I put my life on the Internet. I have a blog. I have a YouTube channel. I’ve turned web-based content creation into my full-time job, and as I work you can be absolutely certain that I’m keeping a close eye on Twitter (my social media portal of choice). I’ll be the first to tell you that I use Twitter as my “bridge” to the outside world. Twitter is how I keep in touch with friends (from all over the globe) while I sit alone in my apartment composing content for my clients and helping them market their wares.

You…well, your school, should be using it, too. Why?

Twitter Beats Facebook

Facebook is filled with wacky algorithms that dictate what you do and do not see when you log in to the service. More and more often, feeds are filled with sponsored posts instead of status updates by friends. Even then, Facebook algorithms dictate which status updates you see and which you don’t. It tries to decide for you which friends you most want to know about. If you want to make sure that you don’t miss a single update, you have to visit each person’s page to see what they’ve published, something most of us are too busy (or too lazy) to do. This means that the updates you make to your school’s page might not get seen by most of the people following the account.

Twitter, on the other hand, sends updates in real time. People can create lists to prioritize who they read, but if you tweet it, it will show up in someone’s general feed.

Marketers Haven’t Yet Taken Over

Marketers have made Facebook and the other social media portals all but useless in terms of keeping up with things socially. On Twitter, though, users are more likely to flag sponsored messages as spam. This means that you don’t have to worry about competing with marketers who are paying to ensure that their messages show up everywhere.

Faster Notification

Twitter users can choose which updates automatically notify their smartphones and other portable devices. Some people choose to only be alerted when someone talks specifically to them. Others will choose to be alerted whenever a specific user publishes a tweet. Other services don’t allow you this customization, which is why most people have turned off alerts for other social media portals but keep Twitter active.

You can encourage your school’s students to set up your school account for automatic notification so they’ll know immediately when you send out a campus-wide alert or reminder. Your students will be notified within a few seconds of your hitting “publish.” With the other systems, you have to wait for them to log in or seek you out.

Sharing Is Almost Too Easy

On Twitter, people can easily pass your message along to their own followers with a single click of a mouse or tap on a smartphone screen. This means that your messages are more likely to be passed along by students to other students — even if those students haven’t followed your account directly.

Brevity Is the Source of Wit

While there are times that the character limit can feel like a burden, most of the time it is a blessing. The character limit forces you to get to the point. This makes your messages more likely to be read because your followers know that they won’t have to slog through a bunch of rhetoric before getting to the intention behind your update. You simply update them with relevant information and that’s that. It saves everybody time.

Lots of schools are using Twitter to help them with their social services and to keep students informed about what is going on around campus. Last year, Virginia Tech used Twitter and text messages to keep students in the loop when they went through a second shooting (the first happened in 2007).

A quick glance at my feed and you will see that 95% of what I post is social, not professional, in nature. I trade jokes with friends. I forward on articles that are relevant to our community. I have entire conversations, 140 characters at a time. When it’s relevant, I’ll share articles I’ve written myself or retweet job opportunities.

Your school can take advantage of that same social atmosphere to keep your students informed and engaged in ways that they might have felt too intimidated to figure out on their own.

Header Image Courtesy of: JefferyTurner

This post was written by Erin Steiner