Multiple Social Media Tools: Overwhelming but Okay. Actually, a Must.

Michael Staton

We hear folks get frustrated with feeling the need to be across so many social media tools.  Many administrators look at our Lifecycle Engagement Platform as a way to start to aggregate, centralize, and create a directory of so many presences on Facebook.  And it is, sort of.

But when people ask us: “Does this mean we have to give up our effort on (pick a web tool)?”, our message is always the same:  Social Media is, by it’s nature, all over the place!  And that’s okay!  No, it’s better than okay!  It’s good!  There is no such thing as “duplicating your effort,” there’s only “multiplying your presence.”

Your audiences are trying to connect with you.  Yes, they’re all on Facebook.  But they also crawl around all over the internet.  They use search and click links about so many topics you can’t even predict.  They hear of your institution through peers and on random internet odysseys.  You want them to stumble upon a professor’s slideshare or scribd account.  You want them to see their intended major on academia.edu and Twitter, run into their extra-curricular activities on groupspaces or meetup.

We know that if you’re a marketing or admissions executive, you might feel a little uncomfortable with everyone all over the internet creating content in an uncoordinated, possibly “off-message” kind of way.  But, “increasing your digital footprint” is more important that controlling your digital footprint – that’s a fact.  The internet is a forgiving place (that remembers everything) and for every piece of content that seems negative or disastrous that you can’t delete, your approach should be to outweigh that with even more content that is positive.

That all being said, you can surely “target” your efforts so that all your energy spent multiplying your presence is prioritized.

But, the internet has become a crazy place, and that’s the new reality you need to deal with.  Deal with it in a productive way: embrace it.  Get all over the internet yourself.