/ DK universities on social media (Twitter)

By Christian Walther Bruun / On / In Ikke-kategoriseret

Twitter is increasingly being used, also in science and education communication, where institutions such as Harvard University has 1.3M and Cambridge University has 600+ followers. Twitter is well suited to reach a large audience with clear and short messages a allowing you to get instant feedback from customers and potential clients.

It seems as if Danish universities have vastly different strategies, when it comes to their online social media presence on social media specifically on Twitter. By tallying the number of followers and tweets on their Twitter platforms a few interesting points arise:

  • – Aarhus University (AU) has been most successful in building a strong follower base
  • – Technical University of Denmark (DTU) is also performing well with more followers than University of Copenhagen in spite of having roughly 50% staff (FTE) – a good potential follower base.
  • – University of Copenhagen (KU) is comparably not very active with only about 2500 tweets compared to 8500 of AU. KU managed to have just over one follower pr. staff at the university.
  • – University of Southern Denmark (SDU) is by far the most active on twitter with 15000 tweets, but have been less successful in turning these to followers, limiting the reach of the many tweets.
  • – Copenhagen Business School (CBS) is overall getting most value pr. tweet with 4.8 followers pr. tweet and 4.2 followers pr.  staff (FTE) at the university.
  • – IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) is a smaller institution with less than 500 staff (FTE). It has managed to turn active Twitter presence into a broad reach with more than 13 followers pr. staff (FTE).
  • – Roskilde University (RUC) have fewer followers and is less active, it does however manage to turn tweets into followers taking the university’s size into consideration.
  • – University of Aalborg seem have chosen other paths of communication with 64 followers and 0 tweets.
  • However, all Danish universities are lagging far behind major Nordic and Dutch universities, where especially University of Helsinki is performing well, with more than twice the number of followers that the highest ranking Danish university (AU).