Students get social

January 25, 2010 by Hannah Birch 

While some students use their phones to secretly update their Facebook status under their desks in class, there is one teacher on campus that encourages her students to do so — without the secrecy.

Social Media in Hospitality, a class within the College of Hotel Administration, is the first class at UNLV designed to help students integrate social media skills with their future careers.

Students enrolled in the class are required to create accounts with Internet sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and to use these resources to explore networking and advertising potential through social media.

For example, each student has to have secured 1,000 followers on Twitter by the end of the semester.

Patti Shock, who teaches the class, says she gives students tips on how to do that.

“85 percent of your posts should be interesting, educational and informative. About 10 percent [should be] humorous and only about 5 percent should be marketing,” Shock said.

Shock added that the real challenge lies in keeping the followers, citing “spam marketers” as a problem.

“If you’re marketing too much, they can stop following you with one click,” she said.

Tweets and status updates aren’t the only tools available.

Students have the opportunity to create groups and fan pages on Facebook for hypothetical companies as well.

“They can play with it and see what works and critique each other,” Shock said. “They’ll understand how these things work and how they can plug them in together.”

Will these skills be useful in real-world scenarios?

Shock believes so.

“It’s a major part of marketing,” she said, explaining how the students will be working with the Las Vegas Hilton to evaluate the hotel’s current marketing techniques as they relate to social media channels.

“It’s a real-life project that they’re going to be working on,” Shock said.

Peter Arceo, the executive director of casino marketing for the Las Vegas Hilton, spoke to the class about the marketing project.

Arceo said the Hilton is most active on Twitter and Facebook and that both the Las Vegas Hilton account and their own personal accounts are monitored closely throughout the day.

“We engage our followers and fans as much as possible and try to keep our response time as short as possible. We believe that everyone is important,” Arceo said.

“So far, I have been pleased with the results.”

Because marketing through social media is still in the developmental stages, Shock believes students that are affluent in the technology will have an advantage.

“We’re ahead of the curve,” Shock said. “People that are learning it now will be head and shoulders above their competition. It’s the new thing.”

Arceo believes social media marketing goes beyond just advertising.

“Social media [are] comprised of two words: social and media. Sometimes people forget about the social part and concentrate on the media,” he said. “The true way to success is to concentrate on the social aspect of social media. You can develop long lasting relationships with people who are in your target market and demographic if you focus more on the social aspect.”