@SyracuseU’s daily flood of followers and constant re-tweets allow Syracuse University to be among the top educational institutions in social media practice. But the strategies the university’s Twitter account uses to achieve such results remain in question.

SU’s account currently serves as a showcase and presentation of the accomplishments of faculty, alumni, community and students. When the university first created a social media team made of students to take over the Twitter account in August, they began to use @SyracuseU as a public relations outlet as well, said Kate Brodock, executive director of digital and social media.

‘It’s sort of like a big SU pep rally. Our broad focus is trying to have content that can reach everybody,’ she said. ‘The main juice comes from a huge event we have, and we want everyone to know what happened in case they missed it.’

But social media professor Anthony Rotolo said he disagrees with this philosophy.

There are at least two main schools of thought on the operation of social media. One, Rotolo said, is marketing and promoting a school like a brand, while the other method is to let marketing ‘take a back seat’ and have customers help generate content themselves. Rotolo, who teaches at the School of Information Studies, said he believes in the latter.

‘Twitter should be used more as a meaningful way into campus life and campus experience — a tool Syracuse University can use to be a greater part of students’ daily lives and experiences,’ he said. ‘It’s all about interactivity.’

And so the question arises: What’s the best strategy for SU’s Twitter?

William Ward, professor of practice in social media at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said it all depends on the content the Twitter account posts.

‘It’s really more of a quality versus quantity issue. A lot of conversation could be generated on subject matter, on something as simple as the weather. And that might be organic conversation, but it’s really just noise,’ he said.

As of press time, @SyracuseU had 13,585 followers and had tweeted 13,685 times since it was first created. The number of tweets the account posted is steadily increasing; In November, they tweeted about 15 times a day. Tweets rose to 23 times a day in February, according to Twitter Counter.

In the past 90 days, the university received about 9,800 mentions and 15,000 re-tweets from other Twitter users, according to Klout, a San Francisco-based company that provides social media analytics.

Though the numbers are high compared to other universities, they reflect little about the actual influence of SU’s social media use. Ward said the Klout ranking is only a glimpse into real success, as it is mostly based on the level of replies that an account is receiving, not the context and quality of the replies.

‘The mistake is getting high numbers without regard to quality,’ he said. ‘If there’s no quality it might just seem fake or phony.’

Brodock, executive director of digital and social media, said her approach to social media is one of engagement, bilateral relationships and building trust for an organization. She said she tries to use Twitter to align these attributes to a communications and marketing strategy.

She said she also uses @SyracuseU as a vehicle to promote SU to alumni and connect them with the Syracuse community. Part of the account’s goal, she said, is to make sure alumni do not forget about SU and to keep informing students about the excellence of the institution they attend.

John Burke, senior information management and technology major, said he agreed.

‘We’re always looking for content that showcases why it’s so awesome to be a part of SU,’ he said, ‘whether that’s alumni talking about job opportunities, highlighting the achievements of a student organization or even just students being proud to be part of what we like to call the ‘Orange Nation.”

Elizabeth Liddy, dean of the iSchool, said although everyone applauds when @SyracuseU posts university achievements, she hopes to see SU become more progressive. Like Rotolo, she said she wants to see the Twitter account communicating more with students and helping them become part of a ‘campus-wide dialect.’

‘I think it’s easy to go with the crowd, to look at other universities that brand themselves similarly and say, ‘OK, we’re gonna do what they do,” she said. ‘But I want to see SU be an example for what is possible, not a mirror for what has been done.’

Liddy said there are different formats for showcasing information, such as magazines and newsletters, and that @SyracuseU should not be an ‘official mouthpiece’ for SU. She said that as a dean, she would like to display iSchool accomplishments as the university displays theirs, but that 140 characters on Twitter should not be the place for it.

The alternative approach, she said, would have far greater potential.

‘What would you rather hear: constant reaffirmations of what Syracuse is when every other school also thinks they’re great?’ she said. ‘Or would you like to see an engaged and active student body having a conversation with their university that makes you think, ‘This is an environment I’d like to be a part of’?’

Rotolo compared SU’s current social media strategy with that of the corporate world, in that businesses sometimes use their social media staff as part of their public relations and marketing team. But, he said, he believes social media really belongs in a department geared more toward customer satisfaction by acquiring information from users. And though it should not be used to overtly ask questions and ask for suggestions, it should be part of a conversation, he said.

‘One of the things that bothers me sometimes from a school or company is when they ask a question in a tweet that produces a sort of fake feeling, sort of like, ‘Syracuse is playing whoever this weekend, how are you showing your Orange spirit?” Rotolo said.

Though some people are eager to answer those questions, Rotolo said he believes it would be more effective for Twitter to create an environment where people are sharing their own thoughts on Orange spirit and for SU’s Twitter to serve as a conduit for amplifying those thoughts.

‘We need to get students to understand how great a certain student’s work or creativity is without being so overt,’ he said. ‘It needs to feel organic.’

But the two altering strategies do share a common ground: conversation. Student discussion, to any extent, is encouraged by both philosophies and is something @SyracuseU is beginning to move toward.

To engage students in conversation regarding campus life, the social media team partnered with the Division of Student Affairs and began using the @SUcampus Twitter handle last fall. The account allows them to focus certain information just toward students rather than @SyracuseU’s broader pool of alumni and faculty. It also provides students with resources to get their information out, Brodock said.

Although an alternative Twitter account creates a parallel between the two different philosophies, it still does not provide a clear answer. Ward said, as in the case of much of social media, the most effective strategy really just comes down to trial and error.

‘There’s so much going on that it’s already hard enough to keep up with it all,’ Ward said. ‘There’s not just one right answer.’

meltagou@syr.edu

Published on February 19, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Marwa: meltagou@syr.edu | @marwaeltagouri