July 23, 2010 by Bill

Our recent study on social media usage by colleges and universities has been generating conversation, predictably enough given the hot topic. But what’s the real revolution that’s occurring? It has to do with who’s communicating with whom.

Our study for the Council on Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), which we undertook in partnership with mStoner, was designed to give university development, alumni relations, and marketing professionals insights into what their peers are doing with social media, and why. We found that the biggest reason schools are investing time and money in social media is because their alumni (and other constituents) want them to. It’s expected, and it’s how an increasing proportion of alumni want to communicate with their alma mater.

No surprise there. And another recent piece of research amplifies this point. The U.S. News commissioned the Engagement Strategies Group to survey alumni around the country and learned that 47% of young alumni don’t feel their colleges do enough to connect with them, other than soliciting donations. So alumni want their schools to take a more active role in forging those relationships. That doesn’t mean more communication, of course. It means better communication.

Which brings us right back to social media, because Facebook, Twitter, and other network-driven communication platforms aren’t just new channels to carry the university’s message to alumni (or prospective or current students). They’re not even merely two-way streets: they’re whole neighborhoods of “streets,” new communities of information and exchange. 

A slide from our presentation at the CASE Summit for Advancement Leaders, 2010. ...   

Charlie Milichar, an incoming associate chancellor for communications at Vanderbilt who was on our panel at the CASE conference at which we presented the results last week, pointed out to attendees that social media should be seen as a tool to listen to alumni, as opposed to telling them things. Most alumni and development professionals still think in terms of messages and messaging. That’s (literally) old school.

The strategic shift — and it can be a difficult one for institutions like colleges and universities — is to use social media to transcend the institution-to-alumni mindset and foster the alumni-to-alumni connection that alumni tell us they want. We know from our own research in higher ed that alumni want to connect with one another, as well as with current students (through mentoring). They want to be part of a community. And social media provides a perfect set of tools to meet those needs, even over geographic distances.

Alumni also want "lifelong learning" and "lifelong services," according to the U.S. News study (which agrees with our findings). Both of these could also be facilitated by social media, if universities began to think of them in these ways

As a longtime researcher, I would pick up on Charlie’s point: if we think of social media as a way for universities to listen, they can be used to learn more about how alumni want to engage with the university. Some schools—and many for-profit enterprises, of course—are beginning to listen in as their constituencies “talk” about them online, and new kinds of monitoring and research services are sprouting up to help them.

The bottom line is that colleges that focus their social media energies only on alumni giving are missing the boat. The ones that will succeed in the Facebook era will focus on connecting alumni with one another, building community, and providing services that support that community (such as online directories and other web-based services).

There are many other avenues to pursue in the wake of this study, and I’ll be writing a more detailed whitepaper about the data with Cheryl Slover-Linett and Michael Stoner for dissemination this Fall. Meanwhile, the buzz is exciting, and I welcome your thoughts and perspectives below.
 

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