Maintaining good relations with potential students, current students and alumni is a key communications investment for all colleges and universities. By being open to communicate with students or alumni, the college or university is able to improve their brand and help enhance the academic experience for students. This is where social media comes in.
Social Media as Direct Communication
Social media has changed how institutions and brands communicate with people. With platforms like Twitter, a business or non-profit is able to micro-blog news, ideas and links at a rapid pace. Whats most important about this, however, is that people can directly communicate with those social media accounts with questions, inquiries or responses. The person or department behind that social media account can then respond to all of these direct communications.
For example, say a high school student is very interested in enrolling either between the University of Denver or Colorado State University. The student has an interest in business, so they are trying to determine of the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver or the College of Business at Colorado State University. The high school student can visit the Daniels College website (http://daniels.
Social Media & Small Business by Dean Meyers, on Flickr. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
To find out more, the high school student turns to Twitter and sees the Daniels College of Business and the College of Business at Colorado State have Twitter accounts. With access to these Twitter accounts, the high school student can engage both accounts to ask further inquiries about the colleges, the programs offered, what internship opportunities are there, and what are the basic academic requirements to being a business major with those schools. Depending on the answers given, the high school student may be more willing to go to one school over another.
Not Just for Prospected Students
These social media services are not just for prospected students. Current students can frequently interact with these college Twitter accounts and follow them for the latest departmental news. News like an upcoming Fall class can alert a student to consider that class in their Fall schedule for example. In addition, alumni are served by these social media accounts. By following the accounts, the alumni can keep in touch with news regarding their departments, the type of research and events their colleges are doing, and finding new professional connections with graduates and other alumnus.
Social media has helped numerous colleges connect with everyone from potential students to alumni. There are many benefits to this form of communication, so if colleges want to become more communicative with students, social media is an affordable investment.
