To develop your school brand’s authority and credibility, social media marketing is necessary. Here are a few recommendations to assist you to improve your university’s social media presence.
Using social media effectively in higher education involves more planning and thought than most people realize. College, university, or independent school may have a large student body, but it does not automatically make them good at using social media for marketing purposes.
Social media for higher education is no easy task, even if you’re an experienced social media user or have previously handled social media marketing for another institution.
The good news is that you can control it and make it work for your college or university if you follow these helpful recommendations.
1. Set Social Media Rules
There are a lot of things that happen on social media that you have no control over. However, this does not exclude you from taking steps to safeguard your educational brand.
Anyone in your company who wants to develop a social media account that represents your business should post a set of rules or guidelines on your website.
So that all of your social media profiles associated with alumni, sports, and department interests may be directed to adhere to the brand requirements, you can use this method.
However, if you notice a social media account continually breaking the rules, you can petition the social media platform to have it shut down.
Even if it means taking down rogue accounts, you need to maintain your brand’s voice and authority constant.
2. Plan your Content Distribution Strategy
The nature of social media in higher education is complicated. Even so, a little structure can help you deal with the commotion.
Distribute material using procedures that outline who is responsible for posting to which social media platforms and how they will be notified when the content is ready to go.
Some examples of this include: if you have students or staff putting up a blog post, they need to know who will edit the content; how documents will be shared and saved; and how the social media managers will be notified when content is ready for them to publish.
Here are a few tools to assist you in streamlining your social media posting process:
Project management software like Teamwork, Asana, Trello, or a Google Sheet with tasks and responsibilities recorded.
3. Let Users Contribute to your Project
For your social media feeds, you’ll always need new material. Create means for students, staff, alumni, parents, and donors to submit your tales or ideas so that you don’t run out.
An online form that asks visitors to submit their stories can be used to crowdsource ideas and content curation on your website.
In order to have a successful form, you need to get people to fill it out.
Email, print marketing, and social media posts can all be used to get people to fill out your form.
Inspire visitors to share their tales by providing them with gated material.
4. Set up Social Media Groups and Join Them
Facebook groups are one area where Facebook’s ever-changing algorithm does not apply. Meaning that your posts are visible to everyone in the group.
You should really consider starting social media groups for this reason alone.
Another benefit is that you can build a dedicated group of people who are passionate about a single subject, division, or activity.
To participate in Twitter discussions, don’t forget to use hashtags. Using LinkedIn groups to maintain your school’s name in front of former students and future adult learners can be quite beneficial.
5. Organize Activities on your College Campus
Using social media groups as a starting point for college activism can be a powerful tool.
To encourage students to volunteer, you might set up social media groups for specific issues on your campus or in your local area. Charitable activities can be organized more effectively through these groups.
Keep this in mind when dealing with scandals and major shifts as well. If your social media platforms face a crisis, have a plan in place on how to manage it.
6. Be Aware of Where your Audience Congregates and Keep an Eye on It
Certain populations in social media for higher education use specific platforms to communicate.
However, you should not solely rely on generalizations. Your target audience will have specific tastes. Use social media analytics to find out where your audience is congregating and what they enjoy doing on those platforms. For example, many kids use Facebook to communicate with their families and Snapchat to communicate with their peers.
7. Be a Good Storyteller
Numerous social media networks have debuted their own take on the “story” format. The stories feature is popular with Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram users in particular.
According to Buffer’s social media blog, here’s a quick definition of the feature:
Short collections of photos and videos created by Facebook users can be seen up to twice before disappearing after 24 hours.
Facebook has been testing a Snapchat Stories clone in Messenger since September 2016, when the Menlo Park, California-based business originally introduced the feature.
Stories can be used in a variety of ways:
- Disseminate campus news
- Talk about the things to see and do in the area.
- Accomplishments in research should be made public.
- In order to keep everyone informed about the latest developments in your department
- The main premise is to have a good time telling stories. Do not be a bore. Post your story in an intriguing way by using the filters and caption options.
8. Instruct students to create a blog for class discussion
Students can easily link their class social media channels back to their blog entries they write for the class blog. Teachers can build a class blog on a variety of platforms, including WordPress, SquareSpace, Wix, Blogger, Tumblr, or Medium. Creating a user account for each student allows them to participate in class discussions and to leave comments on class assignments.
It is also possible to post the course curriculum, assignments, updates, and resources on a blog as a central site for students to access.