I’m off to Birmingham next week, the social media centre of the UK, for an event organised by AMSU about how social media can be used to make Students’ Unions stronger. I like the title, it implies that the Union is already strong but there’s much more we can do. It’s a fitting time really as the Union’s Facebook page has just had it’s 1,000th fan join (good times!) and we need to know how we can improve what we’re doing with social media.

Ahead of the event we’ve been asked to answer the following questions:

• the biggest single issue your students’ union is facing and also
• one thing you think social media will be most useful for

The biggest single issue UCLan Students’ Union faces:

How to keep doing what we’re doing, but potentially with less, and proving our impact and legitimacy

It’s no secret that in the future there is going to be less money around. Less money means less resources, less people and less time. But, as a Students’ Union how do we keep giving our members best value, innovative opportunities and chances for involvement without comprimising on quality? It’s not going to be easy to keep current services operating the way they are. And at UCLan, it doesn’t seem like student numbers show any sign of slowing down and also the students that we have in our numbers are becoming increasingly diverse and spread out across different campuses. The pressure will also be on to prove what we are providing, show how we measure that and as a lot of Unions become charities – show our impact.

One thing you think social media will be most useful for:

Engaging and mobilising groups of students

Social media can be a driver for getting students involved. Not just in the Union’s business, getting them to vote etc but also by empowering them to use social media themselves to campaign, inform, mobilise other students and make friends/contacts. If we have a membership that is twittering, facebooking, blogging, creating video, posting photos that is an active and engaged membership that will help the Union achieve its goals. At the moment a lot of that activity is lacking and we need to find ways of inspiring and instigating it – but this needs to be balanced with letting students have their own opinions in an increasingly policied space (both by the Union, the University and other organisations).

I’m hoping from the social media course I am able to learn what other Unions are doing, pick up some hints and tips and put together the start of a plan of how the Union can use social media particularly in its membership functions.

New Leeds University Union homepage

As web & digital marketing co-ordinator for a Students’ Union I’m constantly taking a peek at what other unions are doing with their websites. It’s interesting to see the diversity across the sector, with some sticking to rigid templates while others go to bespoke designs. Leeds University Union is one of the leading unions in the UK and at UCLan we often take a lead from what Leeds are doing – and when Leeds launched their new website powered by the Membership Solutions Limited system it was well worth a look.

The first thing that hits you is that they’ve managed to fit a lot more onto their homepage than previously, really showcasing what their Union does and has available for students. Here’s what I like and don’t like about it.

Loving

Mid homepage navigation

Their mid-page navigation is a really sharp design. Very often there’s so much in the top navigation that should be showcased on the homepage but there just isn’t the space and the homepage would end up cluttered if everything was. They’ve pulled news stories and content through from each section featured in the mid-page navigation and opened up those sections, plus it’s bound to keep those staff in those departments happy that they’ve got a presence on the homepage.

The crispness of the design is quality. It matches Leeds’ corporate colour scheme but doesn’t come across as a corporate site. They’ve pulled a lot of content through and for the students there’s loads of click on, follow and find out about – which is great for new students coming for the first time but also for returning students there’s the chance to get involved again. The website makes you feel that there’s always loads going on at the Union and that you should be involved.

Not loving

Unclear tabbed news box

The tabbed news box, a good idea and used on many sites but their tabs aren’t very clear – that they are tabs. I went to click the four links thinking they would take me off to other pages, not just change the tabbed news story box. Could do with a bit of tidying up to make it clearer.

Leeds aren’t making use of their social media either. There’s no photo integration onto the homepage, a lack of video (surprising for Leeds, as they do a fair bit of video) and twitter/facebook is nowhere to be seen.

The Job Link integration (the student job agency) is a little clunky as well, just listing the job title doesn’t seem enough, could do with another piece of info such as closing date or location or wage. And also a little sentence explaining what Job Link is?

Overall the site is very well put together and a big step forward from the previous homepage.

Gave a presentation to AMSU (Association of Managers in Students’ Union) North-West meeting this afternoon about what’s nearly been a year journey for our development of the web presences at UCLan Students’ Union.

It was a great chance to reflect on how far we’ve come, particularly in the last six months, and to take stock of some of the big changes that have happened as a result of our new website and approach to the web and social media.

The presentation was only a few slides long but there was plenty of discussion about how Union’s can use the web, and in particular how they can engage the membership through the web. Hence some discussions about online voting, the use of Ning as an issue based social network and the collection of members data to communicate messages properly.

It was useful to show what we’d been doing and hear that others wanted to follow suit, but needed to have a real think through what they wanted to do with their web presences. We also talked about what we’d got planned for the next six months and it looks promising.

Image from flickr: Felice de Sena Micheli

‘Are Students’ Union recession proof?’ that was muttered by our chief executive during a meeting the other day. He’s not the only one wondering. We’ve kicked off a discussion over on The Charity Place about how Students’ Union’s can respond to the challenges that are potentially ahead. So here’s my key points about how Union’s can respond to the threat of a recession, some are specific to UCLan but some could go for the sector as a whole.

1. Make sure no one can question our legitimacy. This means showing what we do, how we do it and why we’re important. This makes it harder for people to take things away if we are shown to be doing an excellent job. Also, as Union’s officially become charities it’ll be important to consider our impacts as an organisation and be able to measure them. The days of just giving money to said club and society and saying ‘that’s involvement’ is going to be harder to justify, or running said campaign because someone sitting in an office thinks ‘it’d look good wouldn’t it?’ are dead.

2. Get smart with technology. We’re looking at investing in technologies which will allow us to use students data to increase loyalty to student services, get smarter with how we communicate with students and ensure that destination events are promoted effectively. Poster/flyer blindness is rife and especially for us being a city campus we’ve got to compete for every single penny to ensure we are still the ‘gatekeepers’ of the student market and student pound.

3. Customer service. Ensure that commercial outlets are 100% switched on and ready to please every single customer who comes through the door. Students are going to be thinking twice about spending, and we need to make sure that when they do spend that tenner they are very happy with what they’ve got – not just the product but everything that comes with it.

4. Don’t rush into things. Just because there is a recession looming (or already here) doesn’t mean we should just retreat into the trenches. There are umpteen opportunities for Students’ Union’s to partner up with loads of different organisations and work with them to deliver services, create a market, deliver information and much more. This is especially relevant if there is going to be a big government splurge in spending, as some of that might be up for grabs for new projects or promotions.

5. Innovate. Be a leader, take the odd risk or two but make sure you’ve backed it up with resources. Not easy in a recession, but if you spot an opportunity to expand then make sure you’ve got the support behind it and do it properly.

6. Engage the membership. They after all are in charge, go out to the membership and ask them how they think things can be improved, get them onboard, get them working with you, for you, feeding back to you and most of all being loyal to you.

7. Develop niches. Ensure that while you’re appealing to the 18-22 student pound market that you’re developing niche products/services/communications that satisfy a particular demographic of the student body. We know that the demographics of students are changing to include international, mature, part-time, commuting and a whole host of other ‘groups’ – identify them and develop strands to appeal to them and bring them into the mix.

What do you think? Are Students’ Union’s actually recession proof? Or is that bullshit? Will some go out of business? How can they survive?