mkhmarketing / Flickr / CC B 2.0

 

Social media has become one of the primary modes of communication for people who want to stay in contact with friends, family, and work. But social media is also great for keeping up with the larger world around you -- it allows you to follow your favorite brands, discover new services and ideas, learn about industry trends, and read up on the latest news.

One industry that hasn't been as open to adopting social media is education. If you're a healthcare school administrator, then you could be making a big mistake. Students are overwhelmingly online, and that's the best place to connect with them. Here at AIMS Education we've seen the benefits of using social media to reach current and potential students. Keep reading to find out how the use of social medial can benefit your school and the things you should look out for when embracing this form of communication.

#1 Recruiting, Enrollment and Admissions Information

Schools across the country are turning to social media as a way to communicate with their applicants. These days it's common for students to turn to college social media pages for information and research on the schools they are considering. So, as a healthcare school, you need to be putting your best face forward in competing for prospective students. Building an exciting online image and proving opportunities for engagement are key to attracting applicants and persuading those you've accepted to choose your institute.

Social media is also a valuable tool that can be used to provide important updates to prospective students and applicants. In addition to social media channels, you might want to embrace text message/SMS services to ensure that your information is reaching candidates quickly.

Best social media channel(s) to use: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Warning: Be careful about sending out private information.

#2 Class Guidance 

Photo credit: Jisc / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Schools can enhance their students' lessons and study habits by turning to social media. By creating private groups, professors are able to communicate more widely and increase collaboration in their classes. This also helps students communicate about problems they are having with different aspects of a class, organize study groups, or even organize their own private group for getting class-work completed.

Best social media channel(s) to use: Facebook and LinkedIn private groups and pages.

#3 Course Assignments

In addition to being a great tool for collaboration and guidance within classes, social media can be used to focus on course curriculum and assignments. Information about class progress, upcoming deadlines, and other pertinent information can be shared quickly and directly with all students. This serves a huge benefit for students who have missed class for an emergency or some other reason.

Best social media channel(s) to use: Twitter with the use of a class specific hashtag or a professor’s private Facebook group.

#4 Networking

Dean Meyers / Flickr / CC BY 2.0

Social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn Higher Education provide crucial networking opportunities for students. Including former students on the school’s social media pages gives current students information on job prospects, openings, salaries, and easy connections to alumni already working in the field.

Best social media channel(s) to use: LinkedIn – this is exactly what LinkedIn was designed for. Schools can create pages and invite industry professionals and alums to join and post employment opportunities and/or professional advice.

#5 Current Events and Updates

Blasting out a twitter message or posting a page update is one of the quickest ways to disseminate information today. With new medical research and health-related news reports coming out everyday, social media is a great way to keep students and staff on top of highly relevant news and reports.  

The updates, though, don't have to be limited to industry-wide topics. Events on campus, weather alerts, and even job openings or internships can easily be communicated to students through a school’s various social media channels.

**Best social media channel(s) to use: **These kinds of updates work best when used across all of the popular social media sites. If you're working with social media channels for just one school or a relatively small university, you can probably collaborate within your office to manage your accounts, or even use students and interns to assist with social media management. For bigger universities with many subdivisions or partners, there are many online tools, which can help keep everything on track.

#6 Feedback and Communication

Photo credit: tiff_ku1 / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

For schools, social media can be a great tool for engaging with staff and students and getting constructive feedback. Of course, there are always going to be complaints and people who just like to be negative. But that doesn’t mean schools shouldn't take advantage of this valuable feedback.

As all social media-savvy schools know, it's great to use these reviews and feedback to enhance your reputation and open up lines of communication. Ultimately, social media is a communication tool and the opportunity to increase two-way communication is a huge benefit to you and your students.

Best social media channel(s) to use: Google+ pages is a great place to drive reviews and interactions with the public.

Best Practices for Educational Social Media

There are numerous benefits and advantages to using social media, but as with anything else there are possible pitfalls you should take care to avoid. Healthcare schools must always keep the following two things in mind when engaging with students through social media:

#1 Professionalism

It’s often too easy to have social media accounts open to the public, especially personal accounts. Make sure your healthcare students and staffers know that posting public information that paints you in a bad light can affect their enrollment and employment.  

Students need to be aware that things they post on Facebook and Twitter can easily be found by simple searches, and this could seriously affect their job prospects in the future.

#2 Privacy

In the era of social media, privacy is often taken for granted. This is a very important topic for healthcare students and professionals. Cases of students posting status updates with seemingly harmless information about a patient they worked with have resulted in expulsion and patient confidentiality violations.

With social media you need to think twice before posting things that could be taken the wrong way or seen as giving out too much information about yourself or others.

The Magic Formula for Social Media Engagement 

With social networking becoming ubiquitous, healthcare schools need to be part of this trend. There are so many upsides and benefits to implementing social media networking into a school. All educational institutions, especially healthcare schools, need to embrace this technology but they need to create a set of guidelines to ensure the safety, professionalism, and privacy of their students and staff.

What’s your take? How should healthcare schools be using social media? Leave a comment.