The article discusses the growing use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to advertise a brand or event and whether a corporate website is needed any more. So is a university website required any more, can the university's web presence be left entirely to social media sites?
Aston University's Twitter feed.
Social media is a conversation with potential customers which suits the nature of on-line media which is very easy to make interactive. In many ways a conversation suits education marketing. Potential customers a.k.a. prospective students are hungry for information and may not be sure about what they are looking for. They require guidance and help in their course and university choice. A static webpage is not the best for these kind of inquiries. People are often unsure about higher education, its a huge and unwieldly world of strange acronyms and jargon. The key is not so much to find the information you are looking for but know what you are looking for.
The university i work for has dabbled it's big toe in the waters of social media, what they have done has been very useful and not just social media for the sake of it because it is "cool". The course guidance department, for example, operates a blog where they run Q&As on various courses and discuss aspects of higher education. Several courses have created Facebook groups for new students so they can get to know their classmates before they start their courses. Various Twitter feeds, a Youtube channel and Flickr area have been set up in the university's name.
Some of these initiatives have been set up centrally and others by departments and course leaders themselves. There is a lot more that can be done of course but as with anything resources and time are finite. There is also the question of trying to do too much and to try and get a presence of social media sites for the sake of it.
But to return to the central question, can these social media initiatives replace a central website? I feel the answer is still no but social media needs to be incorporated into being an integral part of the corporate site. Why no? Because the amount of information universities have on their courses and themselves is vast and also they have to cater to a number of different audiences (many people forget that its not just potential students who are looking for information but their parents too!) Social media sites which require registration are also, by design, exclusive. So it is no point advertising your course exclusively on Facebook for example as you won't get to people who use Myspace, Friendster or none of the above!
However incorporating social media can add to the richness of the web experience on the corporate website. Let us take for example a fashion design course. You could of course just have a nice flat page with some pretty pictures and plenty of text. Not bad. But why not embed videos of fashion shows? A gallery hosted on Flickr? A Facebook group for students? A lecturer's blog? These will turn a flat page into a dynamic conversation with the potential student.
An example of embedding social media : Brighton University's prospective students pages include embedded Youtube videos of students talking about their experiences.
This does require a leap of faith though. Social media, as it is "social", means you are losing a degree of control over your message. Allowing people to comment on your videos, for example, means they may not necessarily be complimentary! However with monitoring and considered moderation (personally i feel only really bad, offensive or untrue comments should be removed, honest criticism is healthy - though that may not be an easy position to maintain!) this can be managed and be a positive not a negative.
So there is still a space for corporate university websites but social media cannot be ignored. No longer is a university's web presence it's central website, the web presence is now spread across dozens of separate sites. But the best way to organise this is to use the corporate website as the "central hub" and pull in content and functionality from these social media sites to create a rich, varied and interactive web conversation with your potential future students.
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