Unless you’ve been hibernating for the last few years, you have probably noticed that a lot of people are engaging in social media. Approximately 1/5 of the world’s population is on Facebook. Twitter has more than 100 million users, and new networks with their loyal followings are popping up as I type. Still think that social media is just for kids? Think again. Even the Pope is an active Twitter user who has 49,000 followers.

Although specific social media applications have different followings in terms of demographics and are used to communicate for different reasons, the fact is that social media has tremendous implications for our personal and professional lives. If you think that Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin have zero business value for you and your institution, you might want to reevaluate your position. Not only does social media need to be a part of your college/university’s marketing plan, but it needs to be approached thoughtfully, strategically, and systematically.

It is critical to follow trends in usage, demographics, and popularity to understand where your prospective students are spending their time online.

Analyzing the number of users on both of these networks, their ages, levels of education, and income levels, it is clear that there are many prospective college students on Facebook and Twitter. And, these are just two of a slew of social networks that prospective students use.

There are two main activities that you need to focus on related to social media at your institution where prospective students are concerned:

▪Conducting social media listening/monitoring so that you understand what networks your prospects are using and learn what they are saying about your school. What they are saying and how they are saying it has tremendous implications for your communications strategy in terms of channel utilization and messaging.

▪Creating a social media plan so that you maximize engagement opportunities. Social media needs to be planned for, executed routinely, and managed.

In future posts, we will dive into more specifics regarding how to conduct social media listening/monitoring and how to create a social media plan.

Are you currently conducting social media listening? If so, how are you doing it?