Relevance of Social Media in Education Sector & Business

 

Relevance of Social Media in Education Sector & Business

Bon Ami Laishram

 

Social media is the platform where users can interact with one another by connecting to a number of web based applications. Interactivity is what that differentiate social media from the traditional print and electronic media or websites. Social media applications encourage an allow the users to share their experiences, knowledge, intelligence, pictures, videos and other contents. There is connection in social media and these connections bring loyalty among the social media users. Traditional media approaches are centralized and focus on delivering on or more information to the customers whereas social media approaches are collaborative and rely on sharing information and gathering feedback for better improvement if the matter is about providing products and services. Using traditional media- distributing press releases, granting interviews etc. the organization try to control the message. Using social media such  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube organizations can post information that individuals can share, comments on and sometimes modify.

Branding and marketing have been considered as the important factors that indicate the success of educational institutions ranging from senior secondary to university level. As there is increase in the number of students or aspirants, more and more private universities are coming up with the world class teaching methods and infrastructures aiming to provide world class education to the students. Hence, there is competition among the universities too. These universities are pooling their efforts to present a clear image offering a brand. Likewise, students must be convinces that what they see is what they get. Thus, many universities and Higher education institutes are interested in attracting more and more students and excellent applicants for hiring.

Promotion plays a vital role in investment project. Promotion is one of the marketing mix and includes all of the available tools to the marketer for marketing communication. Promotion can be on the social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram. The particular institute can create their own official page or channel on each social media sites and post their day to day happenings or updates. This will aware the world about the existence of the particular institution. In the present era, things get disappear when they are not on social media.

Almost all the educational institutions consider social media as the better means of promoting so as o get more students enrolled because the scenario has changed completely. A research by Forrester Research has indicated that the audiences have shifted their attentions to online channels as 52% of European are always online at home, 36% of European internet users watch less TV and 28% have reduced their newspaper and magazine reading by 17%. Social media has become an effective tool to directly connect with the audience. The students don’t have to rely entirely on mass media. The perspectives of perceiving the advertisement through social media has completely changed.

The educational institutions have started using social media as a tool to attract maximum eligible students without incurring higher cost of advertisement. They get broader exposure on the social media platform. Students are using social media to gather information about the institution before coming to the campus. Many universities have taken advantage of social media as s promotional tool. One of the relevant examples is Harvard University, the place where Facebook originated and the oldest education institute in the United States. They are using social media sites as a part of social media strategy to increase interaction with the target audiences.

Despite, social media marketing is a well-researched topic, experimental and theoretical researches are the only means of studying the social media. Studies never precisely describe the benefits that the colleges and universities gain from this social media marketing tactic.  Despite the progress made by researchers, development in this area of study has been limited. Research needs to expand by providing a deeper understanding of the long term promotional gains retailers obtain from social media marketing as compared to traditional advertisement. More formal studies are also needed to progress beyond theorized or predicted outcomes in order to gain knowledge of real life applications. The gaps that currently exist within social media marketing research and points out the need for future studies to explore the benefits gained by marketing on social networking sites, especially for small retailers.

Social media have permeated all generations of Internet users, becoming a prominent Communications tool and found to be facilitating teaching and learning, particularly in the student community. Thus, academic institutions and faculty are increasingly using social networking sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, to connect with students and to deliver instructional content. This has led to a rise in questions about the impact of social media for collaborative learning and the possibility of using it as an effective teaching tool.

 

Institutions of all types and models - private and public, for-profit and not-for profit, online and campus-based - are exploring a wide range of higher education options. These include the blended delivery of coursework and/or support services, regional learning centres, open education materials and courses, partnerships with education and technology providers and completely online curricula. The future of online education is promising with predictions and projections towards technological trends, which include evolving learning environments, personalized learning strategies, the use of wearable technology and continued growth of collaboration between universities.

Our Online student enrolment system enables students to enroll into their subjects prior to the commencement of their semesters. This enrolment system not only allows international students to enroll through internet without traveling to the campus but also incorporates the business rules. These business rules cover a wide range of regulations and policy such as subject pre-requisite, student's payment status, course coordinator's decision and the correspondence of students' seniority to the intended enrolling subjects. Besides business rules, the system also incorporates various notification mechanisms like Short Messaging Service (SMS) and Email. XML is used to store the business rules and thus allow the portability of the system interface to wider range of devices such as Personal Device Assistant (PDA). The interface auto-detects the user's device either PC/laptop or much smaller screen device such as PDA. In short, the enrolment system backend engine runs based on the business rules and front-end engine runs to provide high satisfaction user experience. With the business and user interface, the system is able to run the workflow of student enrolment from the online enrolment form to approval workflow cycle running parallel with the notification capability.

Millions of contemporary young adults use social networking sites. However, little is known about how much, why, and how they use these sites. In this study, 92 undergraduates completed a diary-like measure each day for a week, reporting daily time use and responding to an activities checklist to assess their use of the popular social networking site, Facebook. At the end of the week, they also completed a follow-up survey. Results indicated that students use Facebook approximately 30 min throughout the day as part of their daily routine. Students communicated on Facebook using a one-to-many style, in which they were the creators disseminating content to their friends. Even so, they spent more time observing content on Facebook than actually posting content. Facebook was used most often for social interaction, primarily with friends with whom the students had a pre-established relationship offline. In addition to classic identity markers of emerging adulthood, such as religion, political ideology, and work, young adults also used media preferences to express their identity. Implications of social networking site use for the development of identity and peer relationships are discussed.

Social media has evolved into the most effective means of interacting with the masses by sitting in a small office room or cubicle. The application of social media should be utilized in such a manner that it is effective for the organization. The social media is used by almost all the students between elementary sections to post graduate level. They are very active on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Instagram is very popular among the youths. And the business organizations are targeting them on these social media platforms by showing the contents of their choices and the users also retain on the pages looking up for more updates about the particular brands and the organizations urge the users to stay on their pages longer by providing the contents of their choices. The colleges and universities are very active on different social media sites and with timely updates they are capturing the eye of the young students. Its very important for them to stay active on social media because social media is the biggest platform of advertisement.

With over 70% of internet users active on social media worldwide who spend atleast an hour or two a day average on social media platforms, social media has become an effective interface for the people to communicate, interact and trust. Majority of that 70% happen to be mobile users and this is the strong indication that the number would increase further in the future.

Social  media is the new dimension of reality that has become a part and parcel of the business world as well. Over 90% of marketers reported they have social media for effective marketing campaign and majority of them successfully gain new customers through social media.

Businesses have benefited using social media as their marketing tool. That’s the reason why the social media marketing is no longer considered to be in probation. It’s full time now.