Social Media and College Admissions

In today's world of college admission offices social media has become an increasingly used tool. Every school now seemingly has a twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat account. Lots of schools are using social media due to the fact that most college or soon to be college students use some type of social media. This has been a recent development for higher education institutions. Even a couple of years ago colleges did not have much of a social media presence. Their main source of direct marketing was in the form of mailings and phone calls with student. This form of contact has proven to become ineffective in recent years, which prompted institutions to take a step into the world of social media. For example, Ohio Wesleyan which is a private liberal arts school in Ohio dove in by creating Instagram and Facebook accounts for each admission counselor on staff. This allowed counselors to interact with prospective students and to show where they were traveling among other things. This however turned out to not be huge success for the institution. With extremely low followings and little interaction between counselors and prospective students it appears that this was not a great usage and roll out of a social media campaign. After this approach the university changed their approach. They switched to a more centralized approach next. They stopped using individual accounts and created "Ohio Wesleyan Admission" accounts on various social media platforms. This allows them to create a single central message whereas before it was harder to control the message since it is coming from multiple voices. The decentralized approach spread their following too thin. Each counselor had a very minuscule audience. Prospective students are more likely to find the institution as a whole than their individual admission counselor. Social media has proven to be an effective tool for higher education and has allowed them to adapt as prospective students change how they communicate and receive information. Other small liberal arts institutions should look at how Ohio Wesleyan manages their social media presence.