Graduate Careers AustraliaGraduate Grapevine - Number 11, Winter 2008Social Media: There are More Voyeurs than Participants!Web 2.0, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Blogs, podcasts – the so-called ‘social media revolution’ dominates the press and the internet daily. ‘Ignore it at your peril’, we are warned. What does this mean for graduate recruitment and careers guidance? Prospects (www.prospects.ac.uk ) surveyed current students and recent graduates about their online media habits in September 2006 and again in May 2007 – 3000 students and grads responded, representing 77 UK universities. The survey findings make fascinating reading.
User-generated content is still a minority sport.
But (and it’s a big but) the number of voyeurs is huge and growing and the key is that they share the content with their friends and networks. YouTube has 200 million users and Facebook has 60 million, growing at 150,000 per day. The results suggest that for the higher education sector the content generators and commenters may also be higher than average. It’s a Very Muddy Pool This particularly applies to the social networks. (People use these networks to connect to each other and to share photos, music and videos. www.facebook.com and www.myspace.com are the two most popular.) Facebook has grown extraordinarily in the past few years (over 60 per cent of the respondents to the Prospects survey said they use it) and MySpace (previously the most popular) is beginning to decline (44 per cent use it). The key message is that they want to use this medium to connect to each other. It doesn’t matter which network is the current favourite, we need to recognise that this sort of space is where students and grads congregate and spend time. Eighty-six per cent of the respondents to the survey were members of at least one of these networks and visit it four times a day. (This is up from 40 per cent on the last survey.) Facebook currently fits the higher education demographic best and this is likely to be the case for a couple of years. Over 100 UK universities already have a Facebook community and this is growing quickly. Space Invaders These media have been developed for social interactions and there is some resistance to UK recruiters and other organisations using them. About half the respondents said they didn’t mind being communicated with in this way, with certain caveats. If the information is fit for purpose, adds some value and says something real, this would be acceptable. It is about communication and conversation, not advertising. It is advisable for careers practitioners and graduate recruiters to join the communities, make yourself available there and allow the students to find you, but don’t push it. Getting it Right All of these things are relatively easy and cheap to do. The hard part is doing it well. Blogging only works if you use good writers with something to say. We all have our favourite newspaper columnists and it’s the quality of their work which makes us regular readers. The failed blog graveyard is crowded. Creating great and compelling online content takes real work and commitment. Getting the right balance between promoting your organisation and providing valuable information and content to the audience is tricky. Respect the boundaries and remember that it’s their space not yours. Promotion is the key. If you have created audio or video content, put it on YouTube, iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes ) and other podcast directories and link back to your Careers Service website. It’s simple, quick and free and a fantastic viral marketing tool. Some recruiters are already doing this successfully. Twenty per cent of survey respondents said their university was using new media to deliver the main curriculum. If students are used to having their academic content in this way, they will be receptive to getting information on further study or employment through the same media. This is the on-demand generation. They want 24/7 access. Join the dots. Make it part of your communications strategy. If you’re attending Careers Fairs and running events, promote them through Facebook. Make podcasts and vidcasts of them and upload them to your website and also to YouTube. This is a wonderfully rich time to investigate new channels of communication and no one is getting it absolutely right yet. It’s constantly changing with new players and tools coming online. You do need to be aware of what’s happening and there are some great things you can take from the emerging technologies and environment both in terms of efficiencies and effectiveness. But don’t lose sight of what’s important – that whatever you do needs to reflect your objectives. Do as much or as little as you have time for, but don’t ignore it, as it’s here to stay. “If the web was once an enormous library, it is now a vast conversation. Transmitting information from one person to another has never been easier. Everyone can participate. Young people now communicate more through social networking websites than through email. Instead of keeping diaries, they keep blogs; instead of photo albums, they have Flickr. While older adults go online to find information, the younger crowd go online to live. The boundaries between private and public and between offline and online are blurring, and there is a widening generation gap between adolescents growing up with social technology and adults who find it foreign and unsettling. Welcome to the MySpace generation.” (Gefter 2006) (Source: This article was written by Jayne Rowley, Graduate Prospects, UK and first appeared in Phoenix, Spring 2008 Issue No 124. The original article is extracted here with kind permission.) |
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