Homecoming, as we all know, was last weekend, and it's important for any school to promote such a big event. Ohio Northern has both its own Facebook and Twitter pages, so it should be able to promote such an event pretty effectively to at least anyone with any interest in what's going on here. I'll take a look here at how effectively it did on both in the weeks before homecoming.
On Facebook, Ohio Northern did a good job of at least letting everyone know that Homecoming was nearing by posting about events during Spirit Week, and posting photos from these events. This is certainly good, as it's visually stimulating and attention-grabbing; for those interesting in ONU's events, seeing pictures like these may get people talking about the events, and, as we remember from "Groundswell," word of mouth is a particularly effective way of energizing people around a product or event.
Unfortunately, Ohio Northern did not seem to post many links to provide information about the events that were coming up during Homecoming, which damages it because otherwise people might be more inclined to see what events are coming up and then attend if the events sound interesting to them. As "Share This" states, it is important to include detail when appropriate, and this is a case where it could have been useful.
Ohio Northern's Twitter is the bigger issue, though. Aside from a tweet or two, it looks like Ohio Northern mostly neglected to mention Homecoming over Twitter until the day itself, which is not good for promoting an event. Perhaps they wanted to avoid seeming repetitive, but that would be a smaller mistake than not under-mentioning Homecoming, which they seem to have done. They did prove willing to retweet at least one tweet about Homecoming, which is good, as it is a form of interacting in real time, which the book of the same has let us know is very important.
Overall, there was definitely some good stuff on both accounts, but also room for substantial improvement.
Link to my Storify covering Homecoming: http://sfy.co/dSay
I completely agree with your observations about the University's Twitter account. Whoever was monitoring it was really slacking. Last year there was even an account for homecoming itself. Where was that this year? Poor PR/marketing work on their part. I mean, it's homecoming after all!
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