Summary of article 'A Guide for Professionals in Higher Education'

Summary of article '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. It is a two way discussion that brings people together to discover and share information. Brian Solis, co-founder of the Social Media Club and leader in Social media thought, recently introduced 'The Conversation Prism,' in which describing as 'the art of listening, learning and sharing' (Solis 2008).

Introduction

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. This article is focusing on the possible uses of Facebook, My Space, YouTube, Flickr, Blogs, Twitter and del.icio.us for marketing in higher education.

Facebook is made up of 6 primary components: personal profiles, status updates, networks (geographic regions, schools, companies), groups, applications and fan pages (Cheater 2008). Fan pages are similar to personal profiles, but can be used by businesses. They include wall posts, discussion boards, photos, videos, and many other applications. Besides, Facebook pages also offer organizations the ability to communicate with fans through direct and targeted messages. 

MySpace is an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends, share photos, journals and interests. It has developed an “elite” image and is more attractive to colleges and universities to adapt, over MySpace (Qualman 2007). Unlike Facebook, MySpace allows users to fully customize their profiles by complete changing the appearance, background and format of their pages (Solis 2008).

YouTube is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through the Web. It allows people to easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through Web sites, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail (Li and Bernoff 2008).

Flickr is an online photo site where users upload photos that can be organized in
sets and collections. Public photos may be viewed and commented on by others (Consortium 2007). The automation of uploading the photos, adding captions and tags and turning them into organized collections with slideshows without any manual Web coding, is a great time saver for time-strapped Web professionals.

Blogs are a form of online journal that allows readers to post comments in response to an article or post. One-quarter of all college admissions offices use blogs by students or campus personnel (Noel-Levitz 2007). The key that the bloggers selected best represented a full spectrum of interests and status is to use official admission blogs to recruit millennials, from a public relations perspective.

Twitter is a cross between instant messaging and blogging that allows users to send short (140-character) updates.Users can also follow the updates of friends they 'follow', send them direct messages, reply publicly to friends, or just post questions or comments as their current status (Consortium 2007).

del.icio.us is one of many social bookmarking Web sites. The primary use is to store bookmarks online. Tags are used to organize and remember bookmarks. del.icio.us can be use to see links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return (Foss 2008).

Survey Result

For every form of social media questioned in the survey, respondents reported the overwhelming majority of these tools are maintained by one or more individuals in their marketing/communications/public relations office. 

For Facebook, most report using it as a tool for communicating with current students, to reach out to alumni, and for recruitment. Most spend 1-4 hours a week keeping their Facebook Page updated.

For MySpace, 60% of their marketing/communications/public relations office maintains it with the highest reported reason - being recruitment. Majority also reports spending 1-4 hours/week maintaining it. 

For Twitter, 50% of them say it is updated by their marketing/communications/public relations office. 50% use it to communicate with current students, and the other half use it to reach out to alumni. Majority update their status 1-4 times/week.

Their use of Flickr were split evenly between sharing photos with current students, faculty, staff and alumni, and the majority report spending 1-4 hours a week adding photos to Flickr.

YouTube seems to be used primarily for recruitment purposes, with some using it to share videos with current students an alumni. Most report spending 1-4 hours a week adding videos to their channel.  

Blogs have been most popularly used for recruitment purposes. However, the survey respondents were split fairly evenly amongst their use of blogs on their university’s Web site.  

Concerns

1. Loss of control

The perfect example relates to blogs and their 'comments' feature which being called Negative commentary. However, at the very least, is truly an opportunity to change the perception that you did or didn’t know existed (Solis 2008). 'Negativity will not go away simply because you opt out of participating.' Online social network users are 3 times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertising when making decisions (Juniper Research 2007). While we may not be able to control the message, or completely control perception, we can help steer it if we’re a part of the conversation.

2. Time commitment

Workload creep is something many professionals in higher education deal with. There needs to be a strategic reason and plan in place to use social media. You need to have time to respond quickly or to update at least once a week and be able to moderate comments on a daily basis if you have a blog.

3. Information overload

The advent of social media has created so many forms of media, that those who follow blogs and other social media friends, 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

If you do not already have an official account for your school, consider creating one to reserve the university’s name with those tools you may not be ready to use yet, such as Twitter.  

Best Practices

Ohio State University (OSU) uses Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, delicious to as part of their social media strategy in seeking ways to develop interaction with their target audiences. Before launching their YouTube channel, Convery talked to a staff member from The University of California, Berkeley, and Google (owners of YouTube), for assistance and best practices. They assisted with the setup of the channel and design of the page. 

Southern Illinois University College of Business use their Facebook group to provide members with school news, the ability to communicate with other students, faculty and alumni. University of New Mexico (UNM) has setup a “Flickr pool” where they encourage community members to create a Flickr account to share their photos of their campus.

Recommendations & Considerations

What if we opened up courses for student reviews on our site? New students would be able to view reviews on classes when trying to make their selections, especially for general education courses. 

Social media offers advancement professionals a great opportunity for keeping in touch with alumni after they graduate. Social networking can be a great resource for recruitment efforts, and could be very beneficial to particular program. Social media gives us the opportunity to humanize stories of students and alumni of our institutions, which can create loyalty and earn future business and ultimately their respect (Solis 2008).

'Participation is no longer an option as Social Media isn’t a spectator sport'.