Social media is the go to medium for people to interact. Current staff and students, prospective staff and students, alumni, stakeholders and the wider community can all communicate with like-minded individuals and have their questions answered, make friends and network.

2- Relationships

The University, and its staff, can use social media to connect to students, prospective students, researchers and other organisations, but at its heart, social media is about creating relationships with people like you.

Students can connect to:

3- Knowledge Sharing

Social media provides a platform where you can share your knowledge and gain credibility in your chosen field(s) or specialism(s). Within an online community, you can also acquire information and insights from others who have already been where you are now or have completed similar research.

4- Low cost

It can be very cost effective communication medium and is usually free for the end-user. Not only can you use it to communicate, but it is also an excellent promotional tool for things like events, new courses and research advances. 

5 - Connect at any time

Social networking never sleeps. You might not get an instant reply from someone local at 3am GMT, but most social networking sites are not restricted by geography and there is often someone to chat to from the international community. Or you can post a question and wait until daylight.

6- Branding

Many people are increasingly spending a great deal of time on social networking sites. Social media should be seen as a wide-reaching tool to reach a huge audience and so getting your name, the university’s name out there on the web, in the way we choose, is incredibly important.

It can also be used as a tool to see what people are saying about us! See Protect Yourself Online

7- Social media content is now integrated with search results

Search engines like Google and Bing are increasingly indexing and ranking information from social networks. The more presence we have on social media sites, the higher our ratings become in online search results. This makes it increasingly important that we present ourselves in a positive light.

“A couple weeks ago, one of my friends and I got into a fight and she told me all of her feelings as to why she ignored me for two weeks. Assuming it would have been really hard to say it to my face, she sent me a text message. The negative side was I didn’t know if she truly felt sorry because I didn’t hear it from her. The quality of a conversation using social media is awful because you cannot sense the emotion or enthusiasm from the other person. It makes you wonder if they actually mean what they say.”

“I do think it has gotten to an extreme point where you can say things you can’t say or get away with in person.”

“I’m disappointed whenever I hear about social media being used as a way to hurt people. I wonder if this happens when the writers forget that there are real people behind the screen.”

“Computer reliance could hurt a person’s ability to have a face to face conversation by making it awkward and unusual to hear something and respond with a thoughtful message through the spoken word because of one’s dependence on a keyboard to convey a message.”

“Social media conversations today are filled with “haha”, “LOL”, and other exclamations that are meant to represent laughter. This shorthand has become second nature and is often used when the sender is not even smiling, much less laughing, in real life. On the occasion that our “roflcopter” is actually put to use at a funny moment, we are replacing actual laughter with, in this case, a simple ten-letter acronym. According to Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford, the actual physical act of laughter, and not the abstract idea of something being funny, is what makes laughing feel so good. If we are so willing to replace the act that, honestly, we all love, with an artificial, typed representation that doesn’t even bring the same joy, what else would we be, potentially subconsciously, willing to exchange?”

“Since the inception of social networking, the quality of conversations has dropped. I believe that people are spending so much time online that they don’t always understand the feeling, emotion and/or character of the person they are talking to. When you talk to someone through a message or even a voice, you can’t always fully understand them.”

“Social networking has ruined the thoughtfulness in basically saying hello in person. For instance, you could say hello to your friend in Germany with Facebook, chat in seconds; but what if there was no way to communicate via social networking? Well you would have to write them a letter and that is something very thoughtful.”

“When I see my friends on their phones and I am around them, I feel disconnected even though we are only two feet apart….. Unfortunately, sometimes friends use their phones so much that it is difficult to have an actual conversation with them. Sometimes friends can get so socially attached to something such as a blog or gaming console that they lose touch with friends, creating small gaps and holes in close friendships/relationships.”

“The new socially active era causes laziness because instead of running to your friends you can message them. Or instead of walking upstairs to notify the family of dinner, I can blog it. Social networking makes life so convenient that it creates laziness. In my opinion staying fit is important, but it is difficult to go beyond the newly developed status quo.”

“It’s really easy to spend hours doing nothing….It’s a fantastic way to waste time.”

“We tell ourselves lies about ourselves and develop something we are not. We post pictures of us looking perfect and share the good news. We never post pictures of ourselves when our dog dies, when someone we love leaves, and when we lose a job. We never share the bad news that always clouds our lives. We all develop this perfect image of ourselves and some of us actually try to rely on this imaginative thought we have of ourselves instead of staying true to who we are.”

“Texting, Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail alienate us from our families more than we actually think it does…. When my family is spending family time together and watching a movie, in reality my brother and I are on our phones rather than actually watching the movie with our parents.”

“When I have my phone out, it makes me feel like nothing else is going on around me. I use social media as a way to feel popular, important, and also just to fit in. My friends and I always compare ourselves to each other, wondering who has more Facebook friends or Twitter followers. But what really ends up happening is I begin to talk less and end up relying on text for a conversation. Ever since I got a smartphone I have been distracted from everything. I watch television less, do homework less, and even spend less time with my friends and family.”