Universities Beat Business In Social Media Use

The UK’s universities are leaving businesses way behind when it comes to social media, according to a study by Virgin Media Business.

Of the top 50 universities 72 percent have official Facebook pages and 94 percent have official Twitter accounts, whereas just 35 percent of businesses are using social-media to engage with customers and recruit new staff, according to the report.

With 48 percent of 18-24-year-olds checking Facebook when they wake up and Twitter adoption for the same age group growing at 8 percent per year, both platforms offer universities a cheap and direct route to their market.

Cambridge and Oxford topped the table and just two of the top 50 are yet to use either Facebook or Twitter.

Using the Klout score measurement for online influence (created by San Francisco firm Klout), the study ranks Cambridge ahead of Oxford with 57 out of 100 on Twitter but Oxford has 133,000 more ‘Likes’ on Facebook with a total of   over 230,000 ‘likes’. The average was 10,386.

Lessons to be learnt

According to Andrew McGrath, executive director, commercial at Virgin Media Business, the private sector and universities face similar challenges when it comes to engaging their audience so there’s no reason why business can’t  replicate the latter’s successful use of social-media in their particular area.

“For this reason, universities are setting a fantastic example of how organisations can engage with their audiences via a multi-channeled approach,” he said.

The University of Oxford Press Office uses social media to complement its traditional communications tools, tweets at least twice a day during the week to nearly 20,000 followers, the largest following of any European university.

The university has embraced the power of social media to amplify its communications but recognises that it requires a certain level of dedication in order to be effective.

A spokesperson said: “To use Twitter successfully, you need to be able to provide regular tweets which direct the followers to regularly updated material that is relevant to them.”

The university also pointed to the power of blogs in managing and controlling communications, giving them an opportunity to have the first say on issues relating to them or emanating from the university.

“It means that an authorised version of the story appears online, which can be particularly important when a story is complicated or potentially controversial,” they said.

But the key to success comes back again to commitment – blogs, Twitter and Facebook must be regularly updated and maintain a clear identity in order to maintain readers’ interest or else they risk becoming a white elephant.

The study named America’s Harvard University the global social media leader among universities with a Twitter influence of 69 and nearly half a million Facebook ‘Likes’.

The study also found that other social-media platforms are being used by internet-savvy universities claiming that YouTube, FourSquare and Flickr are becoming increasingly popular channels amongst universities, enabling post-lecture video viewing, photo sharing, and check-in capability.