Social Media Communities

The largest and most influential social media community, Facebook encompasses users from all ages and walks of life. While high school and college students are still considered the site's main users, folks age 55 and up are a surging demographic. Thus you could expect to find prospective students as well as their parents, current students and alumni, and everyone in between... sometimes all participating in the same conversation.

The official SUNY Oswego Facebook page is still our main social media outlet. With over 26,000 members, this page features photo galleries and videos, links to news stories, promotion of big events, and other items of broad interest. We encourage other members of the campus community to also post relevant and interesting non-commercial items—such as events open to everyone. A variety of voices can make a community more vibrant and viable. The page has a posting policy, which is recommended for any effort in Facebook, to let people know what represents an acceptable posting and what may be removed by administrators. Our page increasingly sees responses from alumni and parents, reflecting the rising average age of Facebook users.

Facebook pages vs. groups

A common question as people ponder what to do on Facebook is: Should I make a page or a group? This depends on a few things:

1. your audience, 
2. your intended activity and 
3. what you want out of the community you create. 

Facebook's often-changing functionality can muddy the question, but the following thoughts apply to the most recent versions.

Facebook pages represent more definitive, authoritative and official efforts. While Facebook is about conversations, think of pages as being more top-down than groups (see below), perhaps more promotional in nature. One advantage of Facebook pages is an Insights feature that gives you analytics (statistics) on your fans and interactions with your pages. Pages also allow you to post as the page itself, which has the advantage of letting multiple people post to the page on the same account... although some would argue an advantage to humans responding to questions instead of institutions (a point widely debated in social media circles).

Facebook groups work better for more democratic or collective entities, such as student organizations and peer networks. Groups may have administrators, but generally reflect a community where all members have virtually equal say. An advantage Facebook recently added to groups is that when someone posts on a group, its members all receive notifications. Thus any member can receive notifications when anyone else in the group engages in any activity, which can keep that community more lively. With Facebook's upgraded groups, potential members have to ask administrators if they can join. We have not found this a barrier to those genuinely interested in participating, while it does tend to dissuade spammers.

Facebook individual accounts, according to Facebook's terms of service, should belong to actual and authentic human beings. You may find many non-individuals—such as organizations, businesses, etc.—using individual accounts. Facebook frowns upon this and has been known to eliminate these accounts, even when they have thousands of friends. Therefore, we strongly recommend against using an individual account for anything else. Check out this blog from InsideTimsHead for more information.

With its ability to quickly deliver timely information, Twitter is both one of the most powerful and most misunderstood social media options. Its functionality is very basic: Users have 140 characters or less to create messages—or tell stories—which can also include links to websites, forms, video or other options. Twitter is a robust community that binds people of similar interests, a source many trust for the latest news and as an ongoing professional development tool.

Two important symbols to know for Twitter are the @ reply and the # hashtag. You use an @ reply to respond to or correspond with a particular account. For example, a tweet with @sunyoswego will get the attention of the official college account. A # tag is used to collect information around a topic or event. For example, those discussing Commencement activities adopted the #ozgrad hashtag, where they could see others commenting on the topic. 

Conferences often encourage a hashtag for attendees and others who are interested to search for or to set up a feed to glean tips and words of wisdom. Our @sunyoswego account focuses, in large part, on what campus community members are doing to make Oswego an exciting and enriching place.

Given the power of the video medium, YouTube continues to be a popular community as the world's second-largest search engine. Our official YouTube channel has thousands of views per month with hundreds of subscribers. We welcome submissions for our official YouTube channel if they meet basic quality and appropriate content standards. Please email [email protected] with inquiries. Videos can be easily found on YouTube and embedded into any oswego.edu web page.

TikTok is surging, especially among younger viewers but growing across demographics, allowing for video content of one minute or less. This is generally more angled toward fun content, although informative videos also can find success with the right pacing and tone. Our TikTok channel is a work in progress (but isn't everything?). While it's tempting to rush there for promotion, remember that all channels require planning, resources and commitment.

Mobile photo apps like Instagram allow users to take pictures and/or video and share via various social media outlets. The attractive visual nature of photos and easy dissemination via social media keep these options fairly popular, with Instagram one of the fastest-growing channels. 

A fun feature we include on our SUNY Oswego Instagram is Laker Takeovers. For one week, a student will take over the channel to show followers content that conveys the lives and opportunities of our students. This might include behind-the-scenes pictures from an upcoming theater production, traveling to an alternative spring break or overseas, preparation for a big game, and more. 

Snapchat is one of the most-used apps among college-aged students, but you would want a sound content strategy before taking a foray into it. Since it exists only within the app (i.e. has no public face like Facebook), you have to provide value and not become intrusive. We currently utilize it by posting Snapchat stories related to what is happening on campus to followers.

Pinterest continues seeing strong use, with SUNY Oswego boards such as what to bring to campus remaining evergreen in terms of user interest.