Why Your Schools Social Media Strategy Is Falling Behind.

Recently, a colleague of mine made me aware of this great white paper on schools and their social media strategy. It was very interesting and I thought I would share an excerpt with you.

"Two years ago, many administrators in higher education scoffed when they heard words like “tweet” and “poke.” Walk into an admissions office today, though, and you’ll no longer hear anyone laughing about social media. Consider the following statistics:

Facebook has more than 500 million active users. Half of those users log on to Facebook in any given day, spending a combined 700 billion minutes per month on the site.
Twitter is quickly gaining ground with 175 million registered users
and 95 million tweets per day.
Every day, users upload nearly four years’ worth of video to You-Tube. Two billion videos are being watched every day, and over half of all American adults use the Internet to watch and download video.

Today, most colleges and universities already know that they need to be involved in social media. What they need to know is how to use it effectively. Years after every school rushed out to set up an account on the most popular social media channels, those accounts are still providing little to no real value. A typical university may have a thriving 20,000-student population on campus, but only 1,000 followers on Twitter and nothing but spam posts on their Facebook wall.

You’ve heard the hype, you know the statistics, but you still can’t seem to make social media work for your school. Fortunately, the world of higher education is filled with schools that have figured it out and are seeing exciting results. Over the next few months, Fathom SEO will present a four-part white paper series highlighting these schools. This first paper will look at overarching social media philosophies, while future work will focus specifically on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. All white papers in this series are based on interviews with thought leaders and social media practitioners at colleges and universities around the country. "

To read the actual white paper in its entirety, check out: Happy Developer

Tags: development, facebook, media, social, software, youtube

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Comment by Chris McGee on February 3, 2011 at 10:24am: Jim,

Great post! I completely agree. We are missing the boat currently on how we can best develop a technology vision and implementation strategy to "keep up" with evolving technological standards.

Keep up the great work!

@cmcgee200

Comment by Stephen A. Schneiter on February 3, 2011 at 12:34pm: Totally agree with the post. The emphasis needs to be placed on how we teach students to use the technology effectively. In order to do that we must also train educators how to use it effectively in the classroom. Just as recently as last summer when I presented on this topic at an educational conference the response from the teachers in the group was that social media cannot be used effectively in the classroom. We just need to keep educating everyone on the value and how to do it.

Great job Jim!

Stephen

Comment by Jim Roberts on February 5, 2011 at 1:34pm: Thanks guys!

Comment by Heidi Siwak on February 5, 2011 at 2:56pm: I am so frustrated that Facebook is blocked for my school. As part of our unit on Space I wanted to follow Commander Chris Hadfield with my class. I tried doing screen captures from home and putting them into a slideshow, but because the interactive element was gone, the process was useless. Students wanted to comment and ask questions. We couldn't. I agree 100% that we need to teach appropriate use rather than simply blocking. http://heidisiwak.blogspot.com/

Comment by Jim Roberts on February 5, 2011 at 3:00pm: Heidi, you are absolutely correct!

Comment by Heidi Siwak on February 5, 2011 at 3:03pm: Interestingly enough, my board has unblocked You Tube, but not facebook. I don't get it.

Comment by Stephen A. Schneiter on February 5, 2011 at 9:01pm: Heidi, I see this a lot around the country with teachers I work with. Teachers may be interested in implementing some technology but they have there hands tied and are limited as to any access they have in the classroom. Some teachers do not even have access on their instructor stations. Some I work with say it is because the IT departments do not know how to properly control or monitor access so they take the simple route to just kill all access. There are a lot of schools that just have basically zero access, and then they wonder why students are not engaged and why there are problems with student behavior in the classroom.

Granted, an ill prepared instructor could loose control of students on the Internet but that is where we need to work more with instructors so that the technology is used appropriately in the classroom and the instructors feel comfortable with what they are using and monitor their students. Technology in the classroom works.

Comment by Heidi Siwak on February 6, 2011 at 7:19am: Wow, I can't imagine having zero access. We do have blocked sites other than Facebook at my school board, but we can always request an unblock and the IT department will look at the site for safety. If it gets cleared, it becomes unblocked.