Students Choose Schools Based on Twitter
Usually colleges to apply to are chosen by students relating to their academic program, their proximity to home, etc. Now there’s a new factor in with the mix: which colleges on Twitter have the “highest grades”? This “highest grade” refers to what a college’s social media score is. This is unusual especially under the idea that students are in a sense basing their future education on social media rather than their own knowledge and understanding of the school’s educational programs and social atmosphere (this knowledge possibly even being ignored even if they have seen it first-hand from college tours). A company called Meltwater looked at the Twitter accounts of many different colleges, specifically in how the Twitter account extended beyond the academic side of the college, and developed their own social media score rankings of the top 150 colleges using media analytics. Not to my surprise, my former college, Syracuse University, was included among the top 5 data results (as Syracuse has been praised in the past on multiple platforms regarding its school spirit and student interaction).
The author describes how the colleges “tap into the zeitgeist”, basically evaluating past, present, and future content that is relevant and has a conversation with users of the college’s twitter rather than spitting out whatever random content that relates to the college. UNC, also in the top 5 of Meltwater’s list, accurately demonstrated the concept of building up their Twitter score from their recent social media success on Twitter. After winning the NCAA Championship, rather than continuing to say “hey remember how we beat other schools in a sporting event?!”, UNC pushed their success in a different, more positive direction by encouraging their students to post content revolving around the school spirit through hashtags such as #UNCSpring and placing the content on their Twitter. Rather than posting just news and information on their Twitters, colleges are reflecting their self-image to their followers (usually current students) and engaging with them through retweets and replies. When students are seeing these colleges online, they are reflecting more of their student environment in some cases due to the physical evidence that the current students care about their college.
Reference: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2016/10/18/three-lessons-marketers-can-learn-from-college-social-media-successes/#4f9ff9e6494c