As educators, you already know that there is a lot of potential for social media in higher education. Social media is a great avenue to raise a school’s profile, drive enrollment, and boost student engagement.

Whether you choose to invest a million dollars or only 50 cents from your marketing budget, you aim to spend it right.

However, many universities invest in new tactics rather than flashy marketing campaigns. Their tactic of choice? Social media in higher education.

Widespread access to the internet and digital media has transformed the education sector completely. Facebook today has more than 2.91 billion monthly active users, while Instagram now has over 2 billion monthly active users. With social media platforms becoming more popular day by day, the way we consume information is also changing significantly.

This can be an advantageous situation for marketers in the education sector. When implemented correctly, higher education social media marketing can help create online communities, increase interactions, engage more students, and form a global reputation.

In this article, we present you with 11 inventive social media marketing strategies used by colleges and universities worldwide to increase reach and engagement with their social channels while fostering a sense of school pride and togetherness. 

1. Start an educational marketing campaign

A social media campaign is a marketing effort that aims to increase interactions with a target audience and engage more users.

Campaigning on social media is a little different from everyday content posting. It has a more strategic approach and focuses on a single goal across all social media channels.

For example, Vancouver Island University (VIU) started a social media campaign on Instagram to create a follower base that loves the outdoors and the eclectic lifestyle.

To give direction to their follower base, VIU started a hashtag called #ilearnhere. By sticking to a theme and creating a hashtag, VIU’s Instagram account could attract many like-minded individuals quickly.

2. The user-generated content advantage

A useful method to increase interactions and reach on social media for higher education is to allow existing students or even alumni to get involved with your social media accounts.

Students nowadays are very active on social media platforms, so why not take advantage of this for your marketing strategy?

Allegheny College’s #acgatorgram is a great example of creating a hashtag to get students and organizations at your school involved.

For example, you can create a hashtag for your institution or for all the major events such as graduation day, orientation, and class reunions.

Encourage students to promote these hashtags and watch your school community build itself. You can also give them a chance to be featured on the institution’s official page.

3. Create social media groups

Social media groups can help you connect with the right audience.

For example, you can have separate Facebook groups that cater to smaller audiences within your university community, such as alumni groups, club groups, sports groups, groups for parents of students, and so on.

Groups can be a good place to hold discussions, share announcements, and interact with community members.

4. Be platform-specific

Every social media platform has its unique advantages for higher education. For example, you can connect with students and alumni while building relationship networks on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Instagram and Snapchat can be used for posting photos and videos, while discussions can be carried out on platforms like Quora.

University of Pennsylvania’s Career Services office does an excellent job promoting its services to students and alumni through Pinterest.

Pinterest can be used for increasing brand awareness. Meanwhile, Medium can be used for publishing blog content for your network.

You may not be present on all the social media platforms out there, but you can take advantage of the unique features of whichever channels you are using.

5. Post audience-specific content

The main goal of your social media strategy should be to deliver content that is relevant to your audience. Hence, university social media managers should think about getting separate accounts for different aspects of university life.

For example, a college can have news to share from different academic departments, sports teams, and alumni networks.

Somebody who wants to see more university sports news might not be interested in what is happening in the chemistry department.

With over one million followers, the University of Alabama football team’s Twitter account is a huge success (and so is their team).

So, if you create separate accounts for each network or department within the university, your content will be better tailored to the specific audience that follows each feed.

6. Go live!

Real-time sharing and interactions over social media platforms are widespread—so going live and engaging with your followers can be a great way to get on this trend.

Live streaming is a good way to build a consistent social media presence. It also allows your audience to gain valuable insights into your academic institution.

You can share what is happening on the campus, from large events to smaller workshops. You can even hold live Q&A sessions for prospective students.

7. Share via Stories

Creating and sharing social media stories that combine videos, photos, captions, and filters is now easier than ever. This feature is available on most major social media platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook.

You can use geotagging, filters, and visual media to show university's location, its main attractions, faculty information, labs, or events that are happening in and around campus.

The University of Westminster highlights its prime location with Instagram Stories.

Many university social media managers are already using stories to great effect.

For example, Colorado State University runs a series of Snapchat stories every Tuesday where a student at the university does a sneak peek into the college campus life and answers questions from prospective students.

8. Appoint students as ‘online tour guides’

Current university students are one of the most relatable, trustworthy, and authentic sources of information for prospective students.

Hence, if you can ask them to give a glimpse of how everyday student life on campus looks, just like a campus tour guide, you can create highly engaging content for your audience.

Asking students to help as virtual tour guides also adds a reality angle to your promotions.

For example, the students at Hope College take it to Snapchat and Instagram Stories to give a tour of their residence life and show the on-campus resources.

9. Create brand awareness

Did your research department make a breakthrough? Share that news on Twitter!  

Captured an image of your pretty campus during sunset? Upload that image on Instagram!

Show off what your school has to offer. Your institution, like any business, is a brand, and you got to create brand awareness to reach prospective students and drive culture through social networking.

10. Automate repetitive tasks

In order to maintain a consistent presence on social media, it is important that you post content frequently and regularly.

Scheduling your posts with a content calendar is an effective way to keep up your publishing frequency.

A content calendar gives you control over your publishing strategy, as it allows you to focus on the big picture rather than just day-to-day posting.

Also, it could potentially free uploads of your time because maintaining multiple different social media accounts manually can be a hectic job. So make sure to consider social media management tools such as Brandwatch.

11. Use social media analytics

After you’ve implemented best practices for promoting your content, it’s time to analyze and see what is working for you and what is not.

For example, you can analyze your followers and their characteristics. You can also gain insights on your posts and content such as what kind of posts are shared the most, what kind of posts get the least likes, or which platform works the best for you.

By choosing the right analytics tools for your social media strategy, you can easily optimize your performance across social channels.

Social media is a competitive environment. Hence, it is important for university social media managers to experiment, track, and analyze which content strategy is the most effective for them.

Your digital marketing strategy plays an important role in maintaining and growing your institution's reputation.

These were just a handful of strategies for promoting your college or university and sharing student interactions on social media. To find which tactics work best for your school, you simply need to try them out and see what works.