Building and Maintaining Relationships Through Social Media

Abstract

In recent years, social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs have rocked the higher education world. No longer is just being present on these mediums enough. Integration of social media tools into daily practices through monitoring, teaching, and collaboration allows those in higher education to build and maintain relationships with key publics. From devising social media goals and objectives to monitoring channels and evaluating efforts, social media can be integrated into the higher education arena. In this chapter, multiple dimensions of social media tools and the various ways those in higher education can integrate those tools into operation are exposed and elaborated upon. In an effort to provide readers with best practices, ideas are shared to present those in higher education with optimal ways to connect, build, and maintain relationships with others both internally and externally.