Happy Halloween from your university

Social media at colleges and universities never take a holiday...

or, maybe they take it and run with it.

(Photo from Microsoft Office Images)

Instagram ideas on campus

Instagram, the photo- and video-sharing social networking site, marked its third anniversary earlier this month. I looked up some stats on its blog this week: 150 million active members, 55 million photos posted every day, 16 billion photos shared since 2010. It's not the biggest social media site in terms of members, but it's grown enough that it cannot be ignored by colleges and universities trying to reach their varied audiences.

Plenty of schools are online with Instagram, using it to recruit new students, reminisce with alumni and more. And plenty are not; with limited resources, they may feel that even if they know their audience is on Instagram, they don't have enough time/staff to add another social media site to their mix.

One way to help with that is to take advantage of what's already out there, or rather who's already out there: current students. Recent posts on the Social Media for Colleges and Higher Education Marketing blogs highlight just a few examples of schools tapping their current students as Instagram ambassadors. I like the "takeover" idea; I've seen schools do that with Twitter as well, having a student post on the official university account for an hour/morning/day. Even when students are selected with a particular reason in mind, I think it can convey an authenticity that anyone can appreciate.

(Photo from Microsoft Office Images)
(Instagram logo courtesy of Instagram)

Psst...YouTube is HUGE

A few months ago, I read a statistic that surprised me a little. YouTube reported that more than 1 billion unique users visit the video-sharing website every month. ONE BILLION.

 The sheer size of that number is staggering; that was part of why I was surprised. The other reason is that, with the ability to post short videos added in recent months to such popular social media as Instagram and Twitter, I thought YouTube's popularity might be waning a bit. Apparently that's not the case!

A couple of other facts from YouTube reinforce why colleges and universities — and anyone else trying to reach an audience with its message — should have the video behemoth in their toolkit:

• One hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Every minute!
• YouTube reaches more adults ages 18-34 in the United States than any single cable television network. That's pretty powerful evidence that video is shifting from traditional media (TV) to online.

And one more fact to throw in the mix: You need a budget of $0 to set up a YouTube channel for your organization.

(Photo from Microsoft Office Images)
(YouTube logo courtesy of YouTube)

More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month - See more at: http://www.activecommunities.com/blog/top-10-social-media-stats-to-watch-2013/#sthash.nnO9Z2ja.dpuf

More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each mont - See more at: http://www.activecommunities.com/blog/top-10-social-media-stats-to-watch-2013/#sthash.nnO9Z2ja.dpuf

More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each mont - See more at: http://www.activecommunities.com/blog/top-10-social-media-stats-to-watch-2013/#sthash.nnO9Z2ja.dpuf

Social media as school cafeteria

When it comes to higher education, and specifically to college students, I like to think of social media as a campus dining hall — the conversation part, not the food part.

Twenty years ago, when the World Wide Web was a toddler and the term "social media" hadn't been invented yet, students met in the dining hall or the student union to eat and talk — about who they were dating, who they wanted to date, the parties they attended last weekend, how drunk they got at the parties last weekend, their classes and, of course, their professors.

They still do that, but now those conversations also can (and do) happen on Facebook and Twitter, where anyone can "hear" them, not just the guys at the next table at dinner. One person listening is Matt Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Iowa, who last month started searching out and retweeting students' tweets about their professors (check out all such posts on Twitter with the hashtag #myprofessor). As he notes in a blog on the Inside Higher Ed website, the tweets are an unfiltered look at how students view their professors, for better or for worse.

Will professors listen to their students' praise/complaints on Twitter? Should they?

(Photo from Microsoft Office Images)

Social media as student retention tool

A lot has been and continues to be written about colleges and universities increasing their use of social media to attract and recruit students to their programs. I haven't seen as much about retention — keeping students on your campus once they enroll. I thought this article from University Business was very good and touched on a lot of ways that schools can seize opportunities for reaching students that didn't exist in the past. Not only can they react to a situation, but they also can be proactive, through social media.

From assisting struggling or homesick students and answering basic questions from incoming freshmen to offering career services for graduating seniors and encouraging successful students to share their dean's list news, social media can be a vital link between colleges and universities and their most important assets. Some may think social media is too impersonal for such a role, but once you make a connection, the impersonal quickly can become personal, as anecdotes in the article attest.

(Photo from Microsoft Office Images)