Brain Waves Blog

Defining your target audience is key to your brand messaging. In Episode 2 of Social Strategy Fundamentals, we walk through finding your audience based on demographics and how to tailor your strategies to the platforms they're on. 

Every time a new social platform surfaces, we hear the question “should my campus be on this platform?” While TikTok has been around for a few years, it’s still incredibly popular with your prospective and admitted students. According to Statista, almost half of TikTok’s users are under age 29 and 25% of them are ages 10–19. 

For most of the last decade, the way campuses show up on social media has become eerily similar. Campuses are on the same channels, posting similar content, chasing similar metrics. Social media has become just another set of channels on which to broadcast marketing messages in a one-to-many fashion. The pixel size is different or the on-screen images might move, but much of what is posted on social is just a few creative steps away from a billboard or a TV commercial. I refer to the mentions on social networks holistically as “online conversation,” but let’s be real—there’s very little actual conversation happening.

Lions and bots and trolls—oh my! Online conversations provide organizations with honest thoughts and feelings from their audiences, but are all of those mentions actual people? Bots and trolls aren’t just for science fiction and fairy tales anymore. 

Higher ed social media is tricky. Once in a while, you’ll post a unicorn. Alumni competed in the Olympics, your basketball team made March Madness, the university president received a prestigious award. But the day-to-day content that makes you a consistent voice in the social media world results from intentional networking and subsequently reciprocal relationships.

In the first part of this series, we discussed segmentation strategies for owned accounts. Here in part two, we’re diving into some of the best ways to break down earned conversation.