In Today’s fast paced world, the impact of social media in connecting with our network of universities and academicians cannot be underestimated. Social media presents a great platform for disseminating quality higher education information in a timely manner, helps connect with our network immediately and helps keep up with latest trends in the academic circles.

In line with this, the AAU has recently unveiled its social media platforms to enhance communication between the Association and its various stakeholders. Unveiling the social media platforms, the Secretary General, Prof. E. Ehile, said that “we aim to increase the visibility of AAU and improve on its continuous dialogue with members through these Social Media platforms”

So far, the AAU has set up the following institutional accounts – Twitter (for sharing short updates and our handle is @aau_67), Facebook (for sharing updates), YouTube (sharing videos), Flickr Account (for sharing pictures), Slideshare Account (sharing presentations) and AAU Blog (for managing news updates). ‘We will continue to utilise these platforms in relaying information from AAU, our members, our development partners, policy makers and our wider stakeholders to the network. We intend to regularly update these platforms with current and useful information and therefore invite all our stakeholders to regularly visit our pages’ said the Director- ICT Services and Knowledge Management, Ms Nodumo Dhlamini.

Some Social Media Best Practices

• Tailor your profile well, make sure your Universities’ logos appears on your profile and ensure your description reflects your University
• Be regular with your social media presence but don’t bombard your audience with too much information
• Ensure content is engaging, concise and relevant to your audience
• Communication must be neutral- no religious or political affiliations
• It must also be Jargon free- don’t use acronyms that your audience won’t understand in your posts
• Keep communications in line with your universities’ brand

We are calling on all our member institutions and stakeholders to like our pages, follow them, share them, and retweet posts on our social media platforms for the information and benefit of the entire member institutions and stakeholders.

We are also encouraging our members who are not yet on social media and those who are not actively posting information on their platforms to start doing so due to the enormous opportunities that social media unveils. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar, Slideshare, YouTube, Flickr are some of the vast range of social media platforms available.