After all, we’re talking about targeting Gen Z and millennials, who can easily be engaged through this medium. A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre stated that 84% of social media users are aged 18–29, which are our target audiences here. Therefore, it’s important to develop a good plan of action to stand out in the current competition. There are numerous institutions with varied courses; hence students and their parents are spoilt for choice.
You might be offering great courses, hands-on training, amazing learning culture – but you still might not be able to reach the potential students. Everyone needs an online presence, and so does your educational institution. Online presence helps create brand awareness and reach students on a global level. Selecting a good school, college, or university is a big life decision, and the marketing used by institutes or universities should be effective enough to give their audiences some food for thought.
Social media is a great avenue to promote a school’s profile, boost student engagement, and result in driving engagement. When used right, it helps create online communities, increase interactions, and create a great global reputation. A survey stated that Facebook has 2.5+ billion active users, and Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users, which is exactly why you also need to be there!
Here are some effective campaigns used for marketing schools, colleges, and universities on social media.
Education Marketing Campaign
Campaigns mean more than just posting content each day. Campaigns are made with an approach and a goal in mind across different social media channels. After some brainstorming, we could come up with a theme that your follower base can relate to. Using this theme, we can encourage people to share their stories or even use a unique hashtag that we create. This engagement activity ensures your content attracts and engages with people outside of your follower base too.
Post Content Contributed By the Users
The best way to engage in interactions and reach a larger base is to get existing students or alumni involved with your social media content. Almost everyone is active on social media, especially students, making it all the more convenient. Creating a hashtag for your institution is a great way to start. Everyone can use this while posting stories or posts about the different events happening at your institution. Be it a graduation day, orientation, or even reunions. Students can be encouraged to use this hashtag and even get a chance to be featured on the official page.
Creating Social Media Groups
Social media groups are another fantastic way to cater to a specific target audience. For example, you can create an alumni group, sports group, or even a group for the parents of students. This helps in sharing or discussing common topics among the members. Whenever there is an important announcement, you can post it on that specific group first and let the members know.
If you have an event in the school or college, posting the details in a particular group will attract a large and genuinely interested crowd. They will surely pay attention to what you are offering.
Platform-specific Marketing
It looks like a widespread piece of advice, but very few understand its importance. Every platform has its advantages and features, and social media marketing can be successful only when each platform is used to its full potential. Like, you can create groups or engage with students and alumni on Facebook or LinkedIn. Snapchat and Instagram being visual-centric platforms, can be used to share or upload photos and videos. Other than that, discussions can be carried over on platforms like Quora.
Medium and WordPress are perfect platforms to post blog content for your audience. Similarly, Pinterest and Flipboard can be efficiently used to create and increase brand awareness. You might not have accounts on all these platforms, but at least you can use the available channels to tap the right audience in the right way. If you need help with accounts creation, we have this expertise too.
Creating Audience-specific Content
Just like groups, creating different pages or accounts to post about various departments can help. Two different people among your audience will not have the same taste. Hence, it helps to reach a specific audience with tailored content on a specific topic. For example, a person interested in physics won’t be interested in reading news about the art department on his feed. We can conduct timely polls and surveys for you to help you understand what your audiences like more.
Going Live
Going live is the trend now, and interactions can be better during live sessions. For example, your audience can get all their questions answered during a Q&A session. Or going live during any event or workshop can make your audience feel included. These live sessions can be impromptu or declared earlier for a better view count. When you are working in the education field, it’s important to answer all your audience’s questions and even invite industry experts to join the live sessions. The experts can talk about your courses and how enrolling in such courses can be good for a student’s future. Videos usually help in creating an immersive experience when done right.
We love to keep our process simple. Simple, yet effective.
The process starts when you subscribe to your Socinova package. Checking out on the website hardly takes 5 mins.
You automatically get a questionnaire once you complete the payment. This is the info we'll need to get started.
We then create/optimise your social pages as per your preferences, and set up the analytics.
Your dedicated manager will then prepare the first set of content and share it with you for review.
Once we receive your feedback, we set up a regular feedback cycle and take social media off your hands!
Influencer Marketing
Influencers are seen as great content creators, especially by this generation who is quite active on social media. They have a reputation for being a genuine source because they usually share their experiences and things that they believe in. These influencers can further advertise your hashtag, promote your courses, and even highlight student discounts. A survey by Digital Marketing Institute in 2021 stated that 49% of consumers depend on recommendations by influencers before making a decision.
Make Use of Stories
Stories are now available on a few social media platforms. You can use your Stories to keep your audience hooked up to the events and happenings at the institution. For example, some institutions have even tried airing a sneak peek series of campus life. Sharing Stories has a more significant impact than just telling your prospective students how the campus life is at your institution. The short span of Stories is also perfect for capturing the attention of younger generations.
Re-sharing Stories wherein people have mentioned your institution’s brand name can make people feel acknowledged, which also goes a long way in building loyalty. As per the State of Social 2019 Report by Buffer, one billion accounts use Stories globally, and 57% of the brands believe that the Stories have helped them as a part of their social media strategy.
Let the Students Talk
As the saying goes, word of mouth is the best form of advertising. Let the students currently studying at your university talk. Let your students give a virtual tour and address all the advantages in their language, which the prospective students can relate to. This can be an engaging activity that gives a realistic angle, which keeps the promotions subtle. We can even help you select a student ambassador from each department or class to help in the promotions. Incentives and perks can also be declared for such students to increase their participation in such activities.
Create a Content Calendar
There is a very thin line between educating the audience and bombarding them with content. A content calendar helps keep a track of which posts are to be posted and their frequency. This also helps track how and when all the social media platforms are used. However, you don’t need to worry about all this, as we will create a personalized calendar for you, keeping your goals and your audience in mind.
Success Stories & Reviews
PPC
Website
130%
Increase in Paid Ad Conversions
2X
Leads in 6 months
Social Media
71%
Increase in Contact Form Submissions
1,500+
New Social Posts Created
Giveaways
There are higher chances of attracting more engagement by using the words ‘Giveaways, discount, or free’. Plus, it is a great idea to call people to participate in something that will be useful for them. We can develop ideas for coupons, scholarships, sponsorships that will attract students. A small giveaway to something big like a scholarship can also be planned. We can also distribute a ‘Certification of Participation’ that you can mail to each participant. This type of engagement helps us reach more students quickly because not only will they check your social media account, but they might also check your website and course offerings to know more.
Highlight Reviews and Achievements
Let the world know what the students or their parents say about your school, college, or university and the courses you offer. Post first-hand reviews about how your courses have helped someone get into a prestigious college or get a job in a reputed organization. Highlighting such achievements publicly can make the students feel proud and inspire an aspiring student at the same time.
Using Social Media Analytics
While you keep trying different strategies, it is also essential to keep a tab of what is working and what is not. It is also important to know which ads align with the students more so that they can promote your brand better. We get you covered here. Our regular email support or call support (depending on the plan you choose) gives you insights into what we have done for your social media channels. This includes data about how well the posts are doing, how many new followers have visited your page, which platform has worked the best and which hasn’t, and which posts have created the most engagement. We choose the right analytics tool to understand the statistics and keep working on getting better.
Apart from social media marketing services, we can also help you with social media advertising, website design and development, and other services to provide you with an all-around online presence.
At Socinova, our team of experts crafts personalized strategies and campaigns for your institute to reach new people, convert leads, and result in business growth. We have the right resources and expertise to maintain your campaigns end-to-end. Even though managing social media for your educational institution looks fun and simple, it’s much more than that with intricate details. You can reply on us for your educational institution’s social media marketing.
How can we help your school, college, or university market itself on social media?
- Firstly, we will audit the presence and current performance of your institution’s online accounts.
- We will carry out a competitor analysis to show you what improvements we can do.
- After the analysis, we will come up with a set of recommendations of strategies and campaigns and discuss the same with you. Leave the planning, execution, and managing to us!
- We find the right campaigns to be carried out on the right social media platforms by pinpointing your audience, determining your goals, and focussing our efforts on that.
- We keep the campaigns as entertaining and interactive as possible. In addition, we keep the layout of our campaigns optimized for mobile as most of your audience will find you on a mobile platform.
- We create a detailed content calendar to let you know how many posts or stories will be posted and their frequency.
- We experiment, keep track, and analyze our strategies regularly.
- We have a data-driven approach. We will study the current analytics and will also provide you with reports supporting the campaigns we carry out.
- We ensure to keep your brand guidelines in mind and create long-lasting student relationships.
To stand out in today’s competitive education sector, consider our services. Socinova brings you a wide range of services for effective social media marketing at affordable prices starting from $99 per month. Explore our pricing plans and get started today!
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