Social media has become an indispensable part of our life today. Not only as a source of entertainment but also as an important mode of learning.
Social media plays a huge role in teen culture today. 90% of teens aged 13 to 17 have used social media. 75% report having at least one active social account, and 51% visit a social media site at least daily.
It is greatly believed that social media is a waste of time, especially for students, as it tends to distract them. But this is not always the case. If we take a close look, social media seems to have positively influenced the way students are taught and learn.
Social media has traditionally been neglected by educational institutions, with many schools and universities failing to recognize its potential as a communication and engagement tool. However, in recent years, more and more schools and universities have begun to see the value of using social media to connect with their stakeholders, provide updates and information, facilitate knowledge transfer, and engage with their communities.
This article details how educational institutions can use social media to bring everyone together and change the perception of using social media for education, along with the best social media marketing tool for schools and universities.
Table Of Contents:
- Benefits Of Using Social Media For Education
- How To Use Social Media For Higher Education (Schools, Universities, Academies, & Institutes)?
- Examples Of Successful Social Media Use In Education
- Best Social Media Marketing Tool For Education
- Get Ready To Unleash The Potential Of Social Media For Education!
- FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
You can directly jump to a section of your choice or keep scrolling.
Benefits Of Using Social Media For Education
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Connectivity: Students can use social media to connect among themselves. Education institutes can constantly communicate with their students by remaining active on social media and sharing relevant information. An education institute having a social presence helps strengthen connectivity without any limitations on proximity.
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Community building: Social media can provide better industry exposure to teaching professionals as it gives them a chance to network with many different industry experts and faculty of different institutions. Even students can build their own community for many different purposes, such as group discussions, projects, assignments, sports events and examinations.
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Stimulate knowledge and discussion: Social media opens doors for the constant sharing of information, knowledge, views, and opinions. It makes giving and receiving information rapidly among students and professors. Social media provides a platform to assess, analyze, retain and share information over a wider net.
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Parental involvement: Social media networks prove to be a valuable tool for education institutes to engage parents of students and encourage their involvement. An active social media presence keeps parents in the loop and gives them visibility into the latest happenings at the institute.
How To Use Social Media For Higher Education (Schools, Universities, Academies, & Institutes)?
- Stream Live Lectures And Host Discussions
- Build A Strong Community
- Access To Wide Educational Resources
- Encourages Collaboration And Communication
- Facilitates Professional Development For Teachers
- Enhances Student Engagement And Motivation
- Improve Education Recruitment
- Communicating Effectively During A Crisis
- Promote Education Events
Stream Live Lectures And Host Discussions
Professors can stream live lectures on social networks like Facebook and YouTube. They can also create class groups, post discussion questions, assign homework, and make class announcements on Facebook or WhatsApp groups.
Classroom groups can help in better student engagement. It can also serve as a reminder for submissions of projects, assignments, and homework.
Teachers should ensure professional conduct in classroom groups on social media. Parents can also be added to groups or live streams to maintain transparency while using social media.
Read more: The Ultimate Guide To Facebook Groups
Build A Strong Community
Communities play a significant role in education by providing a space for people to come together, share knowledge, resources, and support, and offer professional development. Social media can be used in a number of ways to build communities, such as:
- To connect with stakeholders, including teachers, students, and parents.
- To share resources, information, and updates within communities to keep them informed and engaged.
- To facilitate communication and collaboration among community members, allowing them to share ideas and work together.
- To promote events and programs, encouraging community members to get involved and participate.
- To encourage participation and feedback from their communities, allowing them to gather input and ideas from various stakeholders.
Access To Wide Educational Resources
Schools, universities, and academies can use social media communities build on Facebook or WhatsApp groups to give students and parents access to a wide range of educational resources to help them learn. This can include videos, articles, and other materials that supplement traditional classroom instruction.
For instance, a teacher can explain a complex topic by live streaming it on Facebook or YouTube and provide links to articles that provide additional information on the topic for students who want to understand more about the topic.
Encourages Collaboration And Communication
Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp is a great medium to encourage collaboration and communication among students, teachers, and parents. Teachers can create a group or forum on social media where students can ask questions, discuss assignments, and share their work with each other.
This can foster a sense of community and collaboration among students and can provide a space for students to share their ideas and work with each other.
Facilitates Professional Development For Teachers
Social media groups on Facebook can be used to facilitate professional development for teachers. Schools can use social media to share resources and information with teachers and can also create groups or forums where teachers can discuss best practices about a subject or how to teach students and share ideas with each other.
The administration can even pass on the must-follow best practices of the institution to teachers in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and WhatsApp groups. Teachers can create groups on the same social platforms to share and stay up-to-date with the latest trends and developments in the education sector and can also provide valuable support and resources for their professional growth.
Enhances Student Engagement And Motivation
Professors and teachers can use tools like Quizlet to create interactive quizzes, games, and other exciting activities that can help students learn and stay engaged.
They can transform learning into a fun and effective way to support student learning and motivation. Such quizzes can test the student's knowledge as they compete against each other.
Professors and teachers can use social media groups on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter to share interesting and relevant content with students to help them learn and stay engaged.
Professors and teachers can use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter to reward and recognize student achievement, which can further motivate students to learn and succeed. They can share student achievements on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts of the university, college, or school by sharing posts that highlight students who have excelled in a project and can include details about what made their work stand out.
This will make students feel valued and recognized for their efforts, motivating them and other students to continue learning and striving for success.
By actively monitoring and responding to online reviews on Google My Business page, institutes can improve their online reputation and build trust with potential students and their parents.
Positive reviews provide social proof of the quality of the university's programs and services, which can convince potential students to enroll. Thus, managing reviews can be an effective way for education institutes to attract more student admissions.
Read more: How To Manage Google Reviews For Multiple Locations
Improve Education Recruitment
Several schools and universities use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter to promote job openings and attract potential teachers and professors from across the globe. Social media can showcase the institution's culture and values to students who want to get admission to the college or university with other useful information about the institution. This can help to attract high-quality candidates and improve the overall recruitment process.
Communicating Effectively During A Crisis
Platforms such as Facebook, Instagra, Twitter, LinkedIn & WhatsApp can be a valuable tool for communication during a crisis in any industry. Schools and universities can quickly and effectively disseminate information to students, parents, staff, and other stakeholders through social media.
They can communicate updates on campus closures, schedule changes, and other important information related to the crisis. These social platforms can also be used to facilitate communication and collaboration among parents and the institution during emergency alerts, such as school holidays during rains and natural calamities (floods), fires, etc.
Read more: How To Communicate During A Crisis Using Social Media
Promote Education Events
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can be used to promote events held in schools and universities to reach a large and diverse audience. By sharing event updates on social media, institutions can generate interest and excitement for upcoming events such as guest lectures, workshops, conferences, webinars, study tours and other educational or community-building activities.
? There's more to social media for higher education. Check out our detailed guide on social media marketing tips for high education.
Examples Of Successful Social Media Use In Education
Imperial College London
Imperial College London is one of the world's most renowned universities. Its mission is to reform society through research and excellence in engineering, medicine, science, and business.
Understanding the benefits of video, Imperial College London uses its YouTube channel to create engaging videos and target potential students to encourage them to enroll. Imperial College London knows its target audience well: people who want to change the world.
Their videos are inspiring, slick, and visually breathtaking, and it's all condensed into a few minutes of content. The video not only excites and intrigues those it's targeting, but the innovative use of imagery shows potential students that if they enroll themselves in the institution, they can bring a change in the world.
They even showcase the internal campus in action through videos. The panning aerial shots create an air of excitement about student life on campus.
Read more: How To Create Engaging Social Media Videos
Teachers Pay Teachers
As a niche marketplace, Teachers Pay Teachers provides education-related materials to teachers across the globe. It was founded for teachers to exchange and share information and is one of the popular destinations for teaching materials. TpT also has an active social media presence on Facebook, where they regularly post about new teaching materials and engage with the community.
Khan Academy
Another example is the use of social media by the Khan Academy, a nonprofit educational organization that provides free online lessons and resources. Khan Academy uses social media to share videos, articles, and other content with students and teachers around the world. This has helped the organization reach a wider audience and make a positive impact on education.
Brighterly
Brighterly is a very effective and high-quality online platform for learning math. It also follows the student's pace and has different teaching techniques or approaches depending on the student. It helps the students to learn how to solve on their own and to enhance their analytical thinking. Best part is, they develop the math tutoring program in a fun and challenging way.
Twitter Math Camps
One example of successful social media use in education is the "Twitter Math Camp" organized by math teacher Dan Meyer. Meyer used Twitter to connect with other math teachers and share teaching resources, lesson plans, and ideas. This helped him improve his own teaching and inspire his students.
It also sparked a larger conversation about the role of social media in education. Twitter Math Camps have not been organized since 2019 but this initiative gave a good start for math professionals to communicate among themselves through social media.
The #TMC18 Archive is live! @dylanpkane is the most recent addition, and @misscalcul8 is the most prolific. Read all the submissions so far at: https://t.co/Km0WUovZ31. Videos of Keynotes as well. Add your submission at https://t.co/A7rsM5mVuE.
— TMathC (@TmathC) July 28, 2018
Best Social Media Marketing Tool For Education
Statusbrew is a popular social media marketing tool that schools worldwide already use to manage their socials. Statusbrew can be a helpful tool for education as it offers a wide array of features that can help schools, universities, and academies effectively manage their social media presence and promote their organization.
It provides a wide range of features that can help you manage and optimize all your social networks at one place, including the ability to schedule and publish posts, track the performance of your posts, and engage with your followers. Additionally, Statusbrew allows collaboration with team members and customizes reports for different stakeholders.
With its advanced approval workflows, institutions can ensure complete monitoring within the admin team.
It is common for education institutes to experience problems with spam, trolls, and negative comments in their comments sections on social media platforms. Such comments can be harmful to an institution's reputation.
To combat this problem, institutes can use Statusbrew to hide or delete spam and troll comments and monitor and moderate their comments sections.
While it might be difficult for you to run your institute while maintaining an active social presence, Statusbrew makes managing social apt and less time-consuming by integrating several social platforms in one dashboard with minimal human intervention.
Book a free demo to understand how we can help!
Get Ready To Unleash The Potential Of Social Media For Education!
Social media can be a powerful asset for education as it allows institutions to connect with their students, share helpful information and resources, and engage with the larger education community.
Consider implementing a comprehensive social media marketing plan that can help you to effectively promote your educational goals and engage with your audience in a meaningful way. By following the tips given in this article, you can use social media in the best way to support your education efforts and make a lasting impact.
Are you ready to start using social media for education? Try out Statusbrew, the best social media marketing tool for education. You can book a free demo to see how it can help you connect with your students and drive success in your educational endeavors.
Statusbrew is an all-in-one social media management tool that supports Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and even Google My Business.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Here are some commonly asked questions about social media for education:
How is social media good for education?
Social media helps teachers, students, and parents to get more helpful information and connect with learning groups. Social media even promotes self-directed learning in students, which prepares them to search for answers independently.
How many students use social media for education?
Almost 59% of schools claim that their students use social media for educational purposes.
Which social media is most used by students?
YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook are the most used social platforms by students for learning, especially in the form of video format. Facebook and Instagram even help students share and exchange knowledge through live sessions, messages, and interactive communities.
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