Abstract

Community Education departments are generally constrained by tight budgets, which can create difficulties in marketing its offerings within the region. Social media is a marketing method with low entry costs, thus making social media an attractive marketing option to Community Education departments. This thesis attempts to determine which social media communications are best for the existing "best customers" serviced by the Adult Enrichment department at Rochester Community Education. The research used a 22-question email survey with responses based on a 5-point Likert scale. The research found the online communication tools most often used by the "best customers" group included emails, texting, and Facebook. However, when asked what communication tools the "best customers" group preferred in receiving marketing messages, email and texts were preferred over tools such as Facebook. As far at the current "best customers" group, the results indicate social networking sites such as Facebook are not (yet) good marketing tools. There is minimal scholarship in the realm of social media for local Community Education organizations. The results from this thesis project illustrates that social media holds promise as a better communication method for the Adult Enrichment department's "best customers" and adds to scholarship in the realm of local Community Education. Local Community Education organizations could benefit from more knowledge in this sphere.

Advisor

Lee Tesdell

Committee Member

Juan (Gloria) Meng

Committee Member

Gretchen Prebix

Date of Degree

2011

Language

english

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

College

Arts and Humanities

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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