Notre Dame ranked number one in use of social media

I’m going to meeting with some folks from Notre Dame today, one from the development office and another who heads Notre Dame’s Innovation Park.

As a Notre Dame alum, we’ll be talking about how we may be able to work together on a couple things, particularly how I may leave a legacy through a cause at the University.

Being curious how Notre Dame and Innovation Park may be using social media, I did some quick checking. I was surprised to find that Notre Dame was voted #1 in social media by USA Today. Not bad when you beat out Syracuse, one of the leaders in journalism and social media, Harvard, and Stanford.

The reasons, as highlighted in the ND Newswire by Susan Guibert (@susanguibert), Assistant Director of Public Relations at Notre Dame, and US Today include:

• Notre Dame has greatly encouraged the use of social media and recognizes social media as important to professional development.
• Notre Dame has become a “influencer and brainstormer” online through the strategic use of Facebook, Twitter and You Tube.
• Many areas on campus are successfully engaged in social media, including athletics, the Alumni Association, development and individual schools and colleges.
• The University has adopted a social media policy that recognizes the importance of open exchange and learning between the University of Notre Dame and its many constituents and recognizes the phenomenon of user-generated Web content—blogging, social websites, and networking—as an important arena for interaction and collaboration.
• Notre Dame news, libraries, alumni, and other accounts can be found throughout the social web, including Facebook and Twitter.
• Even if you’re just a fan of Notre Dame athletics, the school has something to offer you, with Irish Alert text messaging, as well as Twitter and Facebook pages for almost every sport.

I’m not a big fan of rankings and I am not suggesting we read too much into the USA Today Report, but there is real place fro social media in academia.

• Students and professors should be using blogging and other social media for learning and professional development. Rather than top down knowledge management, social media promotes learning from a network that extends far beyond the campus.
• For recruitment of students and professors. Wouldn’t you rather go to a school harnessing the powers of innovation and leveraging social media to provide you and others a transparent look into the University.
• Fund raising. Make the University more relevant with its alumni. Rather than solely kick out information to alumni via magazines, newsletters, and social media (using it as a bullhorn), engage alumni through blogging, Twitter, and Facebook. Proactively highlight the accomplishments of alumni through blogging, Twitter, and Facebook, rather than having alumni send you cheesy updates. Leverage the university’s brand by building custom social media solutions to curate blog posts and Tweets of alumni – empower alumni to really network and build relationships.
• Accelerate learning and advancement of causes by educating professors, students, and administration how to effectively network through the Internet with professors, the business community which supports the university, fellow alumni, and students.
• Placement of students. As I blogged about law school placement and social media last week, graduating students are woefully unprepared to use the Internet to network so as to enhance their reputations and build relationships so as to gain employment.

Kudos to Don Schindler (@donschindler), Director, Marketing & Communications at Notre Dame, and the rest of the folks at Notre Dame who are spearheading the adoption of social media at the university.