Photo courtesy of Jean Valley on Flickr
STUDENTS & SOCIAL MEDIA
Whittemore School Of Business & Economics
96% of college students use Facebook.
84% use YouTube.
20% read blogs.
14% use Twitter.
12% use MySpace.
10% use LinkedIn.
THOUGHT: While it is no surprise at all that college students are spending their time at Facebook and watching videos at YouTube, what will surprise a lot of people is how little they use Twitter.
The assumption often is if someone is young, then they’re naturally going to be all over social media, whatever the platform. The thing with Twitter is it is not obvious until you use it and even then it takes some conceptual effort to understand its utility and usefulness.
You might consider the 12% that use MySpace dead-enders but the site is still a good source for finding music.
And college students aren’t bothering with LinkedIn until they hit the job market.
The two biggest reasons college students use social networks are for virtual socializing and for entertainment, naturally.
So if you’re trying to reach college students, keep those last two points in mind.
Educational institutions looking for new students might want to find a way to connect current students to prospective students through Facebook or highlight entertaining video that was shot on campus on YouTube, be it goofy student pranks or concert footage shot on the quad or highlights from the football team’s last game.
Reaching college students, or any audience for that matter, is as much about cultural factors and expectations as it is about where people hang out.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
SUPER COOL TOOL TUESDAY: Topo.ly lets you easily build maps from an Excel spreadsheet.
Thank you for Tunheim kickball.
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