Three Things Higher Ed Leadership Should Know About Social Media
While social media can be a hot-button topic in today's world, we can all probably agree it's also not going anywhere. Not anytime soon, anyway. What exactly does that mean for higher education?
We live in a world predominantly run by electronic communication and digital processes, yet many higher education institutions need to be more open to embracing and truly understanding what social media means for their institutions and the potential it holds for their school’s future. Digital natives have graced our campuses since the late '90s, yet most higher education institutions have yet to update their practices to keep pace with this want, and now need, of its student body.
In 2023, optimizing your institution's social media strategy benefits the institution's brand, marketing, recruitment, retention, engagement, and ultimately the coveted U.S. News & World Report Rankings. Here are three insights for higher education leaders for navigating the social media landscape for their institutions.
Social Media’s Power to Influence the Next Generation
We're past the point of marketing and recruiting to digital natives. Incoming college freshmen in 2023 were most likely born in 2005—the year Apple introduced podcasts to its iPod users (it was also the year the iPod featured a color screen that displayed videos). These students grew up with podcasts the way many of us grew up with radio. In fact, they grew up with the iPhone and similar smartphones as their baseline understanding of not only telephone communication, but handheld electronic communication, with the arrival of the iPad just a few years after the introduction of the iPhone.
Because GenZ and Gen Alpha utilize these devices and social platforms in a way their predecessors may not, overlooking strategic social media communication and marketing will only hurt higher education and its institutions. For instance, in late summer 2022, technology reporters were finally noticing and digging into the fact that Gen Z and many TikTok users were utilizing the platform as a search engine. And yet, I can't tell you one university that is "owning" the TikTok "game." Fortunately, some passionate higher education social media experts share loads of helpful information, and one even keeps an updated list of universities with TikTok accounts.
Regarding Gen Alpha and social media and marketing, higher education needs to consider lifetime customer value—that's what this generation wants. Kids aged 6 to 16 stated social media as being their second biggest influence for motivation to want to purchase an item. The first influence is their friends, and the third is their family. "Kids under 14 aren't our target audience," a non-marketing leader may retort; however, is there a college, university, or community college that does not want to build a pipeline of future prospects?
Granted, we may not like some of the marketing "tactics" other industries use on specific audiences. (Studies show that cereal companies targeting children do increase positive purchasing power by parents, despite more nutritional information available.) But understanding how and why this generation responds to certain messaging on different platforms is vital for higher education to stay relevant. While ongoing consumption of sugary cereals might not be the best for a kid's health, introducing an institution of higher education and the opportunities it can hold will benefit future generations.
The Value of Listening
There is another vital aspect of social media that many colleges and universities can utilize more effectively. Social listening isn't just a research method used for social media platforms but for organizations and institutions to utilize as a resource for understanding what their audiences are saying about them online. It’s used to apply strategy and insights to an institutional brand and audience to generate new potential enrollment and recruitment audiences (what people in business—or the enrollment office—call leads).
While very basic social listening capabilities are included in some social media software platforms, there are also higher education industry experts and agencies who dedicate their entire organization to social listening. Campus Sonar is a higher ed strategic agency that is helping universities large and small learn what their audiences are actually saying and to optimize change. For example, from Campus Sonar case studies, actionable responses may include:
Enhancing strategic messaging to align with campus goals.
Developing new marketing initiatives to strengthen recruitment efforts.
Deepening the understanding of the institution's brand equity to increase awareness and enhance the admissions journey for applicants.
This information can help you better understand not only your institution, but the populations, audiences, and individuals that make up the future of the campus community. As researcher and storyteller Brené Brown says, "Stories are data with a soul."
You may think you know your institution's soul—its data—but what story is the university's community perceiving? If our higher education leadership can't answer that question, then the enrollment decline in our institutions will only continue.
The Importance of a Chief Marketing Officer
The marketing and communications leadership in most colleges includes a Vice President of Communications or some similar role around senior director or executive director. However, a recent study of 108 university strategic plans showed that only 52 of those plans specified a marketing function.
If the goal of strategic plans is to provide long-term and short-term guidance for a university's decisions and operations in carrying out the vision, mission, and values of the institution, every institution should include a higher ed marketing expert in the planning.
Much of the challenge of social media in any industry, not just higher education, is leadership approval. Having a high-ranking advocate for utilizing social media as part of a university's marketing and communication plan and strategy will be a game changer.
A recent announcement by U.S. News and World Report is a case in point for how we’ll evaluate our success in coming years. New methodology for Best Colleges Rankings will consider a school's ability to graduate students from diverse backgrounds, rather than factors such as alumni giving, the number of faculty with terminal degrees, and the "class size and high school standing" of incoming students. This means more emphasis will be placed on how an institution is engaging today’s students. And as any great marketing and communication professional will tell you, to engage your audience, you must meet them where they are. For incoming and current college students, that's social media.
