[Summarise] The Use of Social Media in Higher Education for Marketing and Communications: A Guide for Professionals in Higher Education

By Rachel Reuben

Social media comprises of activities that involve socializing and networking online through words, pictures and videos. Social networking is one aspect of social media, where individuals are in communities that share ideas, interests, or are looking to meet people with similar ideas and interests.

Facebook

Social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them.
Made up of six primary components: personal profiles, status updates, networks (geographic regions, schools, companies), groups, applications and fan pages.
Fan pages creates a viral marketing effect – when one of their friends sees they’ve become a fan of another organization that interests them, they’re likely to become a fan themselves.

MySpace

An online community that lets you meet your friends' friends, share photos, journals and interests.
Allows users to fully customize their profiles by complete changing the appearance, background and format of their page.

YouTube

The leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through the Web.

Flickr

An online photo site where users upload photos that can be organized in sets and collections.
Universities have found Flickr to be a great tool to easily share photos withstudents, alumni, faculty and staff.

Blogs

A form of online journal.
The most popular use of blogs for marketing in higher education is having currently enrolled students blog about their lives on campus, as a recruiting initiative in conjunction with admissions.
Blogs are also being used by some colleges to post news articles to open conversations about them. Faculty to blog about their teaching, travel and research.

Twitter

A cross between instant messaging and blogging that allows users to send short (140-character) updates.
But haven’t found a definitive way to use Twitter for marketing in higher education yet.

del.icio.us

Now also available at delicious.com, is one of many social bookmarking Web sites.
Use del.icio.us to see links that friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return.
Browse and search del.icio.us to discover bookmarks that everyone else has saved.
One of the most beneficial ways some schools have found in using this tool is to bookmark news articles about their university throughout the Web to share with their audiences.

SURVEY RESULTS

Historically, blogs have been most popularly used for recruitment purposes.

CONCERNS

1: Loss of control

Their “comments”
Feature have the chance of collecting negative remarks or feedback.
However, most are finding these features to be resourceful, positive tools that help more than they hurt.

2: Time commitment

Workload creep is something many professionals in higher education deal with.
Many play multiple roles and struggle to stay afloat.
Be strategic when selecting your options.

3: Information overload

The advent of social media has created so many forms of media,can easily find themselves overloaded now when trying to keep up with “traditional media,” such as e-mail, print publications, and instant messaging.

4: Anyone can create an “official” account for your university

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube do not do any kind of background checks on individuals wanting to create an account with a college name.

BEST PRACTICES

Through their Facebook group, provide members with school news, the ability to communicate with other students, faculty and alumni.
Facebook as crucial tools for their communication and marketing strategies.
Use Flickr group to share their photos of campus, events or student life.
Create sub-channels in YouTube for more specific content, including courses, events, campus life and athletics.

RECOMMENDATIONS & CONSIDERATIONS

Social media offers advancement professionals a great opportunity for keeping in touch with alumni after they graduate. Facebook is one of the more popular tools they are now using to keep in touch with recent alumni. Noel-Levitz suggests that social networking can be a great resource for recruitment efforts, and could be very beneficial to your program. “Participation is no longer an option as Social Media isn’t a spectator sport”