Last week Kyle James reminded us that the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachussets Dartmouth had just published the results of its latest study on social media use in higher ed.
With 456 interviews performed from November 2010 to May 2011 among a representative sample of 4-year institutions in the US, the findings of this study are valid within a +/- 4% range.
While they confirm some widely-shared assumptions on the state of social media in higher education, these results also reveal some surprising trends.
- According to this study, 100% of colleges and universities now use some form of social media – be it blogs, Facebook, Twitter, message/bulleting boards, videoblogging, podcasting, Foursquare, MySpace, LinkedIn or YouTube. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is the most widely used by institutions as only 2% aren’t present on the most popular social networking platform.
- YouTube follows with an adoption rate of 86%, just before Twitter with 84% and blogging with 66%.
- What’s a bit more surprising is the jump in podcasting use compared to the previous year – from 22% to 41%. I really don’t understand what could explain this surge and this makes me question the reliability of this specific data point (how was podcasting defined to respondents?).
Is success in the eyes of the admissions officer?
When asked how successful institutions are with the different types of social media channels they use, more than three-quarters of the respondents reported all channels (at the exception of the dying MySpace platform) as successful.
So, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds when it comes to social media in higher education?
Not so fast.
A closer look at the results of two other recent studies, namely the 2011 E-expectations Study from Noel-Levitz and the State of Web and Social Media Analytics in Higher Education I conducted for Higher Ed Experts, raises several questions about the very rosy picture painted by the study of social media use in admissions offices.
- When only 9% of prospective students and 5% of their parents have a Twitter account according to the Noel-Levitz survey, how can 72% of the institutions see Twitter as a successful channel?
- When 66% (a 15-point increase from the previous year) of admissions offices use blogs and three-quarters of students and parents said they never or only rarely looked at college blogs, how good can be the social media strategy of the admissions office?
- If 95% of admissions offices pat themselves on the back when they are asked to evaluate the success of their efforts on Facebook yet only 49% of the institutions – according to the Higher Ed Experts study – track Facebook activity, what does FB success look like for almost half the institutions?
Obviously, I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I believe there’s a real need to go beyond the “social media checklist” tactic and adopt a more strategic and measurable approach in higher education. Now that everybody is on board, it’s time to find out what works for the institution and stop what doesn’t.
Don’t YOU think so?
Thanks, Karine.
I have to agree. Saying you use Facebook is a bit like saying you use a hammer (and maybe even the whole toolbox). If you’re not using it to build a house or reach a specified goal, you’re not using the tool effectively. Jay Baer has an interesting article on just that topic: http://bit.ly/oOcuTt
Karine-
EXACTLY! I continue to be amazed at how well colleges think that they “are doing” social media because they are generating activity…however, that activity doesn’t have a strategy behind it, there are little to no metrics in place to measure the activities and they are not listening and evaluating what the actual activity means. I appreciate your perspective and the light you bring to the conversation.
Ann Oleson
Converge Consulting
What stuck out at me was the very last sentence. Unfortunately, at many institutions it isn’t about measuring what is working … it’s about adding new ideas and not really removing. Social media outreach has been added as a supplement to traditional recruitment efforts (which is the best start, IMO) … but 5-10 years from now it will be interesting to see which platforms schools ditch because they realize it’s not worth the investment of time or money.
Great post, Karine! It’s important to look beyond the flashy statistics to get to the real meaning of these findings. As I’m new to higher education communications, it’s good to read posts like these that call attention to the underlying needs for higher education communications and recruitment strategies.
Nice summary, Karine. I found myself focusing on these words from your post: “I believe there’s a real need to go beyond the “social media checklist†tactic and adopt a more strategic and measurable approach in higher education.”
I’d broaden the challenge even more by submitting that “a more strategic and measurable approach” is often not in place for university websites and flagship print pieces. Too often, universities make decisions about print, web and social media that are more influenced by internal stakeholders who are not the target audience, and not grounded in a research-based strategy.
Difficult stuff. We just need to keep plugging away at it.
Nice recap. A major problem is many people focus purely on analytics like Facebook Insights and Hootsuite Analytics. The focus needs to be on how this compares with business analytics and KPIs. We need to always be exploring and investigating previous business performance to understand what it is we want to achieve through future strategies.
It used to be that you could just throw up a Facebook page and Twitter account and that was enough. As social media becomes a primary way students reach out to institutions and to other students on our channels, the industry will need to take it much more seriously for it to be sustainable. Higher ed needs to stop being so scared of measuring social media ROI, we need to be accountable. Higher ed is catching up and there are many case studies from other industries to use as a model. No excuses.
– @mi_chelle, Social Media Coordinator at UBC
Thanks for the information Karine. I would propose that the statistics are all relative to the individual institutions. For example “when only 9% of prospective students have a Twitter account account”. This is a low number and great for posing your question, however at my institution 9% of students is still 2500 students, a significant number.
We have to go where the conversations are, not only where the most people are. Social media can easily influence a potential students feelings about a university. If we are not there to make those feelings positive we are likely to lose that student.
I couldn’t agree more about the need to evaluate our analytics and make the necessary adjustments.
For whatever it’s worth — Joe
It is important to note the magnification effect of social media, particularly with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube feeds being embedded onto multiple sites. This means that many the 91% who don’t necessarily have a Twitter account will still see and respond to Tweets.
We ran a highly successful campaign several years ago by using the #hashtag to place our messages onto the top of the tweet stream on the site that was running the event we were sponsoring.
It is the same with all of our feeds – we reach extended markets.
Of course we also have an inhouse strategy for all of our social media channels to communicate with our network and we take a long term view on building relationships.
@Talmadge You’re right, it’s important to remember that tools are just… tools.
@Ann I think the focus is on social media activity in higher ed for 2 reasons:
1) it’s easy, just grab the numbers – any number
2) Social media is also seen as a branch of media and for a very long time PR or Ad folks measured activity and outputs – the web is a different world as it’s very easy to measure at no cost what your targets are doing. However, this requires a paradigm shift for most pre-Web professionals.
@Gil Hopefully, it won’t take as much as 10 years to assess the performance of these different channels ;-)
@Krista Welcome to higher ed! Thanks for stopping by.
@Susan you’re right – an integrated approach is the only that makes sense for our targets and… our budgets.
@Michelle – do you think social media has already become a primary way for students to reach out to institutions? Y
@Joe you’re right – 9% of the whole prospective student pool is still something. However, keep in mind that we are talking about those with a Twitter account that they might use just from time to time and to keep up with their favorite celebrity or friends – not just to follow institutions :-) The Noel-Levitz survey found that 98% of them are on Facebook, but only 24% have ever visited the FB page of universities/colleges. I get the need for engagement, it’s important, you’re right, but I still think it’s not enough to declare success. We’re not there yet ;-)
@Tom, that’s a very valid point. Syndication can bring more exposure to messages posted on Twitter. I hadn’t think of this aspect. Thanks for bringing this up.
@Karine I am saying as social media *becomes a primary way* students reach out to institutions. Many prospective and newly admitted students reach out to UBC through our prospective undergrad Facebook page and we’re seeing an increase in questions being asked over Twitter to our prospective undergrad Twitter handle also.
I don’t think it’s ‘the’ primary way students reach out, but in time I’ve been working on the social channels we’ve seen an increase in students connecting with us on social media first, before they pick up the phone or send an email.
We also work with the admissions team to find out what frequent questions students are asking over the phone/emails and post updates and links to articles on our admissions blog on the Facebook wall, inviting questions and comments through these channels.
Students can post a question to Facebook/Twitter and check back for a response when it suits them. This may be preferable to waiting on hold on the phone or being placed in an email queue.
@Michelle – that’s what I understood, but I was wondering if it had already in your institution. Do you actually track activity or questions on social media, phone and email? Are you able to say X% of student questions are asked on Twitter, Y% on the phone, etc.? That would make some very interesting data.
I think it is important to realize that mere use/adoption of social media by higher educational institutions is not enough. It’s more important to examine the underlying purpose behind having a social media presence in order to effectively measure success and reevaluate strategic goals.
@Karine We track email and phone activity by query type separately each week and are able to compare this with data from social media channels. I’ll have to get back to you on whether our active presence on social media has drastically reduced traffic to phone/email as we haven’t gone through a full recruitment cycle with social media tracking in place. Numbers are in part reflective of the time of year we receive student enquiries.
[…] are some interesting points regarding this issue made by Karine Joly at collegewebeditor.com: “A closer look at the results of two other recent studies, namely the 2011 E-expectations […]
So even if only 9% of students and 5% of parents use Twitter there’s no need for the institute to stop using Twitter altogether. It’s something that requires so little effort and overhead on part of the university that they might as well run it along with their vastly more popular Facebook and YouTube channels. At the very least they can link Facebook and YouTube updates in their Twitter feed. Considering the cost of setting up and running a Twitter account, even if those updates help only a fraction of that 9% it can be considered a “successâ€.