Indian Social Media Landscape

The question about digital technology and its place in academia is one that is yet to be clearly answered. Understanding the benefits and costs of using digital technology is crucial when deciding if a particular tool, site or package may be used in universities.

Harvard University Twitter Handle

Universities are constantly exploring new ways to use social media to fulfill their missions of engaging and sharing knowledge with their constituents. Here we look at few ways in which universities can use social media without distracting the students.

Reaching out to the world

Social media tools like Facebook Pages have given universities an opportunity to speak to audiences on their own, reaching thousands of people interested in keeping up with news at the school and connecting with others on the social network.

Insight to the campus life

Perhaps the most common way, and the way in which most of us use social media, is sharing information about ourselves or things we find interesting. Because universities are educational institutions, they use social media to highlight their experts, as well as the resources they make available to the public/student. The point is to try to educate and provide a glimpse into what the institution is like.

Showcase work

Aside from sharing news and information, social media is often used in showcasing student and faculty work. That can be as simple as featuring photos taken by students through a photo album on the university’s Facebook page. Or it can take the form of an elaborate YouTube video by students as a class assignment. The idea is to let the general audience know what kind of work is being carried out in the university.

Getting Innovative

Rather than just use social media to promote specific events, some universities employ the tools to provide a place for the university community to engage and participate in the event as it is happening. This can be done through live streaming videos or collecting tweets during commencement through a common hashtag. This allows students and others to report on the event happenings as if they were being attended.

Hashtag Communications

Emergency Service

Emergencies and tragedies do happen. With the growing popularity of social media tools like Twitter, some universities are finding it easier and quicker to spread news during an emergency by complementing their e-mail and text alerts with a Tweet and a Facebook message or post. The University of Minnesota has an Emergency Notification group on Facebook that it uses to blast messages to its 2,300 members during a case of an emergency. It provides another way to reach students who spend a lot of their time there during critical situations.

Alumni Relations

Another key element of using social media is to keep the alumni body connected. With ever growing number of students passing out each year, keeping up with everyone becomes a task. Universities have utilized the services of groups and pages to get the alumni members stay connected. This not only helps connect various batches, it also gives opportunity to draw on resources that may be readily available to the university through its ex students database.

Providing Jobs

The key element of Universities is to provide jobs to the students. Some universities have used the social media platform to source out placements for students through the alumni members. Alma Mater is the best starting point for placements and a connected alumni cell with placement cell has made job search that much easier. The secret groups of Facebook seems to be a very popular tool not just to get fresh offers but also to source out the best job change for the members.

Job Forums

The benefits of social media to help students search for information, learn to communicate effectively and work collaboratively are well documented. There are resources to help academics consider the advantages of using social media in universities. They provide advice on using blogs, social networking sites, social bookmarking, collaboration, presentation and information management tools, and more for academic purpose. All it needs is for the universities to cease the opportunity and use the tool in the best possible manner.

Exclusivity was a promise that Facebook had started with. With the passage of time and with 500 million plus users, that exclusivity had somehow got lost. People were weary of bothering everyone they knew for queries that may not be relevant to most of them. To address this concern, Facebook launched the latest version of Groups.

Earlier people didn’t do much on groups but to post comments and view pictures or share videos. There was no direct communications amongst all the members of the group. Also, the administration of the group was in the hands of select few people, which was a powerful position because they could message the members directly. In short, the groups were not an integral part of the Facebook universe earlier.

With the latest version, that’s exactly what Facebook Groups has attempted to do, become as integral to Facebook as Facebook Pages. Amongst the few key changes that have happened, the most significant is that the administration of the group has moved from select few to every individual. This is done with a desire to develop groups as a real-world group where everyone is participating towards building something more productive. Now, each post sends a notification to all the group members unless the members opt out of the notification process. This rids the group member of the doubt about if their post has been noticed or not.

Click on the Image for enlarged view

The new version of Groups will also allow Group Chats that will enable real time IM conversations between the group members. This one tool has the potential of taking the Groups to the next level for business purpose. With real time communication possible, people and more importantly brands can engage in closed group surveys, focused group discussions and even internal communications. Also, the group mail facility makes it easier to communicate with the members when someone is away.

Click on the Image for enlarged view

Another little addition to Facebook groups is the Docs feature that allows the members to post “Docs” with minor amount of markups such as bold, italics and lists. The docs can be revised and each revision goes into the history, which users can navigate back through.

Click on the Image for enlarged view

With new Groups being released with a mobile interface and an Open Graph API, Facebook Groups will be accessible in all imaginable capacities, helping it reach more people in real time, thus making it more viable for business purposes.
What this means for businesses is that while Facebook Pages are useful for defining our commercial affiliations, Facebook Groups help define who we are socially. These would mean a more easy and more upfront interaction with the stakeholders, which can be leveraged to conduct Focused Group Discussions, Closed Group Surveys, addressing product complaints and even managing internal HR issues.

Between group chat, docs, and an eventual Groups developer platform, Facebook is aiming to become a more significant communications and collaboration platform. There’s no doubt that smaller organizations could find the new groups product to be extremely useful and with more customer support even the bigger ones will soon join the bandwagon.

I love Facebook.

There I said it. The reason I was having dilemma stating it openly was that till all this while I considered it as one more yuppie social networking site that will die a quick natural death. But I was wrong. And that only makes me happy. Having turned an entrepreneur, I have realized the kind of benefits I have reaped from its features.

So this post is to those features that each of you can use to promote your brand. Use them wisely and you will experience success whichever category your brand may be operating in. Here goes: