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?