Higher Ed Social Media Marketing

http://www.fb.com/thecatalystpartnership Should your company have a Social Media Marketing Strategy? Should you be on Facebook? Should you be on Google+? Sho... (What's YOUR Social Media Marketing Strategy?

My friend Inger Mewburn (@thesiswhisperer) recently wrote a thoughtful piece in The Conversation web site entitled Academics behaving badly? Universities and online reputations. For the record I think that the points she made were valid and true but I also think that there is an underlying issue that remains uncovered. Simply put, it is that fact that policies around the use of social media by the academy have, in many cases, been outsourced to individuals who are not members of the academy and do not understand the purpose of the academy. As a result they fundamentally miss the opportunities that social media offer universities in engaging with the wider community. This seems to me to be particularly true in Australia where rampant managerialism associated with the corporate university has led to situation in which ‘brand positioning’ and being ‘on message’ is seen to be more important than concepts of sharing, collaboration and collegiality in knowledge distribution and generation.

We wanted to propose a Facebook Opportunity Pyramid to help admissions offices think about how best to leverage Facebook.

Our Horizon Project research, along with plenty of firsthand experience, has proven that social media is not just a fad. The education world is only beginning to harness its full potential. Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, provide endless opportunities to communicate smarter, foster close-knit communities, and garner more attention for academic projects. In partnership with the HP Catalyst Initiative, the NMC is hosting a two-part online workshop dedicated to helping educators build a solid social media identity and boost project visibility.