You can’t be a university president and be anti-social. In a president’s ceremonial role, she’ll have to attend luncheons, dinners, meetings, cocktail hours, fundraisers, all kinds of athletic contests. So this blog post isn’t about how painful it is to be a president and attend all those events. No, it’s about why presidents aren’t more active on social media.
And let me just say this right up front: I’m talking about the full range of social media here: blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and other tools for communication and engagement. Like the rest of us, presidents who use social media make choices about what channels make the most sense for them.
For the past month, I’ve been doing research on how CEOs, including college and university presidents, use social channels to build relationships and communicate about themselves and their institutions. Clearly some presidents—like Paul LeBlanc at Southern New Hampshire University; Dan Porterfield at Franklin & Marshall; Beth Stroble at Webster University; and Robert Wyatt at Coker College—are comfortable and adept in social media. Walter Kimbrough, soon to be the president at Dillard University, has been dubbed the HipHop president (he tweets as @hiphopprez), a sobriquet that has followed him onto TV and into the pages of magazines like People.
These presidents, and others like them, understand that social media offer them opportunities to reach more people in ways that other channels simply don’t. For example, Paul LeBlanc said that his blog and Twitter stream allow him to communicate outside the formal and ceremonial channels that often characterize his role:
If you think about the way presidents get to communicate, there are a fairly limited number of tools. I can only do a little bit of walking around. I can send out formal communications but they don’t allow me to talk about aspects of my life that are more personal. These channels allow me to reach a lot of people and give them a more personal view of my thoughts and my life. I really love that.
Tech users, but not social
Many college and university presidents use technology heavily. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project,
College presidents are major adopters of new digital technologies such as e‑readers, tablets and smartphones: 87% use a smartphone on a daily basis, 32% use a tablet computer such as an iPad daily and 15% say they use an e‑reader such as a Kindle or Nook every day.
Yet, despite this, only about a third report that they use Facebook weekly or more often and only 18% occasionally use Twitter.
In one sense, its not surprising that more college and university presidents arent more active on social media: their job is incredibly demanding and complex. James Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan, reminds us in The View from the Helm:
Today’s university president is expected to be part chief executive officer, intellectual leader of the faculty, educational leader, occasional parent to the students, political lobbyist with both state and federal government, cheerleader for the university, spokesman to the media, fund-raiser, entertainer, and servant to the governing board. Large institutions require strong executive leadership; public institutions need political acumen; and smaller institutions seek a greater degree of hands-on engagement with faculty and students in academic issues. And the performance in any particular one of these roles is usually considered as the singular basis for evaluating the president’s performance by the correspondingly affected constituency.
Duderstadt’s book was published in 2007, before the Edupocalypse was in full swing. Now, of course, he’d have to include several chapters addressing changing education paradigms, alternative credentials, financing, for-profit ed, and other contemporary issues. In short: the president’s job has become even more complex.
Given that reality check, here’s why presidents say they have chosen not to be active on social channels:
Of course, norms and expectations are changing. And presidents are beginning to realize that social media can be important, if not downright essential, in their personal engagement and communications. I’ll share insights from presidents who are active on social media in future posts.
Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?