Why Your Schools Social Media Strategy Is Falling Behind.

[Jim Roberts]

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:

1. 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.
2. Twitter is quickly gaining ground with 175 million registered users
   and 95 million tweets per day.
3. 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