Although most postsecondary institutions now leverage social media channels to some extent for marketing and communications, alumni engagement, and teaching and learning, many of these efforts remain ad hoc and largely unintegrated with key strategic efforts within each division. An April 2011 survey of professionals at research institutions conducted by Slover Linett Strategies Inc. and mStoner in collaboration with the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) found that:

• Only 36 percent of professionals surveyed would describe social media use within their unit as “planned” (as opposed to “spontaneous”), and 65 percent would like to see the amount of planning increase
• 62 percent regard their unit’s use of social media as only “somewhat successful” in achieving strategic goals

Because social media tools are new, it’s easy to assume that they require a new approach or a new “social media strategy.” Yet what is actually needed isn’t a new strategy, but rather a close look at your current strategy and a thoughtful analysis of how social media tools can be brought to bear on some of the challenges you face in meeting specific, strategic outcomes – such as increasing student yield, boosting the engagement of students in hybrid or online courses, or engaging alumni.

Social media isn’t a “brave new world” – it’s a set of new communication and collaboration tools you can apply to what you are already doing to help you do it better.

Examples from Other Industries

Other organizations in the corporate and nonprofit sectors have seen success in leveraging social media channels in support of their strategic objectives, and have done so in ways that supplement and complement what they have already been doing through more traditional channels.

Alan Webber, industry analyst and managing partner for the Altimeter Group, offers these examples:

• After integrating Twitter into its customer service communications plan by allowing customers to tweet service requests and empowering staff to tweet back links to resources, steps to take, or expected response times, Comcast has seen decreased wait times and decreased call volume.
• Zappos and other online retailers that lack a physical storefront have mastered coordinated communications across email and multiple social platforms, tailoring information blasts and calls to action to their Twitter, Facebook, and email audiences to maximize traffic back to their websites.
• In 2006, the American Red Cross assigned staff to monitor social media networks as a reputation management strategy; the Red Cross quickly realized, however, that given the candor and openness of conversations on them, social media channels offered market research opportunities to help meet goals around improvement of services. The Red Cross’s social media strategist now regularly documents stories shared on social media and distributes them to key internal staff as discussion starters.

In each of these cases, social media tools were employed alongside more traditional channels and methods (such as email, phone, or in the case of the Red Cross’s market research effort, surveys and focus groups) as part of a broader strategy in order to move the needle on specific outcomes. None of these organizations have treated social media as an entirely separate set of tools, and rather than devise a separate “social media strategy,” these organizations have found creative and successful ways to integrate social media into their existing customer service, sales, and market research strategies.

Because your constituencies (prospective students, current students, faculty, donors, alumni) are logged into social networking sites and actively using social media tools in their own lives, these technologies offer significant opportunities for extending the reach of what you already do well – whether you are looking to extend student recruitment across a larger geographic area, extend student learning outside the classroom, or extend and expand the impact of an alumni event. To stay competitive, institutions will need to be intentional in how they integrate social media tools into key, strategic efforts.

In This Issue

To walk you through what integration of social media into your strategic initiatives might look like across various divisions of your institution, we’ve interviewed experts in marketing and communications, faculty development, and institutional advancement at a variety of institutions – a statewide university system, a private liberal arts university, a community college, and a public research institution. In this issue of Higher Ed Impact: Monthly Diagnostic, we’ll help you think through:

• How to leverage social media channels in service of student recruitment priorities (read Social Media and Student Recruitment)
• Opportunities for harnessing social media tools to meet specific pedagogical and student engagement challenges (read In and Out of the Classroom: Using Social Media in Ways that Matter)
• Integrating social media channels into your alumni and donor engagement strategies (read Social Media and Alumni/Donor Engagement)
• How to provide central support for these decentralized efforts – even on a limited or zero budget (read Providing Central Guidelines and Support for Social Media)