The question for college admissions counselors isn’t should they be on Facebook, it’s how they should be on Facebook. U.S. News and World Report first asked the question nearly a year ago: “To friend or not to friend?”
Admissions counselors want to keep the personal lives they stored on Facebook separate from their professional ones. This is understandable. Potential students share a similar concern for privacy. They’re fearful what admissions counselors might see and how that might impact an admissions decision. This is also understandable.
Multiple profiles (for personal and professional purposes) aren’t the answer. First, they’re a clear violation of Facebook’s terms of service: “You will not create more than one personal profile.” Second, isn’t that just confusing?
You don’t need Facebook friends anyway.
Admissions counselors simply need people to like them … or at least like the institution of higher learning they represent. They don’t need another profile. They just need a page.
A Facebook page kills the privacy debate from both sides:
Pages are tied to a personal profile, yes, but the only reference to the page administrator is the acknowledgement that the administrator ‘likes’ his own page. Personal photos, wall posts and embarrassing Farmville apps remain with the profile, not with the page.
A prospective student can acknowledge she ‘likes’ a particular counselor — thereby opening the door to university-sponsored news and announcements — but still keep her personal profile under lock and key. A page administrator doesn’t have access to a profile simply because the person ‘likes’ the page.
Creating a Facebook page couldn’t be easier. The trick is maintaining its content and cultivating an audience once it’s up there. So here’s five tips to get you started:
- Make the page easy to find. Keep the page name simple and include easy-to-search keywords, like say the name of your university.
- Update regularly. People will scan a page for any number of reasons, but they won’t return unless they think there’s something new. How often do you check your own Facebook account? That’s how often you should be updating.
- Engage the audience. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and encourage others to do the same. You can learn a lot that way.
- Recognize you are a voice of the University, but not THE voice. The reason you set up a professional page is to separate your professional life from your personal one. Keep it that way.
- Have fun. Just because you’re a professional, doesn’t mean you’re not a person. People react to others who know how to have a good time. Social networking is no different.
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