Communication effectiveness in social networks of leading universities

Abstract

The article presents the results of communication effectiveness analysis in social networks of leading universities with strong economic departments. The study was carried out using the textual information analysis i.e. content, links, posts, comments, tags, etc.; multimedia i.e. photos, videos, audio, etc., and the ontology method, which estimated the social networks parameters like the number of subscribers, average path length, etc. The study showed that the main platform for international higher education institutions is Facebook; Instagram is actively developing, and then comes YouTube. The number of publications does not directly affect the number of subscribers, in contrast to the number of students. The high frequency of posts does not lead to subscribers increase. There is no single strategy for universities social network development. The use of informal communication, which encourages action, significantly increases the audience and its involvement; but is not used by all universities, because it might contradict with the university’s image. It should be noted that good design, the use of professional photos and videos, has its impact on potential audience.