WHAT IS THE IOMBA PROGRAMME?

The University of Genevas International Organizations MBA is a unique MBA program that prepares professionals for careers as global change-makers in the increasingly interconnected fields of social development and private enterprise.

www.iomba.ch

MBA SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDE

Prepared by Josh Adler (@JoshAdlerZA) for IOMBA v1.0 September 2012

WHO SHOULD READ THIS GUIDE & WHY!

This guide is to help everyone involved with IOMBA get the best out of social media for themselves and their careers as they go about changing the world for the better! It is primarily aimed at students and alumni, but it is equally relevant for IOMBA staff and professors. I believe that approaches to social media are taught the wrong way. You are taught how to do twitter or use Facebook, but that doesnt really help anyone know what to say (the hard part) once they know how to tweet (the easy part). What were going to do is focus on functional issues, and how to use social media to achieve particular goals.

MY ASSUMPTION: YOURE NOT AN IDIOT

Importantly, this is not going give you step by step instructions on basic tasks. If youre about to do an MBA, you should easily be able to figure out how to do what I suggest, or do some research for videos or tutorials. Tip: YouTube is your how-to friend. Remember, millions of kids around the world figure this all out with no help! You can too...!

THIS GUIDE IS FREE TO ALL!

In the spirit of openness, this guide is published openly on the web under the Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org) as a guide for any MBA or masters student to get more out of school. So if you find it useful, please tell your friends about it at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/, and share it and use it.

WHY LISTEN TO ME?

While Im not formally a Social Media expert, I definitely got a lot out of it during my year at IOMBA, and believe that if you follow this guide, you will get at least as much as I did, and much more! In essence, Ive been where youve been, and it worked for me! But I have long credentials in the digital sector before doing the IOMBA, so there is hopefully some substance to my advice. Check me out http://www.linkedin.com/in/joshadler to see if you want to swallow what Im saying, and please CONNECT!

FEEDBACK PLEASE!
Yes, this is a Social Media guide! So please give us feedback on Twitter (@iomba or @joshadlerza), hashtag #mba, or go to our official page for the guide at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/ and leave a comment! Well use them promise!

MBA Social Media Guide by IOMBA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Download and Share at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/.

OUR SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLKIT

These are the tools that will be covered in this guide. Its short and to the point, and Id recommend that you register and create an account for each of them.

LINKEDIN
Your most important online profile for getting a job today. It requires as much (if not more!) effort and attention as crafting your CV. Think of it as a live document, that not only shows what youve done, but who youve worked with. What to do: 1. Register for an account, and complete your profile. a. Remember, its your online CV! Look for these kinds of examples: i. Other MBA students ii. People who have jobs that you want! iii. People you respect and have done well. b. Remember, less is more. Be brief, and tell the truth. 2. Connect with people you have done business with. a. Dont be stupid. Connect only with people youve interacted with. The UN Secretary General, President of WBCSD and the CEO of P&G are unlikely to accept your invites. b. Please dont import your entire address book from Gmail or Outlook, as LinkedIn tries to suggest you do. Being connected to your high-school friend who now deals drugs is not helpful for your career (thats what Facebook is for!) The best thing to do is scan your address book for people you want to be associated with professionally. Grab each of the email addresses, and use the Import Contacts feature to send invitations to connect. c. Connect with people in your class. Think of them as your work colleagues for the year. d. What about Alumni! I view Alumni as the perfect test ground for online social networking for your career. Dont just connect to every alumni you find, strategically begin to interact with those that are aligned with your interests or career aspirations, to see if it helps you network your way into a job!

MBA Social Media Guide by IOMBA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Download and Share at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/.

3. Tips a. Change your profile URL address to something short, that you can easily send in emails and put on business cards. Heres how: http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/87 b. Set a target for updating your profile with an interesting link to share; for example: 2 per week and put it in your diary and do it. c. Set a personal target for how many people you want to connect to you (not you to them) over the year (eg. 50). If you achieve this, it means youre interesting! The best way to drive this is to find groups that are affiliated to your career aspirations, and begin to talk to people; d. A connection that actually means something to your career is hard to come by. Once you connect, invest some time into following up and engaging the person. Have a goal, like what job opportunities are there at your company, how did you get to where you are, can we meet, as Id like to find out more about what you do etc. e. Post articles to LinkedIn rather than Facebook of stuff thats interesting to your career and studies. It will put you on peoples radar.

FACEBOOK
Ahh. Facebook. The killer distraction but surprisingly useful tool! The assumption is that students today are on Facebook, and its where you keep in touch with friends and family back home, and enhance new relationships at school. Here are some particular tips for getting the best out of IOMBA. The key suggestion, particularly for small schools like IOMBA, is to setup a Facebook group for your year, where you can share updates, help each other with study tips and notes and arrange class events. The second key suggestion is for those that are active, to encourage those that are less active to participate. Some people are actively anti-Facebook, and thats 100% okay. But part of your role as a future manager is to understand what others do and think, and many

MBA Social Media Guide by IOMBA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Download and Share at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/.

will be using Facebook. Treat your year of study as one of experimentation try it out, and see if it adds any value to your student experience. Form an opinion on Facebook as a productivity killer, and how you might manage people who live in a Facebook world! Would you allow Facebook at work? The last thing to do is to help the school with its online profile to attract students by engaging on the official IOMBA fan page. Upload pics of official class events, and like activities that get posted by the school. New programmes like IOMBA will grow through the power of their alumni networks which you will soon be. Visit IOMBAs official Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/iomba.unige

TWITTER
Twitter is the next most important, as it provides an opportunity to change and tailor the information you consume. I personally believe that Twitters real power for MBA students is as a content aggregator, and that you shouldnt worry too much about the manner or scale of your contributions to it. If youve got something to say, say it. But you will get far more by investing time into who you follow, rather than worrying about whether anyone is following you! What to do: 1. Register and create an account. 2. Watch some videos / read some stuff on how to use Twitter. 3. Follow organisations you want to work for, admire, or are learning about. The same goes for people find exciting people for both your work, hobbies and interests, and follow them. They will become your referral network for great content. 4. Install a decent Twitter client (eg. Hootsuite) and see how you can track lots of information at once. 5. Install Twitter on your Smartphone, scan your feeds, take pictures, get involved become geeky! 6. Install Instagram (www.instagram.com) on your phone, and take your photo sharing to the next level, sharing of course with Twitter and Facebook. 7. Mention @IOMBA all the time when youre positing pics and links that relate to school and what you are learning. This helps attract attention to the school, and adds credibility you! IOMBA can then re-tweet these links to a bigger audience.

MBA Social Media Guide by IOMBA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Download and Share at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/.

CUSTOM NEWSPAPERS
If you have an iPad or a smartphone, install a news aggregator that links to your Twitter and Social networks. In my view, the best one is Zite (www.zite.com), with Flipboard (www.flipboard.com) next. Install one, link it to your Facebook and Twitter profiles and choose some additional content channels of interests.

BLOGGING
Blogging is still a hugely important area of the new media mix, and if you plan on journaling your year at IOMBA, you should consider the following two tools for either a private Dear Diary only accessible to you and your friends, or something where you reflect your thoughts in more detail that 140 characters. They are also really good at handling photos and emails, you just send an email with what you want to say and your attached photos and Shazaam a beautiful blog post automagically appears! Both of these services are great, and free. You just login, and start. www.posterous.com www.tumblr.com

If you want to be fancier, consider www.wordpress.org or www.blogger.com The most important part about blogging dont create one if youre not going to update it. It doesnt have to be often even monthly is fine, but it does need to be done!

PERSONAL HOME PAGES

With so many social spaces, its nice to have a homepage with a simple link that you can give to people and put on your business cards. People can then head off to the various social media sites. The best is About.me, and you can really exert a bit of personality, which is great! Visit http://about.me ; write up your bio and upload a pic of you looking dapper!

MBA Social Media Guide by IOMBA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Download and Share at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/.

GETTING MORE FROM ...

YOUR COURSES
Using Social Media can help you get additional benefits from your courses. Here are my tips for making that happen. 1. While doing your pre-readings; take note of the key authors and case-study subjects (people, organisations) and try find them on Twitter ; follow them, and get a contemporary view of the landscape of the topic youre about to explore. 2. While writing your papers, youre going to do a lot of research, and come across a lot of interesting content. Share it on Twitter and LinkedIn and with your classmates on our Facebook group! Use appropriate #hashtags (find out / read up on them), and use it throughout the week and while youre researching to build up a bit of momentum and tweets on #microfinance or #socent (look them up!). 3. Look up events that are happening in the same week as your course, covering the same topic, anywhere in the world. Find out what the hashtag is, and follow the conversation aiding your learning. Examples would be #gfsc2012!

YOUR EMAIL
Im going to show you my favourite tool in the world! Rapportive, which is a social media plug-in for Gmail (which IOMBA uses). Install it, and have better conversations with your friends, classmates and future colleagues. Essentially, it brings up information about the person youre emailing or receiving emails from allowing you to reference recent things theyve done or said on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter assuming theyre connected. This is particularly helpful while engaging with people for jobs and networking. Imagine being able to reference an article someone recently wrote or found interesting, and using that to accelerate cutting through and being relevant! Go to www.rapportive.com and install it inside your Gmail Account.

MBA Social Media Guide by IOMBA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Download and Share at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/.

JOB HUNTING
Social Media is not going to find you a job, but it can help you have the best shot at the one you want. LinkedIn is cutting out recruiters every day, so make sure youve got a good profile and watch the LinkedIn jobs alerts. Similarly, whenever you meet anyone from a prospective employer this year, look them up and connect even if you dont have their card. One of the best recommendations I received was to setup alerts on Devex.com and other sites with jobs for the NGO sector, where you can select your target job types and locations, getting a daily or weekly digest.

THE IOMBA TIMES

We have put together a social media newspaper for IOMBA, which pulls together everything students, alumni and faculty reference on Twitter and Facebook in relation to the programme. We use an online newspaper tool that called Paper.li something you may want to use for other organisations and activities later in your career. Please do the following: 1. Send your Twitter username to IOMBA admin, so they can add your contributions to the IOMBA Times. 2. Check it out at http://paper.li/iomba/1341498532; and visit it regularly! It updates weekly, but we will increase the frequency as the year progresses and students become more active.

IMPROVING THE GUIDE

IF YOU LEARN STUFF, HELP MAKE THIS BETTER

Please leave comments / suggestions about what you have learned or things that didnt work that well at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/ or send through improvements or suggestions to the IOMBA team.

MBA Social Media Guide by IOMBA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Download and Share at http://iomba.ch/mba-social-media-guide/.