So How Can Social Media Help A University?

Student recruitment has been a consistent issue for higher-education organisations. In recent years, numerous elements have increased this pressure. However, social media can be a powerful tool in promoting your university and presenting its image to prospective students. Social media can help to promote research and innovation at your institution. Top-tier research universities, like the red bricks, depend on drawing in the finest researchers to accelerate their advancements in innovation. While scholarly journals and guest lecturers do an unbelievable task of reaching audiences, their reach is, by and large, restricted to an individual’s access to and awareness of such materials. Social media enables wider audiences to become much more involved through sharing updates, news and clips of such events – preventing anyone from missing out whilst promoting the university as a prestigious learning establishment. Setting up an effective communications system through social media can help to make your job easier.

Whether you’re on the team that’s supervising all of the university’s efforts or you’re running a single department’s accounts, you require having an effective communications system in place. How do you learn about occasions that are occurring around your campus? In a time of crisis, how will the campus community access the most important information? How do you share that somebody in your department won an award or published a crucial finding? Promoting events via social media will increase awareness and an online presence whilst official statements released by the university will aid in preventing speculation and misinformation flowing onto channels the university cannot manage. Additionally, some universities are using department-focused social media pages to get the word out about the news for that particular department. Creating audience specific spaces rather than posting everything to one main channel will reduce clutter on your feeds and help to create focussed and easy access to information. Whilst this can work well, you do require tailoring content to suit your student audience as well as making sure you have enough routine material to keep your students engaged.