November 10, 2014
Monday Marketing Minute: To tweet, or not to tweet
Submitted by Jeff Morris, vice president for communications and marketing
Were William Shakespeare alive today he might be a prolific user of Twitter. Many of his most famous — and pithy — quotations fit within social media character limits.
To wit:
"To be, or not to be: that is the question." (42 characters) #hamlet
"Now is the winter of our discontent." (36 characters) #richardthethird
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."(66 characters) #asyoulikeit
The Bard relied on a much different form of communication than the majority of us do today, but the power of a succinct message continues to play a role in K-State communications.
President Kirk Schulz has been nationally recognized for his use of social media and K-State was recently ranked third in the nationwide #MyTopCollege social media contest hosted by Forbes magazine. You can find many resources about social media on our website.
Facebook is our largest social networking channel with more than 126,000 fans. The K-State Twitter account — with nearly 7,000 tweets — has more than 25,600 followers. Many of these fans are alumni, prospective students and their parents. We also are seeing tremendous growth in other platforms such as Instagram, and there will be more on these efforts in next week's marketing minute.
Weekly posts such as #TransformationTuesday give alumni a glimpse of changes on campus. These posts generate hundreds of likes and shares as well as dozens of comments from K-State alumni who are delighted to see growth on campus.
As with any new medium, the adoption of social media has not been without challenges and some controversy. However, it does provide a very valuable tool to communicate and connect with our many audiences in ways that were not possible in Shakespeare's time or our more recent past. We appreciate input and participation on our many social media platforms.