Many universities have placed a great emphasis on marketing due to the fierce competition in the higher education market. However, next to official marketing material like social media company pages, sponsored posts, and flyers, 6th-graders are often using social media to get the real picture about what it’s like to be a student. Observing people who are currently studying at a certain university can give them an authentic view on a university or course without the “marketing sauce on top”. Especially for international students, who made up 19% of the UK student population in 2014-2015, social media can be helpful since they’re often not able to visit a university in person.
One of the reasons students turn to social when choosing a university might be the desire to fit in to fit in. Choosing a new university basically means that they’re choosing the place they will spend the next few years of your life – especially when they’re going to live on campus. And most of us find it important to not only get a degree that they find interesting or is useful for their career, but also have a great time with people they like. Looking at social media provides them with more information that helps them make an educated decision about where they would fit.
What social platforms do they use?
National Centre for Universities and business says that Facebook is one of the most popular sites to research universities. 13% of prospective students surveyed said they used it to choose a course. Facebook groups are often used to share information on courses and what people really thought of the lectures. Twitter and Instagram are very popular as well – it is often used to ask questions and for getting snapshots of university life.
The power of social media here is explained by the fact that many of us turn to Twitter or Facebook when something good or bad happens to us. Prospective students can use the power of hashtags to search for relevant posts using social media including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The hashtag #universityofmiami returns more than 70k posts that immediately give a visual overview of life at the University of Miami. Students can search for these hashtags for a general overview, and even contact the person directly to ask questions about the university in general or courses they want to attend. For example, here’s an Instagram post of someone who’s studying at the University of Groningen:
Relevant social media
The struggle with hashtags however is that not everyone is using them when they are posting something about their college life. Moreover, many trolls can bring in false posts. Therefore, when we at Crowdynews talk to marketing or communication managers at higher education organisations about their social strategy, we usually advise showing a social stream with multiple social media sources based on geolocation. That way, posts are brought in that do not just contain the hashtag, but are also shown because they are posted from the university campus. Artificial Intelligence then automatically helps filtering out bots and other posts that are not relevant for showing university life.
The power of word-of-mouth
Due to the fact that many who leave high school use social media to find out what university they want to apply for, social media possesses some great powers that universities can use to help prospective students make an educated decision about their study path. Help that’s not coming from universities directly, but from the students who currently study there – using the power of word of mouth.