"Teens don't Tweet"

[Whitney Shaw]

The Chronicle released an article recently about Twitter NOT being good at grabbing teens. I have had good luck, not just having conversations with teens, but with others in the music industry (we are a music school) on Twitter, and this release is making out marketing team want to pull the plug on Twitter.

Is anyone else having success using Twitter as a general face of the school, or other ways? In addition, has your school decided to pass on Twitter?

Here's the link, it might need a log in though: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Teens-Dont-Tweet/7646/?sid=at&utm...

[Nathan Ronchetti]

We have gone back and forth many times about how to launch a twitter account, what kind of account it should be and on and on. Currently, we have an account parked, locked in private, without any updates so it's ready should we need it immediately.

I'm wondering what your marketing team's thoughts were when you launched the twitter account and who maintains it? Sure, The Chronicle is reputable and shares some great nuggets of advice but if twitter is helping you to build a few measurable relationships (with students or otherwise) then why stop? Even if it's not the best recruitment tool, the connections/conversations between your school and your school's target industry seems pretty important.

[Chris Wiegman]

Although we haven't had much success with Twitter as a recruitment tool, we have had far more success in it's use as a support tool for existing students and for alumni communications. In both cases the cost and ease of use of Twitter by both the department and our followers has made it an excellent option for both community contact and the distribution of information.

[Lane Joplin]

We have a Twitter account for our university. We use it more as a tool to keep current students and alumni up on what's going on on and around campus. It took off slow, but is starting to gain some momentum. The important thing is "listen" just as with any SM. This week was the first time I had a prospective student talk about coming to visit. It was good to hold a short conversation with him, but if I wouldn't have had a search set up for UAT I would have missed it.

I would say go for it. Setup a few alerts for keywords to see what the talk is about. Or setup the searches first to see if an account would be useful.

~Bests!!

[Kris Caden]

It seems most Twitter accounts go 1 of 2 ways:

1) simply index your RSS feed from another source
2) interact with other Twitter users

Most teens and celebrities choose #2 but I think for companies and universities it makes more sense to publish important news feeds and what not. Of course, if other schools start tweeting at you... you might have to tweet back. =)

[Bradjward]

Re: Teens Don't Tweet, some food for thought:
http://twitter.com/bradjward/status/3328410709

[Cade Whitbourn]

We are experimenting with Twitter. We have developed a competition to try to encourage them to tweet, but so far, not too much traction.

csu.edu.au/2010

[daniel spillers]

I gotta repeat what someone said further up: Twitter for universities is not about putting stuff out there and expecting prospective students to subscribe to you. That's a whole different choice. They'll do that when they've already made the decision to go to your school.

What it's about is putting together searches to look for the conversations prospective and current students are having related to your university. The university must subscribe to its audience. You must become a savvy searcher inside Twitter.

When you, as an officer of the university, join a conversation or reply to a student who has a 1) complaint, 2) question, 3) potential relationship with the university, you are implying (quite correctly) that you care about that specific student.