Harvard University´s Web Communication Plan

Wikipedia describes Harvard University as “a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in the country. Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. […] Eleven separate academic units — ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study — comprise the university with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area. […] As of 2010, Harvard employs about 2,100 faculty to teach and advise, approximately 6,700 undergraduates (Harvard College) and 14,500 graduate and professional students. Eight U.S. Presidents have graduated from Harvard and 75 Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the university as students, faculty, or staff”.

As the San Francisco´s (USA) Communication Leadership Institute claims on its SPIN Project about Strategic Communication Plan Template, “the purpose of a strategic communications plan is to integrate all the organization’s programs, public education and advocacy efforts. By planning a long-term strategy for your efforts, you will be positioned to be more proactive and strategic, rather than consistently reacting to the existing environment […].”

Following this idea, Harvard University has developed its own Web Communication Plan mainly around its Official Website and Facebook. The Official Website is the most popular and visited page related to the University and the one that offers the most accurated, reliable, and secure of information about the institution. Facebook, on the other hand, allows an open dialogue where users are able to disscuss and give their opinion about events, pictures, posts and some others published on teh page.

Even if the Offial page and Facebook are the most known ones, Harvard has also built its image around some other powerful social networks, microbloggs and web pages such as Twitter (more and more visited), Youtube EDU or MySpace among others.

As Jeanne C Meister and Karie Willyerd, internationally recognized leaders in creating innovations in the operation and management of an enterprise learning function, claim that Business bloggers at Harvard Business Review have been discussing a variety of business topics including managing people, innovation, leadership, and more, giving advice how to Microblogging to increase productivity in companies.

Through this review, it can be apreciated that Harvard University, as such an importat institution it is, is really aware of its potential and all the possibilities of promotion the Net offers nowadays. That is why Harvard take the most of the powerful tools Internet offers to its users to make its image more popular, to share varied imformation and to change any kind of opinions with all those interested in Harvard University.

References:

• Jeanne C Meister and Karie Willyerd.(2010, April 16). Use Microblogging to Increase Productivity. In Harvard Bussines Review. Retrieved 10:15, December 18, 2010, from http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/04/use_microblogging_to_increase.html
• Harvard University. (2010, December 18). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:27, December 17, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harvard_University&oldid=403693361
• Independent Media Institute. (2005). Strategic Communications Plan Template. In Communications Leadership Institute-SPIN Project. Retrieved 10:30, December 18, 2010, from http://www.spinproject.org/downloads/SCPTemplate.pdf
• Harvard University Official Website. Retrieved 10:14, December 17, 2010, from http://www.harvard.edu
• Independent Media Institute. (2005). Strategic Communications Plan Template. In Communications Leadership Institute-SPIN Project. Retrieved 10:30, December 18, 2010, from http://www.spinproject.org/