Successful Social Media Marketing Strategies for Universities
Social media marketing is essential for your university to establish brand awareness, brand loyalty, and relationships with students. With so many people already active on social media platforms, you need to meet your prospective students, current students, and alumni where they are. An effective social media marketing strategy can be a great recruitment tool, a convenient way to quickly share announcements, an effective way to build a community, and so much more. The possibilities are endless! In this blog post, I want to share some helpful tips to take your higher education social media marketing strategy to the next level. This blog post is sectioned off into two parts: the first part will give you social media marketing content ideas, and the second part will give you tips on how to effectively achieve those content ideas on social media. Let’s get started! Post content that increases brand awareness What is brand awareness? Brand awareness is your target audience’s familiarity with your university’s brand. For the most part, your social media content should be centered around increasing brand awareness. Why is creating brand awareness important? This is to set your university apart from the crowd. There are so many universities and programs out there, so your goal is to communicate to a prospective student why they should choose your university. There are plenty of ways to communicate that through your social media platforms. First off, think about some of the accomplishments and defining characteristics of your university. Then, start posting content around that. For example, share the accomplishments of your students or faculty members. Whether it’s a breakthrough research project, a successful student athlete, or a student who made a positive impact in their community, share these accomplishment stories on social media. Another example is to post defining characteristics of your school. For example, if your school is located in a beautiful greenbelt, post beautiful photos of the greenery that surrounds your university. Or, post content around your university’s brand colors, slogan, or mascot! Create a hashtag for your university Create a hashtag for your university that isn’t used anywhere else and that is specific to your institution. Then, encourage students to use that hashtag on their social media accounts.You can tell students to use that hashtag to share photos of acceptance letters, sporting events, campus activities, and other university-related content. Once students start using that hashtag, you are able to easily find user-generated content on social media by simply searching for that hashtag. And once you are able to easily locate user-generated content, incorporate it into your social media platforms!You can do this by re-posting your student’s posts on your social media feeds or as Instagram Stories.User-generated content is effective in higher education recruitment efforts because it displays authentic experiences from real students. It also increases engagement on your social media accounts as well!Do social media takeovers Speaking of user-generated content, another great idea is to do social media takeovers. This is a great way to tell stories or share events through an authentic first-person narrative.You can use social media takeovers to share experiences of your student athletes, student clubs, campus events, and more!Don’t know where to start or how to get this done? Here is a good blog post on how to run a successful and safe student social media takeover. Feature student stories Showcase your student body by sharing testimonials or stories from students.Not only will this foster a sense of community within your student body, but it can also be a way to personalize your university to prospective students.A great way to do this and to celebrate different cultures is to tell a series of student stories during certain heritage months. For example, during Hispanic Heritage Month, feature student stories from across your campus that talk about your Hispanic American student’s family history, heritage, and culture.You don’t have to limit this to just students though! You can also involve your faculty and staff members! Introduce key members of your university community Another cool way to showcase your university is to introduce key members of your university community.If your university has a smaller student population, this can be the perfect way to showcase your tight-knit community.You can introduce new resident assistants for the school year, new faculty members that join your university, new peer leaders, social media interns, and whoever else! Go live on social media Going live on social media can be a great way to recruit students.While college fairs and campus visits have been the traditional way of recruiting students, universities now have the ability to have a live discussion about their programs and campus life on social media.By doing this, prospective students and their parents can engage and meet members of your university’s admission team without leaving their chairs! Also, going live on social media can be a great way to engage with existing members of your university community!Here are some ideas of what you can do when you go live: Special institutional announcements for the student bodyQ&A about the admission process for prospective studentsVirtual fundraising eventsCommencementsCampus tour Conduct online tours on social media For prospective students who are interested in your university, but do not want to commit a visit, make sure to give them a way to view different parts of your university through an online tour.The best way to give these types of tours is to have a student conduct these tours. This will establish authenticity and trust with the viewers and will make the tour a more relatable experience. You can conduct dorm tours, campus tours, event tours, and more.There are many ways to conduct these types of tours. You can create a long YouTube video that talks about certain spaces in your university in detail. You can create Instagram Story tours and leave them on your Instagram feed as a Highlight so that students can see the tour right from your Instagram account. Or, you can create a campus tour series on TikTok and Snapchat! Promote your university events on social media Have







