Evaluating the Strategic Role of Social Media Analytics to Gain Business Intelligence in Higher Education Institutions

The adoption of social media has been increasing in recent years and organizations are now starting to take interest into how to use the user-generated data from social media websites for their business advantage. So far, not much research has been done to aid businesses to strategically align their social media posts with their organizational goals. In this paper, using the Higher Education Sector as our case study, we explore how valuable business insights can be derived from social media data and how the social media strategies can be aligned with business strategies to help universities gain a competitive edge. Using a social media editorial model for universities and text mining, we analyse the Facebook page of one university and describe the procedures and results. Our findings show that the social media posts have been focusing mainly on advertising and maintaining the reputation of the organization and thereby neglecting the other main business objectives.