9 Ways to Leverage Social Media for Education

Social media platforms have evolved beyond their original intent of fostering social connections in the rapidly evolving digital era. These days, they are useful teaching aids that enable collaboration, information sharing, and meaningful discussions between educators and learners outside of the classroom. We can revolutionize the way we approach education and make it more interactive, participative, and accessible for students of all ages by fully embracing social media. This article uses AI Writer skills to improve content development and distribution while examining 9 innovative methods to use social media for education.

These tactics, which range from encouraging cooperative learning environments to establishing connections with business leaders, perfectly capture the boundless possibilities of technology in education.

Extends Learning Opportunities

Social media opens up new avenues for education. Since working remotely and taking online courses are becoming commonplace, it is essential to teach students how to work remotely to prepare them for the digital age and their future occupations. Social networking sites help teachers in several ways, from posting announcements to hosting in-person seminars.

Create Connections with Students and Alumni

Educational institutions can quickly and directly communicate with students, staff, faculty, and alumni using social media, engaging with a variety of audiences. Posts on social media have a multitude of uses, including attracting new students, educating parents, growing alumni networks, showcasing school events, and more.

Enrollment can also be increased by concentrating on community development and producing interesting content producing interesting content. As to the Higher Education Social Media Benchmarks for 2023 research, 41% of school administrators directly credit social media strategy for driving up enrollment.

Build Brand Identity

Social media enhances and supports university branding. Marketing departments at universities use social media to promote a positive brand image for their organizations. Colleges and universities can enhance alumni relations, promote events and initiatives, raise endowments, and draw in more students with the appropriate plan.

Use Live Streaming for Lectures and Discussions

Teachers can stream lectures and promote more accessible learning with Facebook Groups, Instagram Live, YouTube Live, and LinkedIn Live. Students can enroll online or take a review at a later time if they are unable to attend in person. Students who learn visually, are hard of hearing or are non-native speakers benefit from the addition of live captions. Additionally, live feeds can be recorded on websites like YouTube and Instagram, giving students study content for the weeks leading up to midterms and final exams.

Moreover, by providing lectures to academics and instructors from different universities, states, or nations, recorded live streams increase the institution’s influence and national recognition.

Use Instagram for Digital Storytelling

Encourage students to use Instagram for storytelling by setting up accounts that are exclusive to the class, from which they can share images or graphics to delete them when the term is done. This is particularly useful in classes with lots of visuals: Assign essays to photojournalism students or challenge the social media marketing class to develop a fictitious advertising campaign.

Make a Pinterest Board

Teachers may prepare and arrange worksheets, lesson plans, and other materials for their courses all in one location by using Pinterest. Additionally, they can create Pinterest boards specifically for each of their classes and preserve lesson-related pins.

Make subtopic boards for weekly units, projects, or worksheets, and create boards categorized by class or subject. Students can utilize Pinterest to compile an electronic bibliography for papers, research projects, or group assignments. When it comes time to write an essay or thesis, students can refer back to websites, books, or videos that they have pinned to a board on that particular subject.

Utilize influencers and Creators on TikTok

While many public universities have prohibited TikTok from being used on campus, certain educators and institutions use the app to engage with students and spread knowledge. Influencers who are students and teachers can offer user-generated material that fulfills the need of potential students to view real content from their peers and future instructors.

Add Social Media Links to the Webpage for your Institution

68% of high school students use social media channels to investigate colleges, according to the Higher Education Social Media Benchmarks for 2023 survey. If they’re interested, a lot of parents and potential students will visit the school’s website first. Providing additional avenues for following the institution offers a unique perspective on campus life.

Provide connections to the website’s main navigation or create a social media directory that compiles all of your school’s social media profiles in one location to make it easier for parents and students to locate them.

Create Alumni Community Groups

After graduating, many former students desire to stay connected to their university. Using LinkedIn Groups or Facebook Groups to build a committed group can boost engagement.

The University of Newcastle boasts of more than 148,000 former students. To maximize the employment opportunities that arise from being a part of their community, their team consists of current students, staff, and alumni.

Former and current students can interact and meet people who share their interests through alumni groups, departments or graduating classes, and extracurricular and organization groups. See our guide on best practices for alumni interaction for more ideas on how to maintain the school spirit.

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