The firm’s founding partner is in New York City this week for the annual CASE Summit For Advancement Leaders. Slover-Linett will give a talk with Michael Stoner, president of mStoner, and others about new data on how colleges and universities use social media tools to build and cultivate relationships.
UPDATE: Read Inside Higher Ed's article about the conference presentation and our findings.
Slover Linett Strategies recently partnered with the communications strategy firm mStoner and CASE (the Council for Advancement and Support of Education) to conduct a study on how social media is managed, centralized and funded at the more than 56,000 CASE member colleges and universities worldwide. We also looked at what kind of “returns” and other outcomes are generated by the use of social media.
"We're really excited about this research because it's one of the first studies to look at higher ed institutions, rather than students,” says Slover-Linett. “So we’re filling in the other half of the picture.”
You can download the presentation of findings here, and read a topline summary of the results here.
The survey research is billed as the ‘first’ CASE social media survey and may be repeated in future years to reveal shifts and track progress.
Slover-Linett and Stoner were joined on the panel by Andrew Gossen, who directs Cornell University's new-media efforts, and Charlie Melichar, a communications strategist at Colgate University when the study was conducted and recently named associate vice chancellor for communications at Vanderbilt University's development and alumni relations office.
Slover Linett’s work on the study was led by senior associate Bill Hayward, a veteran institutional researcher who directs the firm’s higher education practice. “This really stemmed from many higher ed professionals asking, ‘What are my peers doing? What are the best practices out there, and how can we improve the way we run our social media?’” Hayward recalls.
“We knew that nearly all organizations use social media to some degree, but this study suggests that it’s still in a growth phase: most organizations expect to expand their social media activities. The tough news is that few plan to hire more staff to do it. So at least in the short run, administrations will be doing more with less.”
Cheryl Slover-Linett will be at the CASE summit Monday through Wednesday this week. If you’re an education professional and will be attending the conference, let her know.
Category: Higher education
