Facebook Course Search for Universities
Facebook Course Search for Universities
Way back in ‘97, ‘98 & ‘99 when I spent my college summers in beautiful Nantucket, we were amazed to see commercial vans (delivery companies, retailers, etc.) having their web site url printed on their vehicles. Back home in Ireland, sure, we were using the web in college but to think that adoption had already reached that level on the East Coast of the US was pretty mind blowing.
Businesses picked up pretty quickly on how important the web could be. In the rush to get online, for most businesses, early promise of the opportunities the web would offer failed to materialise. No need for a web history lesson but for things to really take off, we needed a few more ducks to line up than simply having a basic web site.
Fast forward to today and all we hear about is social media. And just like in the late ‘90’s, we are seeing the same clamor to embrace these new channels. But are we also seeing the potential v’s reward imbalance? I think that for the great majority of organisations the answer today is yes. I am a firm believer in the power of social media / social commerce but just like we experienced in web 1.0 it will take time before potential to be realised.
The biggest issue is not that people aren’t using these new platforms - they are and in massive numbers - but that they don’t know how to use them. Take for example, my earlier post on the Top Universities by Facebook Followers - I looked at the top 20 ranked universities (i.e. the world’s most famous universities) Facebook profiles and not a single one of them offered visitors to their profile the ability to search for a course at their university. Courses are Universities core competence. It is what they offer. Why are they not enabling visitors to their profile to search for a course?
Last year we started offering Facebook course search functionality to a number of colleges. The traction with the app so far has been amazing. It is without doubt one of the most popular products we have ever rolled out.
You can see it live on:
If you would like to get course search for your college’s Facebook fan page, just get in touch. You can have the app setup in less than 2 mins and your fans will thank you for it!
