Monday, June 15, 2015

University - Student Engagement


Universities are always looking for ways to interact and keep their students engaged.  Universities do this in order to welcome and establish a relationship with their students.  Some of the things they do in order to establish these relationship includes: orientations for their new students, annual events, and most recently these universities have turned to social media to keep them engaged. 
The chapter begins with this quote:
            Every time a new consumer joins this media landscape, a new producer joins as well because the same equipment — phones, computers — lets you consume and produce. It is as if when you bought a book, they threw in the printing press for free. (Shirky, p. 153).
This seems fitting considering that every person who now owns a phone is connected through social media.  They are no longer just the audience, but also producers. 
STUDENTS
I decided to connect through Colorado State University (Colorado State University) to determine how they are using social media to connect with their students.  The things I noticed most about their interaction was that Colorado State University tries to be very involved with their students.  Colorado State University will give them shout outs for doing well like this:
Colorado State is also recognizing some of the struggles students have to go through in order to achieve some goals and they also acknowledge their staff.  On their Twitter, Colorado State retweets and acknowledges students who are posting about them.  It also seemed as though the other main use for Colorado State University Twitter is to see how or if students incorporated their “Ram Pride” during their wedding day.
     
There was a good amount of student interaction with the university and those that did interact and tweet to the university did so to state how great Colorado State University is.  Many of the tweets from students showed how beautiful Colorado State University is and how it is the perfect university. 
Colorado State has strong community bonds and they encourage their students to become familiar with the area visit it.  This is an indication that the university also has strong ties within their surrounding community. 
During this tweet, a sister Twitter account for Colorado State is giving advice to those who are planning on having a party.  They are advertising to make sure they are not posting things on social media and they hash tag it with party smart.  This is another way that Colorado State is maintaining a relationship with their student by trying to help them stay out of trouble, especially during a time when everything is posted on social media. 
ADVERTISING
Colorado State University also uses Twitter a lot to advertise about their school as well as the area.  I will have to admit, it even made me want to take a tour of the area and the campus.   
Colorado State is not only advertising their area, they are advertising to students about future career opportunities and about school events going on.  In a way this is the way Colorado State is communication with many of their students. 
SPREADABLE MEDIA
So in short Colorado State University is attempting to communicate with their students by being supportive, instilling pride in them and their community, keeping them engaged, and effectively advertising to bring more people in.  Colorado State Twitter is showing that they are actively listening to their students and they are communicating back.  They are not just focusing on themselves, but they are making sure that their students are engaged and being recognized even after they have left.  This is a very effective form of active communication Colorado State is doing it!  I did not see them not having an effective way to communicate with their students.  There is room for improvement and a way they can better themselves is to have more interaction with them.
While this chapter emphasizes the needs for companies to focus on listening rather than hearing, I believe Colorado State University is doing a pretty good job at it.  On Twitter Colorado State University looks like they are interacting and listening to their audience and not just combining their audience as a whole, but viewing them individually.  

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