There have been some great discussions over the past few weeks – thanks to everyone for your contributions, do keep them coming!

You can read the learner reflections tweeted so far, the videos addressing your “big questions” here, and the student contributions here.

As shown in the photo, the live panel event last week was great fun – thanks for all your questions and the ongoing discussions after the event. Do check out all the supporting social media resources – the Digichamps have written up a blogpost (by Tom Davidson), a Storify (by Hannah Watts) and photos (by Ashley Stout).

The post Reflections on the Power of Social Media MOOC appeared first on Web Science MOOC.

A panel of MOOC Educators and Facilitators, and a group of students from the Online Social Networks module (UOSM2012) will be discussing the key issues arise from discussions within the course about “the power of social media”. Useful exam revision!

We will also be demonstrating the power of the social media backchannel in supporting a live event. A group of our Student Digital Champions will be:

• tweeting the key points covered in the discussions
• taking and responding to questions from virtual MOOC guests
• posting photos and short video interviews with presenters and audience
• summarising the discussions afterwards via blogposts and Storify

Please make sure you use the course hashtag #FLsocialmedia and/or the specific event hashtag #realtimeSoton if posting a question.

A recording of the event will be posted on our Youtube channel after the event if you are not able to join in live.

The post Bringing together campus-based students and MOOC learners appeared first on Web Science MOOC.

Thanks are due to a large number of people who have contributed to the production process, in particular:

Kate Dickens and Manuel Leon from the Institute for Learning, Innovation and Development,

Sarah Hewitt, Nora Al-Rajeebah and Nic Fair, Web Science PhD students

Digital Champions Tim O’Riordan, Hannah Watts and Ashley Stout

Undergraduate Students Ellie Hamilton, Vicky Gilsen, Haley Fairclough and Rebekah Kulidzan

Southampton Alumni Emma Lester and Farahnoosh Berahman

To wet your appetite for Monday, Student Digital Champion Ashley Stout has created this lovely infographic to demonstrate the global nature of social networks: The Global Power of Social Media

The post The Power of Social Media MOOC: starts Monday :-) appeared first on Web Science MOOC.

Farahnoosh Berahman

Farahnoosh says:

“Social selling is no longer optional for Sales Professionals. Social media has provided the sales reps with the opportunity to research their prospects, engage more intelligently, and build long lasting relationships. It has also enabled them to meet their prospects on the networks they actually use.

Social networks are the best way to learn about every company’s history, culture, number of employees, location and who their decision makers are. Most companies also post their latest news and achievements on social media becoming a better resource of information compared to mainstream media.

Social selling provides sales professionals with a great opportunity to build business cases according to relevant needs or opportunities found on social media as soon as the information is published transforming a sales pitch into a meaningful conversation.

This is how I use social selling:

1. To research a company. It’s always useful to listen to mentions around a company on Twitter to find out if their clients are unsatisfied with their service or technology. This provides me with the best excuse to reach out to help them increase their customer satisfaction by presenting a solution to their current problems and position myself as a trusted advisor.

2. To research decision makers. I read their tweets and search for keywords within their tweets mentioning key technological challenges that they might be facing. If they mention our competitors, which would provide me with valuable information to understand if they are currently looking for an alternate solution or of they are happy with their service.

3. After doing my research, it’s time to reach out. LinkedIn has made this very easy, I simply send an InMail which has proven to be more effective than an email because sometimes people tend to be more open on social media (that’s why they are there). Also, LinkedIn is not considered a spam source (yet).

4. If the person is active on Twitter, I mention them publicly. What I like about the Twitter environment is that when I send a tweet to a prospect it is like if I meet that person at a coffee shop while a LinkedIn InMail feels more corporate and formal. Most of the time, the relationship you build in a coffee shop is deeper and more personal.

5. I am active on social media to keep my prospects informed. Whenever I post something about our products and services on LinkedIn, my prospects can see how great we are and it’s a reminder of how useful we could be for them.

6. Finally, I use LinkedIn Sales Navigator which allows me to mark people as leads and receive news about any updates on their company, job position and articles they share which again provides me with extremely valuable information to reach out to them.

Overall, social media has changed the sales process in many organisations worldwide. These days no one likes to be approached by a salesperson on the phone and since people spend most of their time on social media, sales professionals have to simply find ways to take advantage of this reality.”

The post The role of social media in selling appeared first on Web Science MOOC.

Tomorrow sees the launch of our latest Web Science mini-MOOC with Futurelearn –  “The Power of Social Media“. The course begins on 25th April and students from the Curriculum Innovation module “Online Social Networks” will be putting their learning directly into practice as they participate in  the MOOC with learners from all over the world.

The original 6 week Web Science MOOC needed an update (amazingly it’s nearly 3 years since we started on this journey) and we have split the course into a number of 2 week mini-MOOCs with updates to the existing content and plenty of new material. Another of our new courses in the series is Introduction to Linked Data and the Semantic Web (#FLlinkeddata) which starts on 11th April.

You can check out updates over the next few weeks via the hashtag #FLsocialmedia (for the MOOC) and #UOSM2012 for the module.

The post The Power of Social Media: our latest Web Science mini-MOOC appeared first on Web Science MOOC.

Date:   Thursday, March 20, 2014

Time:   4:00 PM – 5:00 PM GMT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

We’ll record the Webinar and make it available via the WST Web Site and the Vimeo Channel

http://vimeo.com/channels/wstnetwebinars/videos/sort:date/format:detail

Please use the link below to sign up for the Webinar and also make use of the HackPad to add any questions/topics for Dave before/during/after the session.

https://hackpad.com/Web-Observatories-with-Prof-Dave-de-Roure-Gox9Wo2SHxV

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/372549326

This webinar is a joint presentation of the Web Science Trust and the Oxford eResearch Centre (OeRC)

Prof. Dave de Roure is one of the longest associated members of the Web Science Trust and also chairs the W3C community group on Web Observatories.

David De Roure is Professor of e-Research at University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford e-Research Centre, Co-Director of the Institute for the Future of Computing in the Oxford Martin School and has a coordinating role in Digital Humanities at Oxford.

David was closely involved in the UK e-Science programme and held a national role from 2009-2013 as the UK National Strategic Director for Digital Social Research. He is a UK representative on the European e-Infrastructure Reflection Group, one of the UK PIs for the Square Kilometre Array telescope, a chair of the UK e-Science Forum, a partner in the UK Software Sustainability Institute and on the editorial board for IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing. He is a champion for the Web Science Trust, chairs the W3C Web Observatory Community Group and in 2011 was elected as a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The post WST 2014 Webinar Series – Web Observatories with Prof Dave de Roure appeared first on Web Science MOOC.

One of the topics we’ll be covering in this digital economy week is the emerging personal data economy, where individuals are taking control of their own personal data. My research has explored this theme, looking at how individuals can understand, control and benefit from their data through the lenses of business law and technology.

Marketing Week has just released a timely article on the opportunities and threats that arise from these developments. The article is based on a research report I contributed to through Ctrl-Shift, a market analyst and Web Science Institute industry partner who I work with alongside my PhD research.

The report also features a viewpoint from Sir Nigel Shadbolt on the phenomenon of personal data empowerment;

What you hope it isn’t is a massive landgrab of our individual data only for the benefit of the company… Data is an amazing raw material which, if made available in an appropriate way, is going to change the economic and social landscape.

This week we’ll be covering these issues in ‘Personal data in the hands of individuals’. I look forward to discussing them with you.

The post Week 5: Personal data and the digital economy appeared first on Web Science MOOC.

I’ll tweet you my job spec if you snap me your CV…a guest post by Nik Nyman @ Neil’s Recruitment

Really? Not really, but in theory it could work. A ten second snap is more or less the same amount of time a recruiter has with your CV anyway. Back to that later.

In a meeting about mobile marketing at one of the major media agencies in London last week the concept of “dead time” came up, and we realised that these days our perception of dead time has changed. If we have spare time we still end up interacting and being social. Online. Wherever. Whenever.

So now it’s (almost) impossible to imagine our social lives without Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and the others. We’re all on them, and we can’t live without them. Actually we spend nearly four hours a day on social media. That’s half a working day. That’s crazy. And pretty cool too if you think about the opportunities we have right there in our hands. So I was thinking… why aren’t we better at using social media to our advantage in our job search?

I work in graduate recruitment in digital media, with guys and girls who literally grew up next to a smartphone. They are incredibly online savvy and want to make digital marketing their career but what surprises me is that most of these grads still see their job hunt as a “send-my-cv-and-covering-letter-kinda-business”. Why they don’t consider throwing social media into the mix I’m not sure. Is it because they see social media as a personal thing and can’t see why it would be relevant to getting a professional career? Or is it because there’s a generational gap between today’s online savvy grads and those who advise them on their job search? I don’t know, but what I do know is that we need to get social media into the personal marketing mix.

Why?

If you’re serious about your job hunt, that’s not the question to ask. What you should be asking is “How can I do that?”, I’ll come to that in a bit. The reason why we should be using social media is firstly because companies increasingly use social media as the first stop in finding top talent. I don’t want to bore you with too many stats but 77% of all job postings are posted on LinkedIn and almost half of those don’t get posted anywhere else. 94% of all recruiters use LinkedIn to search for candidates (66% for Facebook and 54% for Twitter) – at all levels. So by not having an online presence and by not using it when looking for jobs you will miss quite a few opportunities.

Another reason I see (maybe because I work in digital media) is that recruiters and hiring managers want to get a better feel for you in general, as a candidate and a potential future employee.

If digital marketing is your gig then the use of social media, websites, blogs etc. shows that you are you’re immersed in the online marketing world, that you understand the concepts and that you take calculated steps to learn as much as you can. It shows desire and aptitude, and with a blog or website you can showcase your portfolio, writing skills, or technical abilities. Don’t forget it’s a perfect playground where you can pick up some hands-on skills too.

How can I do that?

First things first. I think it’s worth mentioning that we need to take more of a 360-degree approach to our job search and not exclude any form of communication that could lead us towards our dream job. It’s not about CV vs. Social Media or Job application vs. Networking, it all has to come together – nowadays you need to market yourself, not just apply for a job.

You can only get across so much on a CV but with the use of social media you can pretty much throw yourself at someone. I would make sure to use the same profile picture and biog across all social media sites and try to use the same name and handle (mine’s NikNyman across the board). Make them as unified as you can, make sure you’re using them with purpose and make sure they are all linked up to each other but also to your CV, blog, website etc. where relevant.

But, and there’s always a but. Just make sure you’re cautious with what you share online. I’ve come across candidates who didn’t get through to interviews or didn’t get offers based on what was shared online. So be careful. Take a look at this article by Neil’s Recruitment if you want to know how to work out your profiles and what to avoid.

Now over to LinkedIn (again). I keep nagging about it because it is probably the most important recruitment platform out there so you should definitely have a presence. It’s fairly straight forward 1) position yourself 2) write your profile in a way that shows your direction, your desire, and your skills but don’t forget to show a bit of personality 3) add your jobs and education, courses etc. 4) follow companies and important people (not only does it give you job notifications, industry news and updates but it also shows what you’re interested in) 5) join groups (gives you good insights but also provides you with a forum to interact and show yourself) 6) connect and network. Easy peasy. If you want to know more check this article I wrote for Neil’s Recruitment.

Snap? Tweet? What? Why on earth

What was that ‘ten seconds on a CV’ I mentioned in the beginning all about? And what’s that got to do with social media in the job hunt anyway? Well, it’s a reality check. The competition is really high, we typically see that you are up against 100-300 other applicants per advertised job. On top of that a recruiter (agency or in-house) works on many jobs simultaneously which means you also have to compete for their attention. So you’ve got perhaps ten seconds to wow them (that’s no more than the maximum length of a Snapchat snap – now there’s the link to the intro), which means you need to do your bit to stand out – social media might just help you with that.

Get in touch if you want to know more, or follow me on twitter at @NikNyman. Neil’s Recruitment is a great place if you want to start out in digital marketing http://www.neilsrecruitment.co.uk.

Over and out.

The post Using social media in your job search appeared first on Web Science MOOC.

The Web Science MOOC features the current research projects involving a number of staff and students at the University of Southampton. The next generation of work in this rapidly developing area is now coming onto the radar.

Last month we held “Web Science Research Week” at the University of Southampton. A number of projects involving staff, students and external partners were kickstarted on the Monday, and then the progress made was reported in a series of presentations to a large audience at the Royal Society  on the final day.

Chris Phethean has written up the National Archives project report 

Gareth Beeston has reviewed the Personal Data project

My review of the final day’s presentations

More examples will follow in a later post!

The post New Web Science Projects appeared first on Web Science MOOC.

Week 5 has come around very quickly, and we are all very much looking forward to the discussions. Do feel free to comment and interact with us and other learners within the Futurelearn platform, via Twitter using #FLwebsci, on this blog, or in the G+ community. We will all benefit greatly from the  thoughts and examples that are shared.

The Digital Economy is a vast topic in its own right, and we make no claim to cover all its bases here in just a few hours! We have focused the week on specific areas of research that are currently in progress by staff and students at the University of Southampton:

Ian Brown takes a critical look beneath the current hype around “big data”

Reuben Binns examines the evolving issues around privacy and the sharing of “personal data”

Lisa Harris focuses on “professional data” and what it means for recruitment and new business development

Chris Phethean appraises the nature of the value that social media creates for businesses.

Lorraine Warren ends the week by reflecting on how digital age has presented new opportunities for venture creation.

Drumroll….!

The post Looking forward to week 5: digital economy appeared first on Web Science MOOC.