Social Media: Tool or Trap?

Have you embraced social media in your entrepreneurship classes? Does it differ from traditional marketing so greatly that it requires specialized classes?

American check their phones a total of 8 billion times a day, and 80 percent of those smartphone users spend their time using just five apps—Facebook is number one. The argument that “social media is just a fad” isn’t valid. Like it or not, social media is how people communicate today, especially students. And brands.

But do students need to take college classes on social media? Can Facebook’s new training certificate program Blueprint suffice?

If entrepreneurship programs do teach social media, what should these classes cover? Just a handful of topics are:

• Students as users: help them develop their LinkedIn profiles to build their careers and networks
• Students as employers: help them find talent for the ventures they will launch
• Students as marketers: customers and clients will look for your students’ companies on social media and numbers matter
• Students as changemakers: social media can both launch social ventures and help drive political change—just look at our political candidates on Twitter
• Students as tech entrepreneurs: some of your students will build the next Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat—how can you prepare them and help them succeed in a fast-changing landscape?

At PlanningShop, we want to hear your thoughts on social media’s place in the entrepreneurship classroom. Please take our short survey below (or online here)—it requires only a few minutes of your time—and tell us what you think. We may interview you for an upcoming issue of our newsletter.

 

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