April 22nd, 2011

It’s important for today’s business students to be schooled in Internet marketing and social media strategy. With 175 million registered users on the micro-blogging site Twitter, and Facebook reporting 500 million active members, tomorrow’s M.B.A.s need to develop and manage marketing strategies that address the nuances of the online world.

But familiarity with the various forms of social media communication is no longer enough; graduates have to be able to transfer this experience into the commercial landscape. Such knowledge may provide an all-important edge when the time comes to parlay your M.B.A. into a job offer.

Several elite business schools in the U.S. and abroad have added courses relating to social media over the past year, and the move couldn’t come fast enough. As an editorial writer in the Financial Times puts it, business schools that don’t recognize the ubiquity of new technology risk lagging behind not only the students they aim to teach but also the recruiters who come to these schools in search of M.B.A.s.