If you work in marketing or communications in higher education, this latest survey won’t come as a surprise. However, it will help to further justify using social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook in college student recruiting strategies. In fact, we see that student target audiences are becoming more tech-savvy each year, and using social media such as Twitter and Facebook has become a way of life.
As stated in USA Today, a survey of hundreds of colleges by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth reported:
•Only 15% last year said they did not use social media, down from 39% the previous year.
•The number of colleges using social networking sites and or putting video on their blogs more than doubled from 2007 to 2008.
•41% of colleges said they used blogs in admissions, well above the 16% of marketing departments of large companies that use blogs.
This survey is further proof that these social media tools are not just a “fad.” The challenge now is to determine how to balance the use of social networking with your overall integrated marketing strategy.
Just getting started tweeting? There’s a Twitter group for higher education that you can join. It’s great for beginners who want to connect with people already tweeting! Good luck!
If you haven’t produced that YouTube video you’ve been talking about, now’s the perfect time! YouTube just launched a new section specifically for colleges and universities, called YouTube Edu. From complete courses to campus events to information about schools, this distinct channel will make it easier for potential students to find you.
From a branding perspective, you can use this channel to create a video viewbook or video news releases. For those in online learning, it provides a great venue for demonstrating how online learning works. And, of course, student success stories are more impactful in video than print. Going green on campus? Why not share some of the activity with a video diary of progress. Plus, this is another channel that can integrate well with your overall social media initiatives on Facebook and Twitter. As video continues to grow in the online space, it will become a mainstream component of our education marketing strategies moving forward.
If you work in marketing and communications for a college or university, you know the value of social media. However, sometimes it can be challenging to convince others at your organization the importance of integrating social media into the overall strategic marketing plan. Perhaps you have been looking for some quantifiable research to back up your ongoing argument to increase the social networking and blogging for your institution. Well, look no further! Our friends at The Nielson Company have released a comprehensive report that “reveals the new global footprint of social networking.”
Click here to read the Nielsen article and download a PDF report.
The report states that over two-thirds of the global online population visits member communities, which includes both social networks and blogs. In fact, “member communities” has now surpassed personal email, and claimed its spot as the fourth most popular online category. And, according to the report, it is growing twice as fast as the other four sectors (search, portals, PC software and email).
Other key findings pulled directly from the report include:
- One in every 11 minutes online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites.
- The social network and blogging audience is becoming more diverse in terms of age: the biggest increase in visitors during 2008 to “Member Community” Web sites globally came from the 35-49 year old age group (+11.3 million).
- Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking. Nielsen found UK mobile Web users have the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23 percent (2 million people) doing so, compared to 19 percent in the US (10.6 million people). These numbers are a big increase over last year – up 249 percent in the UK and 156 percent in the US.
So, now you are armed with the marketing research you need to justify your social media mission. See you on Facebook!
If you had told me a year ago that I would be writing about Twitter, well, I would have thought you’re crazy. And here we are. Ironically, I was sitting at an American Marketing Association lunch last week and the topic happened to be on social marketing. The nice lady next to me was swiftly plugging away on her iPhone during lunch. I thought to myself, this poor lady is so overworked that she doesn’t even have a free moment to enjoy this wonderful speaker filling our minds with insight on social networking. Ahhh . . . only moments later I discovered she was Tweeting away while we were learning about Twitter. Wow!
For many education marketers out there, you’re still wondering what this is all about and if you should be incorporating it into your daily routine. First, let’s define it. Twitter.com provides this description on its Website: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
There’s a great video (Twitter in Plain English) that provides a simple and helpful overview of how it works.
Twitter Video on YouTube
How can you employ Twitter into your college or university communications?
- Post short media announcements about your programs and events
- Have an event ambassador that reports on happenings throughout campus
- Follow the college president
- Follow a student’s life (to share the “day-in-the-life” experience of your college or university)
- Follow a successful/high-profile alumni to share what life after graduation is like
- Going green? Appoint a “green” reporter to keep tabs on the daily green initiatives around campus (selecting paper over plastic can be inspiring)
If you are in education marketing and/or communications, you need to have some metrics behind this new media outlet. Thanks to David Smith at MediaPost for providing a list of Websites that help you measure your tweets. As David mentions in this article, Twitter is a great place to learn about social networking, keep up with the competition, and track any general topic of interest.
http://twinfluence.com/
http://tweetrush.com/
http://tweetlists.com
http://tweetvolume.com/
http://twitter.grader.com/
There’s even a Twitter group for higher education that you can join. It’s great for beginners who want to connect with people already tweeting! Good luck!
As the use of online social networking tools such as Facebook continue to grow on campus (and beyond), the debate continues with student affairs administrators as to how to use and/or monitor these tools. A new book offers some guidance in these areas: Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding What Matters in Student Culture.
Inside Higher Ed interviewed the authors and revealed interesting insight regarding social networking as the “digital exchange of cultural norms” for students, how the line between real worlds and digital worlds can sometimes be blurred by students, and issues regarding faculty participation on Facebook. The authors also mention that SNS will eventually become an instructional tool (noting that Facebook has already partnered with a course management system).
From a communication and branding perspective, I believe the last paragraph regarding the continued use of Facebook after graduation is important. When we talk about lifelong learning and the student lifecycle, colleges and universities already know they need to maintain those relationships with alumni. Facebook is a permanent player in the social fabric for young adults and now an important part of managing the student lifecycle . . . as graduates enter the professional world, participate in alumni programs, consider graduate studies, and make recommendations to future students.