Social media can be a tricky beast to tame. It’s a vital marketing and communications channel for universities, but it’s time-consuming and relentless and demands an agile approach. There’s no silver bullet for effective social media marketing, but this article outlines some dos and don’ts that could help when developing your university’s strategy.
Do: showcase the community
It’s easy to fall into the trap of using social media exclusively as a sales platform to advertise your university’s latest recruitment events. While that content is incredibly important and has its place on these channels, particularly for prospective students, it’s only a small part of the picture.
Your social channels are a great opportunity to showcase your entire university community. From friendly reminders from your security team to photos from last week’s internal research conference, you can use your social channels as a window into your institution, which can be beneficial in several ways. First, it helps build rapport with your current students – it shows these channels are for them, not just for prospective students. Second, it helps with the sales pitch by giving prospective students (and their important influencers!) a real sense of what your university is like and what it feels like to be an integral part of it. Ultimately, creating a sense of belonging is key to attracting prospective students and supporting retention.
Do: collaborate
The Collaborate tool on Instagram makes it easy to share content between multiple accounts and removes the need to duplicate/copy paste content between various accounts – so take advantage of it. Not only does it relieve the pressure on internal teams to churn out social content by “sharing the load”, but it also helps highlight areas of your institution that might not normally get the visibility they deserve.
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Do: use your internal network
We all know the pressure university social media/communications teams are under so it’s time to work smarter, not harder, and embrace your network within your institution. With the best will in the world, you can only be in one place at a time, so it makes sense to reach out to your contacts, find out who’s going to which events and ask them to snap a few quick photos with their phone. You can then share these on your social channels or even just on your Instagram Stories. This helps showcase everything that’s happening within your institution but means you’re not rushing from event to event and spreading yourself too thin.
Don’t: forget about user-generated content
Thanks to TikTok and Instagram Reels, both prospective and current students are used to seeing user-generated content (UGC) daily so it makes sense to embrace it. Because of its slightly rough-and-ready nature, this content creates an authentic view of your institution that you’d struggle to achieve with a professionally made video. UGC can help prospective students feel a connection to your university community before they even arrive.
UGC can be used both organically and as part of paid advertising campaigns to showcase the authentic student experience. It doesn’t matter that this type of content isn’t as polished because it’s more relatable. It can easily work in conjunction with brand level activity that has been professionally produced.
Lots of universities, such as the University of Staffordshire and the University of Birmingham, have student ambassador schemes that employ students to create this type of content and they’re hugely successful. Why? Because students are keen to share their experiences… and prospective students are keen to see them!
From “A day in the life of…” content to “Come with me…” reels, there are lots of avenues you can go down but sometimes simply asking students to come up with their own ideas can create incredible content that internal teams would never have dreamed up.
Don’t: get caught up in likes
If you working in student communications, it’s easy to get caught up in the big messages and spend hours crafting the perfect post only for it to get less than 50 likes. The next day, you might take a few quick snaps while walking through campus on a sunny day and decide to post them. The result? Hundreds of likes. Yes, it’s a bit annoying but if we’re honest, it really doesn’t matter.
Just because you don’t have lots of likes on a post, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t landed well or done its job. Student communications isn’t a popularity contest – it’s a service and sometimes the key messages aren’t going to get the most engagement simply because of their nature.
When reviewing posts, look at the wider metrics such as saves and shares, which can paint an altogether different picture regarding a post’s success.
The origins of each social platform can also play a part when analysing performance. Pretty photos on Instagram will always perform well simply because of the nature of platform, just like trending videos or videos on topical subjects will always do well on TikTok.
Don’t: try to do it all on every channel
It can be tempting to post every piece of content on all your social channels but it’s not necessary. Student-generated content lends itself better to platforms such as Instagram or TikTok, while more academic-type content will perform better on X or Bluesky.
Consider your audience on each channel and change your communications/social plan to reflect this. If you’re worried about all stakeholders not seeing content if you don’t share it on every channel, just link to your social content from your internal newsletters/intranet, or make use of YouTube Shorts and link there instead.
There’s much more to say regarding social media and higher education but ultimately it comes down to placing authentic content that accurately depicts your university community on the right platforms and making the best use of your network within your own institution.
Amy Edwards is student communications officer and Sarah Markillie is digital marketing manager, both at the University of Chester.
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