How Can You Integrate Organic Social Media into Student Recruitment Strategies? Insights from the Royal College of Art
I’m old enough to be able to remember the start of social media, and it would seem like ever since then, people have been arguing about whether it’s a marketing tool, a comms tool, an engagement tool, or something that transcends all of these categories.
It’s certainly a powerful student recruitment tool, but often there are tensions within teams around ownership and content strategy, which can lead to it not being used to its full potential. At the Royal College of Art, we know that over 60% of the students that join us follow our main social media channels; we also know that 5% of students were first attracted to us by social media. So, we’ve worked hard to link our organic social media into our student recruitment activities, as well as other forms of content and media relations work.
Below are some tips that have worked for us - and feel free to check out our channels on Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok!
Make sure everyone in your team understands about the importance of student recruitment and what they can contribute to it.
Ultimately all university comms and marketing teams are revenue generating, and that’s a useful perspective for everyone to work with.
Build on that by sharing data and priorities across the team, rather than keeping it within marketing.
What do we know about our students? What territories are we looking to reach? What programmes need additional support? The more everyone understands the challenges, the better they can help think of solutions.
Have a clear vision and strategy for what each of your social media channels needs to do.
Our Instagram channel, for example, prioritises insights into the current student experience and celebrating the achievements of more recent alumni, to reflect its audience; our LinkedIn channel looks more at the achievements of academics, and alumni across their careers.
Once you’ve got the building blocks in place, give your social media teams freedom!
Forcing them to use advertising assets or messaging or putting strict campaign restraints on their work can limit their ability to make the most of their platform and channel knowledge - organic social media needs to build on your main campaign themes, not replicate them.
Use your students and academics as creative content drivers.
We pay students to create content and regularly engage with academics to find out more about potential interesting projects. This enables much more authentic content that is better tailored to your potential audience. Give your team the time and freedom to work directly with their community and take a collaborative approach.
Remember that social media is not necessarily a driver to your website - they're their own spaces and offer a unique insight and a regular touchpoint for audiences.
Someone may not look at your website daily, but could well engage with your social media daily, and get an authentic view of what student life is like, allowing you to build and grow relationships in a more holistic way.
Getting our content right in this way has led to really substantial growth and high levels of engagement as a result - do check out our channels on Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok to see how this works!
