Student Affairs Social Media Examples

Student Affairs practitioners are always asking me to showcase student affairs units that are using social media. They want to see those who are "doing it best." During a webinar that I recently facilitated on strategic student affairs communications, this question came up during the Q/A portion and was referenced by a few folks in their evaluations. Since there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of useful examples readily available on the series of tubes known as the Internet, I have decided to share a few sites and to share how I go about finding examples of student affairs social media use.

Here's my primary technique for finding great examples of social media use by student affairs functional areas: Every time I look at a .edu site, I peruse the student affairs web sections to see if there are any social media callouts. Sometimes there are, sometimes there aren't any. I then click through to their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and/or YouTube channel pages. Trust me when I say this, there are a lot of great examples of interaction, community building, customer service, promotions, and engagement. There are also a lot of sites that should probably just be deleted since they resemble a dilapidated ghost town. Seriously. If you build up your social media presence and abandon it, why leave it up?

Another easy way to find student affairs departments that are using social media is to do a custom search on Google on the .edu domain. Here are 3 simple searches that can lead you to a wide array of social media + student affairs sites:

• Google: Student Affairs on Facebook
• Google: Student Affairs on Twitter
• Google: Student Affairs on YouTube

Sometimes I get the impression from fellow practitioners that those of us in the consulting "world" are somehow "holding back the good stuff." The truth of the matter is that we share the "good stuff" on a daily basis. There really isn't a shortage of amazing and/or awesome examples of social media in student affairs.

Here are 3 great social media + student affairs resources/examples:

• Butler University Student Affairs: This page is fantastic!
• Boston University Dean of Students: I've written about Dean Elmore and company before and they are still doing great things!
• Florida State University Division of Students Affairs: Look at their social media listings...everyone should create a page like this!

In the interest of full disclosure, I now live in a residence hall at Boston University because my partner recently got a new job in Res Life at BU, I've known the VP of Student Affairs at Butler University for most of my professional life, and I really dig social media directory pages on student affairs websites...way to go FSU!

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