Diane Rarick, College of Lake County Takes Social Media to Next Level from Community Media Workshop on Vimeo.

Diane Rarick doesn’t much care about GeekyGuy43 — who followed her when she tweeted about Star Wars, then dropped her a month later. She’s more excited about the recent doubling of Facebook followers to the account she manages for the College of Lake County–many of them part of a key demographic her, 18- to 24-year-olds.

Nerds may not be a target audience for Diane, but they are key to Adam Thurman, who led the workshop she and other nonprofit communicators took earlier today. Court Theater, a branch of the University of Chicago, considers one of their core online audiences to be (and he means this obviously in the best sense possible) nerds.

These ideas about audience are what Taking Social Media to the Next Level — the title of Adam’s session — was all about. In addition to turning in stellar results via online engagement at Court, he has his own firm (and blog) Mission Paradox. The key theme of the session:  how to use social media as a tool to lead to:

• more transactions, not just clicks and
• more engagement, not just friends on Facebook

The image at right, part of extensive online copy and other details on the background of an upcoming play at Court, is one example of what Adam meant about “nerds” as an audience member.

He worked with theater staff to produce incredibly detailed  essays and other content about the upcoming The Illusion, a play by 17th-century French playwright Pierre Corneille adapted by Tony Kushner (this sounds awesome by the way). While not every theatergoing public will be wanting this level of detailed background info, Adam notes, he’s got a nerdy audience that grooves on that kind of thing–which is why he’s giving it to them.

Diane, who attended with her supervisor, talked about how the College of Lake County has gone from beginner a year ago (in a social media need to know workshop with Emily Culbertson) to more advanced this year.

Along the lines of Adam’s key point for the day, she said she was surprised when her Twitter feed swelled up to 1,000 followers after she posted info about a sociology professor’s class on social science in Star Wars.

She wasn’t disappointed to see it go down afterward–especially because in the past month she’s seen the number of Facebook followers (many in her audience sweet spot, 18-24 year olds)  double. She thinks this is connected to increased sharing of events and other resources on campus.

Watch the video for more tips (my personal favorite: “find a teenager–or rent one”) but keep the big picture in mind here, a la Adam: social media is a tool. Like a hammer. Figure out how to use the tool, sure. But then use it–go build a house or something!