Tips on how to use social media in higher education

The Internet, especially, social media has become an integral part of our everyday lives. 70-years old grandpa and 15-years old alike are active on the most popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, etc. There are Facebook pages even for people’s pets. Marketers are also busy targeting their customers across different social media platforms. Universities and colleges are using social media now because students and their parents are constantly accessing their pages on social media websites daily. How can universities and colleges best take advantage of everything that social media has to offer to the education sector? Here are some tips on how to use social media in higher education:

#1 – Establish social media strategy and policy

Every social media campaign, be it for a corporate house or a university, requires an effective strategy and policy. It is important to work together with your institution leaders, colleagues, student councils, as well as your university’s marketing and social media teams for preventing duplication of information, under- as well as over posting, and posting of inaccurate content. There should be a set of guidelines which should be followed regarding posting and promoting on social media. It should be clearly defined as to who is allowed to post on behalf of the institution, at what frequencies, and what type of content is allowed to be published. For creating policy and strategy, the target audience should be kept in mind along with your academic institution’s overall communication and marketing goals. It is also important to develop and follow a schedule of social media content creating and publishing.

#2 – Collaborate with leaders, students and social media teams

One of the most important aspects of managing social media campaigns for academic institutions is to clearly identify those who are in charge of running them. There needs to be order, management and identification of roles. There should be a campus-wide social media manager. Each department should also have a social media manager who should delegate assignments to different members of the university staff and student councils. It will help in ensuring that no one is posting the same content twice across the board.

#3 – Closely watch the social media data

Keep a constant track of what works and what doesn’t on your university’s social media accounts. What posts get the most retweets? Which types of posts get the most likes and shares? For this, consider making goals based on your key performance statistics and use them as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Make weekly social media goals and compare them against your data. And based on this comparison, you should adjust your academic institution’s social media strategy.

#4 – Become the voice of your school/university on social media

It is important to remember that when you write and publish some content on behalf of your university on social media platforms, it is not just a reflection of you, but it is also a reflection of the university and what it stands for. Therefore you should be respectful, and rigidly follow the copyright laws, and appropriate cite sources wherever needed. What you post as a social media intern for your university affects not just you but your entire team. It is, therefore, essential to envision your social media strategy as well as goals of your university before publishing any type of content.

#5 – Accuracy and thoughtfulness in social media content

Ask yourself – Is the content accurate? It is factual? Is it also representative of the thoughts of the student councils? What are the sources of the content you are planning to publish? You must think about how the content will be received by its target audience. The trick is to ‘think twice before publishing any content on social media.’

What are some of the social media tips you may have for managing the social media campaigns for your academic institution?