I write this post with a bit of despair about how higher ed has dropped the ball. As a whole higher ed has seemed to have dropped the ball when it comes to all these new tools. It is blown off with the casual “that is for the kids” or “it’s just a fad” comment.
Now there are some who are capitalizing on this opportunity and using these tools to our advantage. I was reading Shel Holtz’s article “The social media manager debate,” and it got me thinking about how whenever I talk to higher ed communicators, I preach. We are marketing to the target market of most all social networks “college kids” so using these tools as a marketing/recruiting/communications tool seems like a logical step right?
Wrong. People look down on these tools. We have the same old “well we don’t control it” or “what if something bad is said” discussions. But the thing they overlook is that they are missing the discussion. The biggest problem with marketing is that marketing talks to people, when they could go full circle and listen making it a discussion. Social media tools make this discussion easier that ever. It takes more than just the “web guy” to stay on top of this, it takes the people who are recruiting college students to be out there and with their “feet on the pavement”. Social media has turned the tables. Users now have the power in the conversation and in the attainment of knowledge. We need to look to them, they have so much to give and offer us.
This is much more of a global idea than just higher ed. It takes real authentic interesting content to influence. You have sites like Digg where if your stuff isn’t relevant or exciting it won’t get “dugg”. There is no reason why we in higher ed can’t get our information duggor stumbled upon but we need to make it relevant and exciting not just marketing fluff. People see through that, including students.
So back to my original inspiration, in order to keep up with the buzz on your school you have a person that keeps up on this, or a team. The DotEduGuru wrote an article on tracking your school. Brad Ward talks about how to use comment tracking tools to follow your conversations. Mark Greenfield talks about a community management officer, which is the same general idea. When he asked
So I ask - does anyone know of a college or university who has created the position of CMO, Online Community Organizer, or Director of Social Media Relations? Does the above job description need to be altered for higher ed? How would this position relate to the web team?
A good example of how useful and pertinent these tools are could be the tornado at Union University earlier this year. When their site was down what did they turn to? Facebook.
Where do students spend most of there time online? Facebook. Where do students receive most of their personal communication? Facebook. How do students invite each other to social events? Facebook. See a trend here? Yet people still ignore these tools.
I think our goal should be to evangelize these ideas but we really need support and people to champion the idea with us. People that would be really helpful would include recruiters, advisors, pr/ media people and communicators. I could go on forever about this but we really need to push to get support. This is the real, authentic feedback the communicators beg for. Let’s help them use and accept it.
End rant
