Enriching a University’s Mission Through Remote Social Media
Menachem Wecker has a colorful career history. He was a staff member at The George Washington University, GW, for five years, first in the public affairs office at the International Affairs school and then as a writer for the GW news service, GW Today. He currently writes on higher education for the US News & World Report . Wecker is also known for cofounding the Association for Social Media and Higher Education. He and other GW employees launched the group in November 2009 with the goal of bringing social media practitioners, scholars and higher educated education officials together to share information, learning, tools and ideas.
There was no bigger goal in mind at the time, he says. He and his colleagues simply were interested in seeing what colleges and universities could bring to the social media table, and how social media could contribute to higher education. In 2009 universities were largely using social media in a formal way, through having a Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter presence. This has become main stream today but Wecker still sees ways where some education institutions can use social media better.
How universities use social media today
Today, Wecker sees universities mostly using social media as a promotional tool. For instance, most universities that are on Twitter use it to promote an RSS feed of their press releases. Some universities are using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to reach out to potential donors, prospective students and alumni, he says.
Several universities now hire social media directors, something Wecker endorses if the university has the funds. He also sees some good social media news services at universities. He likes Boston University Today, the news service generated by Boston University. “Their quotes are conversational, real sounding and not formal, which for me is how social media should be,” he says.
Using social media as a strategic tool
Additionally, Wecker suggests higher education institutions use social media more as a strategic tool. For instance, through writing for GW Today, he carefully researched how the GW brand was being written about. He established alerts on Google News, Lexus Nexus, Twitter and with RSS feeds. This generated hundreds of hits a day and taught him the negatives and positives being said about the school. Wecker met with students posting negative thoughts, experiences and ideas to learn more about the problem and passed that information on to someone at the university who could help.
Wecker responded to tweets from visitors, from student applicants (he would tweet them good luck), and to those who applied but were rejected (he would tweet back his regrets and wish them good luck at other programs instead.) Essentially, Wecker used social media as a customer service tool, a marketing and branding tool and to research how others view their brand.
This yielded excellent results, he says. “People would tweet GW was the only program writing back to their questions, or the only university following their application progress through Twitter,” Wecker says. “To me, this means there is a lot of low hanging fruit out there for other programs.”
Wecker’s parting advice on how universities can better use social media:
- The time investment might be great initially, but reading Tweets and other online messages written by the community about a university can quickly pay off.
- Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are great ways for universities to find new faculty and staff and to communicate with other schools.
- Invest well in social media research and expertise. Social media can be used to enrich every aspect of a university’s mission.
- Think long and hard before publishing items on social media handles that read like a press release.