Social media can be your friend in reaching students. You build a content strategy, launch campaigns, and admit new students on-site. How? Learn here. 

In today’s competitive world, recruiting the best of the best to educational institutions has become more challenging. It remains vital for academic excellence and innovation though. With the digital age in full swing, universities are turning to new instruments to captivate the brightest minds to their places. And lessons from successful strategies become invaluable. A B2B Advertising Agency shares how to employ social media and uplift recruitment tactics. Suitable for digital media experts, SMM professionals, marketing specialists, recruiters, active students, and all inquisitive minds.

What Is Social Media Recruitment?

Social media recruitment is the practice of using social media to identify, draw attention, and engage potential candidates. This form of recruitment is all about utilizing reach, targeting capabilities, and interactive features of social media to upgrade recruitment processes and connect with qualified experts. Originally, the term referred to job recruitment. But now, when the power of social media is more pronounced, specialists in other spheres have started using this tool to interest people. And the term gets applied to new spheres, education in particular. 

Social Media Recruitment In Higher Education

In higher education, this recruitment means attracting and engaging students, staff, and other school members with social media functionalities. Educational institutions can demonstrate academic programs, highlight campus life, engage with communities, and build relationships with people interested in affiliating with the institution. 

Why do schools need social media recruitment?

• Wider reach: billions of active users worldwide, representing diverse demographics and geographic locations;

• Targeted marketing: universities can tailor their recruitment efforts to specific demographics, interests, and behaviors;

• Close interaction: engagement with prospective students and other members in real-time through relevant content, inquiry responses, concern addresses, and personalized assistance;

• Better branding and visibility: showing unique identity and values when sharing compelling content, depicting campus life, and emphasizing student achievements;

• Cost-effectiveness: affordable advertising options that allow universities to reach a large audience without breaking the bank;

• Data analytics: metrics displaying engagement, data about the target audience, and performance of recruitment efforts.

Why do universities and other educational institutions need to use all these instruments? Here is a brief statistics as of October 2023. 80.8% of the world’s population over 18 is active on social media. The average time a person spends on social media a day is 144 minutes. Anything can fit into this time, silly videos, funny memes, sweet cats, and catchy presentations of educational institutions in the area. 

How to Recruit More Students Through Social Media? 

1. Show University Life

This is especially necessary for undergraduates, moving away from home for the first time. They and their parents want to know everything will be alright: dorms are clean, roommates are sane, and university life is fun and rewarding. 

You can post photos and videos with undergraduates, showing their lives, educational process, leisure time, etc. They can share their experience for the applicants to see real people behind the closed doors of a school. It’s only natural that potential students want to know more about everything. 

At the Miami University, real-life experiences are depicted in the Student Life and Instagram posts. Through such content, employees can collect feedback and improve the upcoming content and university experiences.

2. Talk To Famous Alumni

You can intrigue highly motivated students to your university, presenting your influential graduates. In this scenario, it’s like saying, ‘Look! These prominent people all came from here. You want to be that successful? Choose us!’   

Moreover, many universities regularly mention how and what their alumni are doing, thus explaining that university programs and study curricula are well-balanced to enrich students with applicable theory and knowledge.

Also, you can elaborate on the ways to collaborate with alumni. Here are some ideas: 

• Q&A sessions where students and staff members can ask questions. It can be a live video, podcast, written interview, or whatever. You can also ask current students and other followers to inquire.

• Tags or hashtags from your alumni. What are the profits? It shows close bonds with your university, it says that you care and that there is an active life after the university. In essence, anyone can use hashtags: staff members, students, deans, and professors to give insights into university life. 

• Content with upcoming and recent graduates. You can ask about the plans and ideas for the future. In this case, it is easier for future students to cross-reference themselves with graduates since the gap is usually smaller.

3. Set Up Relevant Ads

You can recruit more students by launching ad campaigns. Most social media have customizable ad platforms. With them, you can target the relevant audience, say applicants from 16 to 18, international students, postgraduates, etc.

For each target group, design special ads. Mention how your audience can benefit during and after education at your school. Don’t forget to answer questions and adjust your ads according to the changing behaviors of your target group. 

4. Make Applying Convenient

The process of applying for a course or degree can be burdensome for students of any level. Unclear interface, inconsistent descriptions, slow load times, and many other issues with the application form can deter promising students from applying for your educational establishment. 

Explain how to send applications in posts and videos. You can also make taplinks for future students to conveniently fill in their information and apply for a student program. 

Also, you can develop a mobile application where students-to-be can learn about the university, take introductory courses, accomplish challenges, visit the campus, apply for a program, and whatnot. To build such an app and promote it successfully, consider collaborating with app store optimization experts.

Social Media Trends in 2024

When creating content for your social media, pay attention to current trends. They can help you understand how to demonstrate your university, campus, and dwelling while boosting reach and content interaction. Trends of 2024:

• Personalization. Think about your audience and talk to it: who they are, what they do, how they access information, what their hobby is, and so on. With that in mind, you can produce targeted content that is more likely to engage people: personalized emails, targeted ads, relevant videos, customized websites, etc.

• User-generated content. Real testimonials from students, blogs from staff members, podcasts with alumni, and campus tours with freshmen help humanize your content and advance your chances of resonating with your audience. 

• Live events. Live streaming is going wild these days. More often we see fashion shows, concerts, fights, and grand openings in real time on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. You can adopt this idea for your establishment and live-stream discussion panels, graduation events, Q&As, on-site tours, and so forth. 

• Partnerships. People like to see faces. Giant brands use ambassadors not just to promote their products and services everywhere. They want people to have associations with their brand. Student ambassadors, famous alumni, and industry professionals can represent your school online to invite a bigger audience and build tight connections with it.

• Artificial Intelligence. Chatbots and AI-powered assistants are helping brands communicate with their audience. With them, you can instantly respond to student inquiries, guide them through the admission process, and schedule campus visits. Moreover, you can use AI to generate content strategy and elaborate on sound ideas for your university account.

• Interactive content. To keep your audience engaged and interested in your education, let people interact with it. For that, you can form polls, quizzes, and quick games. Every user action raises retention, which, in turn, inflates credibility and trust. For social media algorithms, it also signals that you provide a valuable product, worth recommending to a larger user base.

• Diversity. Today’s agenda is all about diversity and inclusivity of the underrepresented. You can show that on your media through programs and grants supporting this idea. Depict the faces of real people. Share their stories. It’s important to be true to your values and ideals. Do not just demonstrate variety because it’s a trend. Talk about what is important. Fake emotions and exaggeration can deter the audience instead.

• Mobile apps. You may not even notice how organically all content is translated into mobile format: short vertical videos, sound-free videos with subtitles, intuitive navigation, screenshot-friendly content, interactive checklists and guides for mobile, etc. And it feels strange to see horizontal photos and videos, tons of unstructured text, and inconsistent navigation. Since mobile devices and internet connections become more accessible, you should invent content for social media as well.

These trends in content presentation aligned with a good strategy and proper information, can work miracles for your school. The sooner you get to promoting your educational institution, the better tactics you can elaborate. If you don’t know how and where to start, you can seek professional help from digital advertising agencies and social media experts.