Use of Social Media in Open and Closed Models of Building the Educational Institutions' Image

This article presents the issue of managing the image of the organization in an environment characterized by high level of saturation with modern Internet and mobile technologies. Significant role in the process of shaping the image is played by marketing communication. The new model of marketing communication is mainly based on social media. The attributes of social media predestine them to be used in the process of image creation. The process of building the organization's image may be conducted in an open system - according to a linear model, or a closed system - according to a feedback model. The method of building the image is largely translated to the effectiveness of the entire process. Market economy principles apply not only to business organizations but also, increasingly, to other types of organizations, including educational institutions. Educational institutions must also build a positive image of the organization. The main goal of this article is to assess the process of building the image of educational institutions in the social media era. In the presented results of empirical studies, the analysed entity was limited to one type of educational institutions - secondary schools. The research has shown that in the process of shaping the school's image, many schools still concentrate mainly on building their identity and communicating it to their stakeholders, and, to a much smaller degree, on obtaining and analysing feedback. Therefore, in theory, the image is built in a closed system - the feedback model, and, in practice, in an open system - the linear model.