Swot Analysis

* SWOT Analysis: Social Media

* Strengths:

* Large market reach or penetration

* Easy to set up

* Very useful if you are setting up a digital engagement strategy (to new people, young people)

* active community members who are willing to become institute representatives

* build a conversation and converse with others and build close networking bonds

* quick information exchange

* Direct contact with audience (almost like face-to-face)

* Lets you follow and connect with people/groups that interest you – but are not necessarily your friends (as with Facebook). Authors, celebrities, co-workers, colleges, organizations, whatever

* Cost-effective in the sense most of the platforms are free. They just demand time

* Human factor: Your “brand” becomes more HUMAN

* Media exposure

* Twitter is in a strong market position in micro-messaging. Facebook is the only real competitor here – and they attract users for different reasons.

* Build strong, long term relationships through online social networking, at a faster pace than just relying on traditional face-to-face networking

* Gets tons of publicity.

* Is a thing on its own (almost no competition in microblogging)

* It is simple but powerful

* It is 100% social in an all-social web

* It is free

* Has developers creating hundreds of applications around its API.

* It’s definitely not evil (yet)

* Businesses, Organizations, Companies like it a lot

* It is real-time

* It is searchable

* It is totally RSS-enabled

* It is the ultimate link discovering and sharing tool

* Tweets show link attachments (may need to be shortened)

* Some post-secondary institutes use it openly (not blocked on intranets)

* Weaknesses:

* Tough to train or convince management team/group members on social media principles

* A lot of “Why Bother” from most mainstream (i.e. Facebook users) people

* Needs more horsepower. It is...