Unibuddy Higher Ed Community Marketing Guide: What You Need to Know in 2023

Community marketing is nothing new for higher ed. You might even say higher ed marketers and recruiters are pioneers of the concept. From open days to recruitment road trips across the country to the fanfare surrounding varsity match-ups between two rival sports teams and other collegiate traditions steeped in school spirit, community marketing in higher ed is as old as higher ed itself. 

Why? Because community marketing works. This concept plugs right into the most-emotional part of the entire higher ed journey: an authentic sense of belonging. A sense of belonging so strong that it permeates long after graduation and can even transcend generations. 

This marketing concept, which includes any type of action which involves and engages students directly, makes the viewer feel included and engaged. In other words, you’re not just showing off your higher ed community, you’re providing an opportunity for users to test drive it. If successful, a community marketing initiative leaves a target audience feeling like they’ve dipped their toes in what it’s like to belong at your school – and eager to jump in. 

But are tried and tested community marketing efforts withstanding the test of time? 

As digital-first generations of students enter the realm of higher ed, we’re seeing melt rates climb and retention rates drop. Higher ed marketers find keeping up with the exponential growth brought by digital demands to be challenging. Students themselves are arriving at campuses every fall without the confidence they need to reach their full academic potential.

That’s why we created this guide – a tool to help you plan your 2023 higher ed community marketing strategy. We know you have the winning formula, but we have the latest tips, trends and data for you to put your plan across the line. Each section unpacks different challenges encountered in digitizing community marketing for higher ed and how you can approach each with confidence and success in 2023.

1.1 What do we mean by “Community Marketing for Higher Ed?”

Community marketing for higher ed is a tactic which leverages candid, engaging and non-intrusive connections with students with a goal of creating organic, self-sustaining, and brand-loyal groups. Unlike other more traditional marketing methods, designed to push information to students, like PR stunts or paid ad placements, community marketing strategies are designed to instill an overwhelming inclusive sense of trust with a goal of initiating intrinsic organic demand. 

In layman’s terms, and for the purposes of this guide, we frame this type of marketing as “student-centric,” even “service-based,” as its methods anticipate student needs by providing the tools they need to conduct research on their own time and terms. 

Common community marketing tactics for digital audiences include leveraging different channels, virtual spaces, forums or hubs for students to interact with one another, pose questions to faculty or staff within an unstructured candid environment, or participate in interactive virtual events.

1.2 Social media is only part of the community marketing equation 

While social media channels play a large role in effective higher ed community marketing initiatives, community marketing serves as an umbrella term encompassing other important touch-points. These complementary efforts include initiatives like emailers, virtual events, peer-to-peer (P2P) chat applications and student ambassador programs, to name a few. 

Basically anything designed to spur student involvement in your marketing efforts can be classified as a community marketing play. Think of it like an open-ended orientation session, where prospective students are being invited to meet your current students, meet your brand, meet your city, meet your school, and meet your faculty and staff, in a comfortable, safe and no-obligation environment of their choosing. 

Therefore, for the purposes of this guide, social media refers strictly to the channels themselves, as not to confuse community marketing with social media marketing, social media optimization, social marketing and/or social media community management. Effective digital community marketing is not just running a couple social media channels – it’s so much more. 

1.3 Why are we talking about community marketing in higher ed?

Student enrollment and retention challenges are reaching crisis levels in higher ed. In the last decade alone, enrollment numbers in the US are down three million – with only 41% of those who do enroll going on to graduate in four years or less. This concerning trend is also occurring across the UK. 

 

A large part of this issue could stem from low levels of student confidence with their chosen higher ed paths. Unibuddy data tells us that over 50% of students lack confidence in their core academic abilities, with over 30% doubting their ability to see their program through to graduation. Combine this with their reported concerns about lacking the necessary social skills to make friends, network and succeed, and you have a recipe for melt. 

 

How do you fight back this crushing tide of nervous doubt? You flood prospective students with the empathetic good vibes brought only by effective community marketing. 

High levels of trust and empathetic inclusiveness are what makes community marketing so successful with students. According to Unibuddy data, for example, one in five Gen Z students don’t feel represented in paid higher ed advertisements. Meanwhile 92% of the same group say just speaking with a current student, a keystone of any community marketing strategy, helps them make an informed decision about where and what to study.

 

And  if you don’t provide students with the hallmark tools of an effective community marketing program, tools which enable self-initiated conversations with trusted voices, they look elsewhere. Unibuddy data tells us that 55% of Gen Z turn to social media channels to research schools, with 40% reporting TikTok and Instagram as preferred search engines.

1.4 Common Challenges to Community Marketing in Higher Ed

Common community marketing challenges facing higher ed marketers and recruitment teams often stem from digitization, safety, content control and external competition. While digital tools for community marketing help increase reach, on account of their more open format, they also open potential doors to malicious actors and extreme competition which can dilute or hurt a higher ed brand. 

Some common community marketing challenges for higher ed marketing and recruitment teams include:

Digitizing offline brand experience

Higher ed marketers and recruiters know their offline community marketing efforts work. But they need to scale this process to larger digital markets and audiences. 

Ensuring student safety 

Virtual environments increase accessibility to community marketing assets for all prospective students. But they also increase accessibility for malicious actors. Higher ed marketers need to ensure any virtual space they endorse is within a controlled safe environment built specifically for their market.  

Getting the right data 

On account of their interactive nature, community marketing channels are a treasure trove of raw, unbiased information about student target audiences. But collecting this data can be difficult, controversial, and even unlawful, without the right tools.

Avoiding omnichannel overload 

As omnichannel customers, Gen Z work across multiple devices, platforms and mediums to get the information they need. Allocating marketing resources to run multiple channels can be overwhelming for marketing teams. 

Working within predefined budgets

There are a multitude of tools and solutions available to higher ed marketers and recruiters looking to get in front of their target audience. But how does one discern cost over net value? And what tools are actually needed?

Competing with influencers 

Whether on TikTok, Instagram, or newer emerging social media platforms, like BeReal, influencers are professional social media users who enjoy followerships numbering in the tens of thousands (even millions). Seeing as 55% of Gen Z appeal to social media channels for where to go to school, influencers serve as primary competitors for higher ed marketers. 

Appearing authentic to your audience

Unibuddy data tells us that nearly half of all higher ed professionals have difficulty in reaching Gen Z. Part of this issue lies in scaling personalized and authentic marketing experiences for every prospective student. 

Identifying and building audiences 

Without the right audience data, it can be difficult to determine where and how to place community marketing assets for maximum exposure. With that said, without knowing where and how to place community marketing assets, it can be difficult to collect audience data. It’s a conundrum. 

Maintaining brand control

While candid authentic conversations are a primary objective of community marketing for higher ed, maintaining brand presence in these conversations can be difficult without the right control valves. 

Creating inclusive environments 

If not set up correctly, open group forums can ironically serve as a detriment to creating atmospheres of inclusivity. Unibuddy data tells us that 67% of students are not confident in their social abilities – and the greatest fears of Gen Z students entering higher ed are making friends, fitting in, and being accepted by their peers. As a result, many prospective students might shy away from meeting their peers, even online. 

1.5 What makes community marketing effective for higher ed institutions?

In addition to their ability to empower students to choose how, where, and when they connect with your marketing team, there are several top-level benefits to community marketing methods for higher ed institutions:

Reach students earlier 

Don’t wait until the first day of the school year to begin hyping your higher ed brand. Virtual student groups can be tailored to specific programs, extracurricular interests or geographical areas to help prospective students find their people.

Provide accessible paths to higher ed

In-person events are great for prospective students to meet and greet your team. But what about those who cannot attend? Running interactive virtual events can help expand accessibility to information your website just can’t provide – like which library is the best to study at for a history student.

Integrate authentic voices 

As trusted peers of Gen Z, student ambassadors are your best in-house resource for reassuring prospective students that they are a good fit for your school. Community marketing platforms can help expand their influence online.

Compete with social media platforms 

Social media channels, like TikTok and Instagram, are where the majority of Gen Z goes to conduct their research if no realistic alternatives exist. Investing in engaging solutions which live under your brand umbrella give you more control over messaging and student safety.

Compete with your competition 

Over 60% of higher ed institutions have existing digital, student-to-student, platforms. Don’t be caught on the other side of the fence.

More authentic, less intrusive 

Gen Z don’t feel represented in ads. They don’t engage with generic messaging. They want hyper-personalized interactions with people who have actually walked in their shoes. Community marketing tactics are designed to enable these peer-to-peer connections they trust.

More engaging

Website copy is great for learning about specific program course offerings, admissions processes, getting a campus map or seeing a list of extracurricular sports activities. But this information can be one-directional, institutional in tone, and strictly “customer-facing.” The flexible, candid, student-centric nature of community marketing channels enable natural room for students to start the conversations they need to get the information they want.

Translates your amazing higher ed brand online 

As you already know, brand colours, fonts and web-copy aren’t what set your school apart from other higher ed institutions – it’s the people, the vibe, the collegiate spirit. Community marketing is all about creating student-centric materials for students to take a look into your world without all the noisy fluff.

Less expensive and regenerating 

From digital groups or hubs to one-on-one, student-to-student, connections, a primary benefit of community marketing tactics is that they are plug-and-play once initiated. There is no need to keep pumping them up with money, time and resources, students can initiate and maintain the connections they make.

Better handoffs for better long-term retention 

School spirit isn’t something that just happens, it needs to be cultivated and earned. Community marketing works to inject school spirit into your student recruitment and admissions process, ensuring students are excited to join a student body before setting foot on campus. As a general rule: students who want to be at your school don’t want to leave your school.

Initiate empowered decision making 

At the end of the day, you want prospective students to choose your school over competitors confident they made the right choice. The inclusive, engaging and trusted environments presented by community marketing methods not only reassure students of genuine concern, but also empower them to ask their own questions.

2.1 Overview

On account of their broad scale and less rigid, looser, nature, higher ed community marketing campaigns need to be focused, relevant, clear in objective and data-backed at every possible step. 

Launching a community marketing campaign without proper planning is akin to boarding a transatlantic liner with no set tacked course – where even small miscalculations can quickly cause major problems down the line. 

This section observes the basic fundamentals of where to start planning a digital plan for a community marketing campaign. By checking off these essential steps, you can ensure you arrive at your intended destination, right in front of your student audience.

2.2 Beginning a Community Marketing Campaign  

Determine audience and objective 

This may sound like a no-brainer, but the most-important step to launching a successful community marketing campaign is ensuring that you know who your campaign is for. Unlike traditional digital higher ed marketing campaigns, where messaging is pushed to a dynamic-selected audience, community marketing focuses more on filling a specific need or want. 

As such, any community marketing campaign needs to provide a specific solution to a specific audience goal. Close is not good enough for these campaigns, you need to hit a bullseye every time. This means that understanding your audience, while always important for any type of campaign, is further compounded in importance for effective community marketing.

A report from Salesforce on “student-centric” marketing argues that part of your audience identifying process needs to be rooted in quantifiable behavioural data. This data, from conversational insights on higher ed chat apps to engagement data gathered from a personalized email invite campaign, can be crucial for determining where to focus your efforts, when to reach them and which students are most-likely to benefit from your content. When you know exactly who you’re targeting and the behaviour you can expect from them, the rest comes easier. 

Consider Indiana University Bloomington (IU). IU knew they wanted to create a forum-like space where students from India, Taiwan and Korea could ask questions about their university beyond a transactional level. Knowing their audience, IU also knew they needed this space to be branded, specific to higher ed and safe to reassure international students of legitimacy. As a result, IU adopted Unibuddy Community to host student-to-student messaging groups and quickly saw traction. One group, “Future Hoosiers 2022 – India,” sent over 850 messages with questions ranging from academics to why cricket isn’t a bigger sport in the US. 

In addition to hitting their objective, the above example illustrates the importance of knowing your audience inside and out. Had IU hosted a virtual event, without market knowledge, would anyone have attended? Would a student hailing from India encounter influencer messaging telling why they should consider attending IU? Perhaps? But then again, unless you’re playing horseshoes, close just isn’t good enough. 

Sketch out priorities and goal measurement 

Similar to determining an objective of a community marketing campaign, sketching out priorities and goals is how you can measure success. Without clear metric goals, on account of their fluid nature (a virtual group, for example, could theoretically stay live forever), an objective may never be met. Be sure to ask yourself how you would define a successful objective and how to quantify it for other interested parties. 

The University of Leicester had a goal of reducing student anxiety pre-enrollment to help boost likelihood to enroll. To quantify this, Leicester invited offer-holders to join specific-tailored student-to-student groups hosted on Unibuddy Community and tracked how many went on to complete their course of study. As a result, they were able to quantify their gains – which included a 23% jump in undergraduate enrollment and just shy of $7.5M (£6.3M) in additional revenue. 

 

Setting quantifiable goals also has the additional benefit of helping you plan future campaigns. If you meet your objective, but don’t see any needle movement across several key goals and priorities, you gain valuable information for improving subsequent campaigns. In this sense, unlike more traditional marketing campaigns, community marketing is more pliable and configurable to the point where even negative information is valuable. 

Speak their language in their voice 

Community marketing isn’t meant to replace human-to-human interactions in higher ed. It’s meant to add a degree of humanity to your other digital assets. Unibuddy data tells us that 72% of Gen Z students use your website to research initial program and campus offerings at your school. But, for every 10 students who visit your website, one leaves if they do not feel “good vibes.” 

 

But what are “good vibes?” Unibuddy data tells us that Gen Z demands personalized, authentic, and familiar experiences. Good vibes are feelings which make them feel welcome, unintimidated and warm. In other words, you want to ensure that any prospective student interacting with your brand has an opportunity to feel included, feel like they matter and feel like there’s a place for them at your school. Something like adding a chat bot cannot achieve this degree of personalization.

This is where community marketing can help add some color to an otherwise cold generic institutional brand palette.  

By wrapping student ambassadors, a quintessential part of community marketing in higher ed, into your digital recruitment experience, you grant prospective students access to people they consider their peers. As people who have walked in their shoes, prospective students trust what your ambassadors have to say about your school and they can help validate brand claims. 

If, for example, you list on your website that you have one of the largest libraries in the country, a student ambassador might be able to add a more human element to this claim in that it might also have a great cafe for hanging out or is conveniently attached to a student center where they play chess every Sunday. 

The caveat with leveraging student ambassadors into your larger marketing plan is that you might worry about losing brand control. The general trend on this? Don’t sweat it. Your student ambassadors are there because they want to be there. 

If you script them, they’ll sound unauthentic. If you try to control what they say, they might not drop the personal gems that can help win a prospective student over. Our data tells us that 92% of prospective students who speak with a student ambassador are more likely to make a decision about your school. A further 45% say speaking with fellow students prior to arriving at school helps bolster their confidence to succeed. As the adage goes: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  

Maria Bentley, Assistant Dean at Alfred University’s School of Art and Design, says that it’s this laxing of control over messaging which makes student ambassadors so effective. She argues that by allowing student ambassadors more autonomy to speak on their own terms, they appear more authentic to prospective students, without conditions, ulterior motives and speaking in a language which is relatable to their peers. 

Understand brand reputation and industry trends

Another primary checkbox of any community marketing campaign is ensuring industry and brand trends are wrapped into your plan. To encourage engagement and participation of your target student audience, you need to make sure your plan is aligned with what your audience expects from your brand. 

Student safety and privacy, for example, are major topics of concern for higher ed institutions at the moment. In addition to far-reaching privacy laws, like the EU’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), which dictate how, why and where European citizen data can be stored, shared and used, there are also more local concerns about how students interact online. 

So how might this play out in a community marketing campaign? Perhaps you have a student ambassador outreach program which invites like-minded students to join a WhatsApp group of students to discuss programs of interest. While this program might seem like a good idea on paper, there is potential for safety, brand reputation and privacy being thrown out the window. 

Consider that WhatsApp is an external chat app which isn’t accountable for your brand and not built specific to higher ed. Anyone can join these groups and you have no control over content which is shared, in addition to asking students to provide their names and phone numbers, which is enough to get you in trouble under multiple privacy jurisdictions. Then there are additional problems like the exclusion of students who do not feel comfortable or safe joining these groups who are subsequently put at a disadvantage. 

Does this really sound like something which would help your recruitment and marketing efforts? How would these issues affect your higher ed brand?  

With a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tool built specifically for higher ed, like Unibuddy Community, you can leverage full control over group interactions, from access to a user’s request to remain anonymous. Users who conduct infractions may be warned or removed from group discussions. This way you could get the objective you want while satisfying brand and industry demands for safety and privacy. 

Identify available data and measurement capabilities

No plan is successful without data and no data is successful without a plan. It’s a conundrum which should be taken seriously but, at the same time, with a grain of salt. While data is the best way to inform and hone in your plan, if not available, it is of equal importance to plan how you plan to acquire data (and what data). 

In addition to ensuring whatever tools and platforms you plan to use have the analytical capabilities you need to collect data, it’s recommended that you use a waterfall stage-by-stage rollout of your plan at first. While going “all in” with your plan might get you faster results (whether positive or negative), a more gradual plan can provide you with the early data you need to adjust your plan accordingly. 

University of South Wales (USW), for example, wanted a community marketing solution which could keep offer-holders “warm” until they arrived on campus. Instead of jumping in with both feet, USW began conducting small tests across multiple messaging platforms, finally settling on Unibuddy Community after successful focus group results. Now, instead of flying blind, this school can confidently embed Unibuddy Community into their recruitment pipe knowing more or less what to expect. 

Ensure brand presence  

Without brand presence, you become just another school in the higher ed pool. While reaching more students is important, you want to ensure you don’t lose brand control in the process. Always ensure your community marketing initiatives are designed with your brand in mind – that’s what you’re selling. 

But what is meant by brand presence in community marketing? It’s not about controlling dialogue, it’s about controlling how your brand is displayed, protected and grown. If, for example, you’re looking to source a tool to connect student ambassadors with prospective students, be sure to know where this tool can live, how invites are sent, what the tool looks like from a user perspective and what sort of control you have in the backend. 

At Unibuddy we create community marketing tools which are tailored specific to higher ed. From backend conversational insights to our best-in-class P2P, student-to-student chat app, Unibuddy Chat, which can be embedded anywhere on your website, featured within aggregator content, like Studyportals, or pushed to prospective students, our software-as-a-service solution offers a variety of ways you can leverage the power of P2P without losing brand control. 

2.3 Selecting Community Marketing Solutions 

Community marketing can be a massive undertaking for marketing or recruitment teams of any size. From channel coverage to language to the platforms you need to run it all, it can be absolutely overwhelming. The good news? There are solutions which can help you scale, run, and succeed with your plans. 

This section looks at the criteria building you might consider when looking for community marketing solutions which can snap to your campaign. Use the following rubric to start narrowing down your search:

What community marketing tools are available? 

Before committing to a community marketing solution, create a short list of tools which might help you achieve your objective. While initial costs are a popular way to vet tools, value is a better way to sort the best tools which bring ROI. Be sure to cross-reference your data, brand and privacy requirements against any solution. 

Also be sure to take changing student demands into account – something 53% of higher ed professionals say is the current most-significant disrupter for higher ed. With virtual events, look for tools, like Unibuddy Events, which provide hybrid options – something 86% of higher ed professionals say will continue. This enables you the flexibility to run hybrid, in-person, or virtual events according to changing student preferences.  

 

What features do you need?

As a fairly loose term, community marketing in higher ed encompasses any initiative which fosters inclusive engagement in a marketing initiative. As such, when vetting tools, be sure to have a clear understanding of what features you actually need and whether this tool has multiple applications. 

You might, for example, be looking for a tool which can be used for recruitment – but can also pivot to help with your retainment rate. Unibuddy Community has applications throughout the student journey, from keeping offer-holders engaged to running groups for current students during the school year. It’s this flexibility which can help drive ROI while demonstrating long-term value. 

What sort of data do you need to collect?

Data is the best resource you have to inform your community marketing campaigns. Without data, you are essentially throwing a dart towards a board blindfolded. When sourcing a solution, be sure to check whether you can collect the data you need – and that it is within the realm of various privacy laws. 

Unibuddy has baked data collection features into all our higher ed solutions. With Unibuddy Chat, for example, you can collect conversation insights which can help you understand what students are asking and what they’re looking for. All Unibuddy data collection features are GDPR-compliant.

What features does your audience demand?

Understanding your audience is crucial to executing an effective community marketing campaign. In addition to providing the tools prospective students need to initiate engagement with your team, you need to ensure these tools offer a seamless user experience. True engagement should be fluid and natural, with as little steps as possible. Look for tools which can create a seamless branded experience for your audience.  

Where will this solution live?

Accurate placement of community marketing tools is crucial for engagement. Depending on your campaign, and campaign objective, you need to ensure any solution you choose is easily accessible for your target audience. Tools which are not easily accessible, require too many steps to access, or are not trackable, are probably not going to work. 

With Unibuddy Chat, for example, you can embed a widget directly on your website. This ensures all traffic coming to your site has the opportunity to connect with student ambassadors. As a rule: If your tool is not visible, it’s not going to be used. 

How hard is it to implement this tool?

Digital tools are supposed to make your job easier – not harder. If a community marketing solution is too hard to implement into your process or tech stack, it’s probably not worth your time. Look for tools which are easily embeddable, easily shared and provide the backend admin support you need for fine tuning your process. 

In addition to being easy to implement, Unibuddy’s suite of community marketing solutions are specifically built for higher ed. Our team is available to ensure a seamless transition regardless of your situation.  

3.1 Overview

Any community marketing campaign needs traction before it can grow to be successful. While you might have the tools, data, and planning locked down, what is your plan for ensuring success? 

This section provides ways you can ensure community marketing success in higher ed:

3.2 Integrating community marketing with brand initiatives 

Think of every brand property and channel you have and how you can integrate community marketing into them. From your website to your events to your current brand initiatives, there are multiple ways you can introduce your existing audiences to your community marketing assets. You might also try introducing these assets to other segments of your student recruitment or marketing pipeline. 

The National College of Ireland (NCI), for example, wanted to create more digital touchpoints across their “Young Future Leaders” program – an initiative designed to connect young people across the globe considering higher ed programs. Leveraging the Unibuddy Platform, NCI generated 340 quality leads for their undergraduate program. This is a perfect example of how integrating community marketing solutions with existing brand initiatives can generate positive results. 

Another good example of integrating community marketing into existing brand initiatives comes from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. In an effort to bolster their enrollment numbers, they looked to digital community marketing solutions for help. By integrating Unibuddy Community with their existing processes, the school saw an uptick in the likelihood of student enrollment of 85%.

 

While these are just a couple of examples, the takeaway here is that not every community marketing campaign needs to be standalone. By integrating these tools and methods with your existing brand initiatives, you can supercharge your results.

3.3 Keep a tab on social media channel trends

Social media channels alone are not what define effective community marketing as a whole – but they’re a big part of it. This rings true particularly for the realm of higher ed, where target audiences consist of the biggest consumers of social media content. Be sure to maintain a presence across every social media channel you have capacity for – but don’t overextend yourself. 

Here are some quick trends and tips to consider for integrating social media into your community marketing campaigns: 

Students use social media for higher ed research

Although 72% of Gen Z visit your website first to begin researching your higher ed institution, 55% continue to social media channels to get a second opinion. Nearly half these users report preferences for TikTok and Instagram – which is aligned with overall market trends for this same demographic. 

 

Ruling and rising Gen Z channels emphasize authenticity 

While Snapchat remains king in terms of providing real-time content, rising stars favour even deeper dives into Gen Z demands for personalized authenticity. Enter apps like BeReal, Locket Widget, Yubo, and Poparazzi, channels which don’t only favour authentic moments – they demand them. Yubo literally markets itself as a an app for “building community and making friends.”

Third-party apps are great – but won’t always give you the control 

While your higher ed brand might be gaining traction on TikTok or building followers on Instagram, are you really getting the insights and control you need? Do you get the conversations you need to inform other marketing initiatives? Are they safe? Or can anyone join? Do you have complete brand control? Can they live on your website? 

These are all questions you need to ask yourself when investing time, effort and resources into a third-party social media app. While it’s important to maintain a presence across most of them, make sure you have a brand-controlled hub for prospective students and current students alike to interact on. In addition to providing you with the data you need to improve their experience, you can ensure your brand is providing students with a safe space to be themselves. 

Enlist the help of student ambassadors

Keeping ahead of every Gen Z social media trend can be exhausting. So don’t. Enlist the help of your student ambassadors to help shoulder the load. In addition to being social media users themselves, as peers of Gen Z, student ambassadors can speak to prospective students at levels you can’t. 

Keep it short. Keep it relevant. Keep it engaging. 

As a rule, for platforms like TikTok and Instagram, you should try to keep content snappy, shareable and entertaining. Students aren’t going on social media to learn about which professor teaches Psych 101, they go there to learn about what it’s like to be a student at your school. Effective community marketing videos posted to social media should help fill in the formal gaps of what your school has to offer – told by the people who go there. Prospective students should be able to get an idea of what it’s like to be a student at your school through your social media. 

Why so serious? Have fun and be creative

The best viral social media content is content which shows the more playful social underbelly of campus life. Lighthearted pokes at the seriousness of your libraries or rating which cafeteria serves the best food can be comedy gold while showcasing to prospective students that these services exist. If, for example, the best place for late-night studying is Library X, prospective students feel like they’re not only in on the secret but also aware that they won’t be alone in their studies. 

3.4 Build influencer networks to build brand authority 

Influencers may be your competition, but they can also be assets to your brand. When selecting student ambassadors, be sure to also consider applicants who are active on social media or want to build followings. While student ambassadors are excellent resources for prospective students to engage with and ask questions, they can also be an excellent resource to help run your social media accounts. 

Andy Jackson, Recruitment Events Manager, at the University of South Wales, says you need to show off your higher ed institution the same way you show your home to your in-laws. While you want to show everything off in the best possible light, you also want to make sure you’re having fun doing it. This can make you appear more authentic. 

One perfect example of leveraging influencer content for engagement, without going off-brand, is a recent post from the social media team at Birmingham City University. To show prospective students the human side of their city, the group visited Karen’s Diner, a restaurant infamous for its intentionally insulting service and verbal abuse of customers. Their resulting “review” of this satirical restaurant experience on TikTok saw nearly 400K unique views, 20K likes, and hundreds of engaging comments. 

While not directly related to the university, BCU’s post leveraged viral marketing and social media to execute a perfect community marketing play. Prospective students engaging with this content were introduced to the more human side of BCU outside academics and the content made them feel included in the joke.

3.5 Higher Ed Tech SaaS solutions can help

Community marketing initiatives can be overwhelming without the right solutions available at your fingertips. While you may be an amazing marketer, and an amazing community marketer, you need a user-friendly and scalable platform to accomplish your objectives. You need the right data to make informed decisions regarding your community marketing strategy. You need tools which make your life easier, not harder. 

This is where higher ed tech Software-as-a-Solution (SaaS) solutions, like Unibuddy, can help. Our suite of higher ed community marketing solutions are easily integrated with your marketing and recruitment processes, from frontend assets, like your website, to backend infrastructure, like your customer relationship management (CMS) systems. With our entire dedicated support team, innovative updates, and robust data-collection tools, we are ready to help you hit your 2023 community marketing objectives and goals.