Top Social Media-Savvy Universities

Check out this study produced by Sociagility and covered by Mashable on social media-savvy universities in the US and UK. Seems only right that Harvard, the university that was home to the most powerful social network in the world, should be at the top of the list. After that, of course, one would need to understand better the nuances of Sociagility's ranking methodology to gauge the credibility of this particular list. From our perspective, this particular study, which wrongheadedly pits UK universities against US universities (UK schools aren't losing the recruitment battles to US schools so much as to one another), is more illuminating for the basic attributes it identifies - cutely encapsulated in the acronym PRINT: Popularity; Receptiveness; Interaction; Network Reach; and, Trust - than for the listings themselves. Also, it may be helpful for schools looking to build their social media strategy to look at the particular social strategies in different social media that each school employs.  

As mentioned above, the listings themselves, such as Sociagility's and Avenue 100s, are primarily linkbait and less important  than some of the strategies identified. Nonetheless, the point to take from these articles and lists is that social media is at least as important a marketing and communication tool for universities as any traditional medium used heretofore.