Universities are Fully Invested in Social Media

• 100% of Universities are using some form of social media.
• 98% are using Facebook, 86% use Youtube, and 84% use Twitter

How are they using it? For student recruitment, School pride, and General Outreach. 

School Pride

Students will rally around content making them feel relevant in this competitive space.  

Example: Stanford University uses visual elements of social media to get their student base fired up

Student Recruitment 

• 80% of America's top colleges are using social media to recruit potential students.

Your future Students are reading your content, and determining interest level via your posts.   

Example: The University of Nebraska is Pro-Active on Twitter, reaching out to prospective students based on locations and keywords.

General Outreach

Current students are looking to you as a resource of what's happening on campus. Parents and prospective studnets are keeping an eye on activities via your social page. Don't forget about your alumni! Make your alumni proud by posting relevant success stories from their alma mater.

Example: MIT uses their social media pages to highlight on-campus research articles, as well as updates on alumni successes. 

More Stats

• 62% of students want to access a college's social media properties via mobile.
• 57% of parents of prospective students say a bad experience on a college's website may have some negative effect on perception of the college.
• 27% of the first-year students felt the recruitment materials didn't accurately portray campus. 

What Does This Mean?

As Universities begin to ramp up their social media efforts, it's important to keep a unified presence across the campus. Different on-campus programs will be utilizing social media in different ways, which can be dangerous in terms of marketing and public relations, if it is not handled correctly. It is recommended that each University hold a quarterly conference to gather various marketing directors to create a unified voice for social media.

To determine a solid social media strategy Universities must keep an eye on their target market. Current students may lean towards school pride content. Prospective students will relate to recruiting materials online, and alumnus will stay connected with current events and news coming from campus. 

Now that Universities have adopted social media into their overall marketing strategy, it's time to focus on maximizing each moment spent in this new media. Strategy development is just the beginning. 

So today I found a very interesting article that talks about a couple of advertisers jumping on the Charlie Sheen wagon and using it to promote some of their products. Ad.ly a company based out of L.A. works with a lot of different celebrities and brands to advertise via twitter. While some of their clients include Toyota and Microsoft, Ad.ly believes that the true marketability comes from celebrities that have a high following on twitter. “…celebrities are currently the ideal brand endorsers in terms of social media because of the influence they have, their fan loyalty and, as he put it, “their ability to move the needle.”

While most people are quite critical of twitter being used as an advertising tool, Ad.ly has found great success bringing active famous twitter users and their fans together while being able to push out products that the celebrities like and actually use. What I really like about Ad.ly is that they do not tweet for their clients, they try to stay away from that because it does not give them the originality. Plus I don’t want to hear from them, I want to hear from the person who’s twitter account it is. “…advertisers are good at writing sales copy. They’re not good at writing organic tweets in different celebrity’s voices.” Often the tweets come as casual messages from the celebrity: “Check this out” or “‘I think this is cool.”

While celebrities are growing in this area of the industry, I don’t know how many brands actually want to associate themselves with Charlie Sheen. The guy is funny and all, but obviously he has some deep issues that he needs to resolve first. I don’t know if I would want my Ad for “Denny’s Family Restaurant” associated with Tiger blood and Strippers.

I was recently featured on 1011 News in Lincoln Nebraska in a discussion on the importance of understanding the life-threatening issues with brain injuries. This is something that I feel strongly about. Taking a risk to play a GAME is not worth it. When you look at your health, it should be with a long-term view. Protect your mind, it is your greatest asset. Take a look.

[BLAKE]