember that when people follow us on twitter, they’re giving us the most valuable gift we have these days…. their time. If we value their time, we’ll share content they expect, provide relevant information, and at the same time… invite them into our community to become part of the conversation – no matter what our twitter icon looks like.