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Teaching Social Business to Public Relations And Marketing Students
February 5, 2012 9 Comments

Teaching Social Business to Public Relations And Marketing Students

I am coming up on my third week teaching at San Jose State University. And while I am having a blast, I am realizing that teaching a class is much more difficult than I anticipated. And I am still trying to get used to the students calling me Professor Brito. Nonetheless, I wanted to share what I will be teaching over the next 3 months. The majority of students enrolled in class are PR, Journalism and Advertising majors. There are a few enrolled from the business school as well.

I decided to divide up the curriculum into three parts (see below) — the social customer, the social brand and the social business in that order.  The first part will undoubtedly cover the growing influence of the social customer, the differences between influencers and advocates, common behaviors of the social customer and we be discussing real time case studies such as the Susan Komen & the Planned Parenthood fiasco, Verizon Wireless, Bank Of America, Comcast and Netflix – and whatever else will break over the next 3 months.

The second part of the class will cover the brand’s “response” to the social customer.  We will go in depth into social CRM (technology and use cases), marketing campaigns aimed at engagement and community building. We will also discuss technology vendors in the space (i.e. Radian6, Spredfast, Lithium) as well as provide case studies of brands using these technologies to engage with the social customer.

The last part of the class will discuss the operational side of social business internally. We will discuss the challenges that many organizations are facing – employees running wild on social media, getting fired for posting questionable content on social media channels; social media policies and governance, change management and leadership.

In parallel, I am going to help the students focus on personal branding – optimizing their LinkedIn profiles, Twitter accounts; writing blog posts each week, talking about the challenges of social media in the organization and the importance of social media and human resources.  If you would like to follow along, the hashtag is #socialSJSU. Wish me luck!

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About Michael Brito

Michael Brito is a Senior Vice President of Social Business Planning at Edelman Digital. He helps his clients transform their organizations to be more open, collaborative and socially proficient; with the end result of creating shared value with employees, partners and customers. Prior to Edelman, Michael worked for Intel and Hewlett Packard in various social media marketing roles. Opinions posted here are his own.

Feel free to follow him on Twitter, subscribe to this blog or read some more of his content on Social Business News.

  • http://twitter.com/jwongjk Jan Wong

    Wow, the university allows you to create your own teaching material / syllabus? I teach in a university too (for about a year now) and I’ve been wanting to do that but we’ve to stick to what’s given which is a pain. 

  • http://www.britopian.com Michael Brito

    Hi Jan,

    Yes, and I am creating the curriculum as we go. It’s not easy! Where do you teach?

  • http://twitter.com/samuelbalsama Sam Balsama

    Professor Brito :) , 
    any possibility of these courses showing up in iTunes U? I’d love to  check out one of your classes from over here on the east coast. Promise no double cheese and sausage pizzas delivered during class. Cheers,Sam

  • http://twitter.com/mileigh13 Amanda Nelson

    Sounds like you’ve got a great curriculum underway! Radian6 is excited to be a part of it and if there’s anything we can do to help, just let us know. Best of luck, professor!  — Amanda, Radian6 Community Manager

  • http://www.britopian.com Michael Brito

    Amanda,

    Thanks for the note!! Thinking about demo’ing the tool at school (that rhymes) … Is there anyone that can walk me through the tool quickly?
    Brito

  • http://www.brandboost.co.uk Danny Blair

    Good luck when you get to social media measurement and defining ROI needs from a business perspective.

    In case you haven’t seen it, the 2011 Chief Marketers Annual Survey highlighted the difficulties organisations have in determining the effectiveness of their social media activity, with just 13% stating that their social media measurement was very effective. Unsurprising, 60% of those polled in the survey said that their top metrics were the easiest ones to measure – the numbers of fans, followers, friends and likes they get.   

  • http://twitter.com/VisionandGrowth Sean Simone

    Did they dress up for the picture or do kids really dress that nice to go to class at SJSU??

  • http://www.britopian.com Michael Brito

    That’s how they dress!! You should see the professor! Haha..

  • http://www.mydiscproject.com/ Peter Scazzer

    Very nice professional.  I’m sure your students will learn a lot from you and some of them will be a social media guru like you soon.  I hope to be your student soon.  Good Luck!