On Jan. 16, 2018, Walter Kimbrough, president of Dillard University, emailed students with this ominous subject line: "I let you down."

That night, a rare winter storm had unleashed snow and freezing rain on Dillard's New Orleans campus. Students braved the elements to hear actress and author Gabrielle Union speak at Lawless Chapel as part of Kimbrough's Brain Food president's lecture series.

"I saw the energy tonight as you came to see Gabrielle Union," Kimbrough wrote in his email and posted on Twitter. "I did not want to extinguish your thirst for knowledge by cancelling class. [But] forgive me. I'm cancelling class tomorrow. I have let you down. I'll do better next time."

The response from students? Pure social engagement gold.

"A college president with a sense of humor... a keeper!"
"I cackled way too hard at this!"
"Dopest college president in America!"

"Students loved it. They screenshotted it," laughed Kimbrough, recounting the tale at CASE's 2018 Social Media and Community conference in March in New Orleans. He sat down with conference faculty member Josie Ahlquist to share insights about institutional leaders on social media.

With more than 17,600 followers, Kimbrough turns to Twitter to, yes, joke with students, but also share university news, celebrate basketball victories, announce commencement speakers (this year: Chance the Rapper), highlight research, and celebrate success stories with the #myDU hashtag.

"I think that should really be the role of [social media]—celebrating what people are doing," he said.

Since Kimbrough began tweeting as @HipHopPrez in 2009, while president of Philander Smith College, and later became president of Dillard in 2012, the realm of social media for college presidents has drastically changed. Here's a snapshot of today's landscape.

More leaders than ever are socially engaged. Half of U.S. college presidents post on Facebook (58 percent) and tweet (55 percent), while 35 percent pen blogs, according to a 2013 survey by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.

Since then, those numbers have inevitably increased. According to Hootsuite's "The Social Campus Report: 8 Opportunities for Higher Ed in 2018," some 66 percent of higher education executives around the globe view social as a strategic focus. Sixty-three percent believe it's an important aspect of a school's strategic planning and for fulfilling its institutional mission.

Higher education executives are 10 percent more likely to be using social media compared to leaders at Fortune 500 companies, the report found.

Social presence: Not exactly optional. #Follow the Leader, Dan Zaointz's handbook for university presidents on social media, opens with the suggestion that social media use isn't mandatory. But that was published in 2015. Today, stakeholders—from students, to alumni, to the media—are posting about university leaders on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, Kimbrough pointed out at #CASESMC.

"Your president is on social even if they're not on social," he explained. Donors and potential partners are watching your feeds, he stresses. "They're looking and seeing if this is a person they want to work with. [So] I try to put out lots of good things we're doing on campus."

Like any communication tool, social is about relationship-building. In 2014, #casesmc speaker Josie Ahlquist—who has studied senior executives and their use of social—assembled her first list of higher education leaders who embraced social media. She updated the list in 2017, featuring Kimbrough, but also West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee's bow ties and York University President Rhonda Lenton's graduation live-tweets.

What unites all of these presidents: They use social media to build relationships. They do student shout-outs. They post mascot selfies to boost alumni excitement. They celebrate community events.

But there's a more serious dimension to relationship-building, too: transparency. Leaders often face difficult decisions and campus controversies; social media offer avenues for openness. Former Kansas State University President Kirk Schulz tackled aggressive questions on Twitter after the university's basketball coach left.

"I wanted to provide some real time dialoging opportunities for people to ask about things associated with athletics," he said. "Twitter allows for immediate feedback and interaction with many members of the K-State alumni base—including sports media." Kimbrough, too, says he's used social to develop trust with reporters.

There's no single model for social engagement. Kimbrough manages his own Twitter account and uses an informal, youthful voice that resonates with students, but that's not the approach all presidents can, or should, take. Some post more photos, others do more direct shout-outs to students; some retweet more news from campus divisions; some (actually, more and more) are active on Instagram, Ahlquist reports. Social media are utensils in an institutional leader's toolbox, to be wielded with strategy and—if leaders like @HipHopPrez, @yorkupresident and @gordongee are any indication—some fun.

"There's a range of ways for people to use it," said Kimbrough. "You just have to find their comfort levels."

Listen to the full discussion with Josie Ahlquist and Walter Kimbrough in this special episode of Josie and the Podcast from the CASE Social Media and Community Conference.

This article is from the April 2018 BriefCASE issue.