Homecoming at ONU

This past weekend was Homecoming at Ohio Northern and I had a blast celebrating and attending different events the university sponsored. For my social media principles course, I had to choose an event and live tweet important updates. I picked the football game against John Carroll University. Those tweets can be found here in a Storify. Spoiler alert: We lost the game, but I had fun cheering with my friends in the stands.

Homecoming is one of the biggest events for ONU, but you would never know by looking at their Facebook and Twitter updates. I was extremely disappointed to see that they didn't post anything about the various events that were taking place all weekend. Alumni look forward to Homecoming so they can come back to campus and see old friends and meet some new ones. The lack of information posted on Facebook and Twitter shows ONU's lack of engagement in the community.

During the weekend, Ohio Northern's Twitter posted 3 updates about events and they were all pictures with very little meaning. For the live tweeting assignment, we were to use the #ONUHC14, but these tags were nowhere to be found in ONU's tweets! There was hardly any information about the events including what they were, where they were, and where they were happening.

The same trend follows with Facebook. The major post that mentioned anything about Homecoming was a photo album, which was posted on Monday. There was no mention of the schedule of events or where those events could be found.

Ohio Northern was not engaged in the community at all for one of their major events, and I think that's pretty sad. I would expect the university to reach out to alumni and parents for such a big event. The social media profiles should have posted updates of events during the weekend, but also reminders of events during the week.

For future events, specially Homecoming, ONU should establish a tag for all to use and tweet updates and events leading up to the main weekend. There was a spirit week last week and I did not know about most of those events. Engaging the community is extremely important to get your audience to listen and want to join your activities. The Facebook page should have posted the schedule of events, as well as updates during the events.

How you use social media says a low about a brand, and ONU should be attempting to market themselves more effectively, especially because future students will look at these resources to see what kind of events are available on campus.