Why do campuses and their partners put so much effort into “brand”? Because good brand building leads to enhanced perception. It's good to start with perception because it's a metric that's measurable and can be applied to multiple target audiences. Perhaps more importantly, increased perception leads to increases in revenue generating metrics—enrollment, fundraising, auxiliary income, etc.
Although they're not the most exciting part of social media management, well-defined guidelines and policies are essential for a consistently effective social media program. In addition to giving you something to turn to in stressful situations, guidelines and policies have a couple of benefits.
Higher education social media managers operated in crisis mode for at least half of this year. It was—yes, I'm going to say it—unprecedented. It also highlighted, for better or worse, the essential role of social media in campus communications.
The average number of institutions a student applies to has been steadily increasing, and your prospective students evaluate your campus against many others. To help your institution stand out, one of the best uses of time and resources is building competitive intelligence—the process of gathering and analyzing information about peer institutions to inform your own positioning.
As a social media manager, understanding copyright is a critical component of your content creation process. And it can definitely be confusing, especially if you have multiple accounts to manage in addition to all of the other aspects of your job.
At the University of Central Florida (UCF), we’ve used influencer marketing with student social media ambassadors to create, collaborate, and distribute content on behalf of the university since 2018. We started the program by finding students who had a decent following on social media and grew it with students who showed eagerness and passion for UCF. The strength of the program and our contributing ambassadors allows us to reach a greater, more influential market of like-minded individuals and create authentic advocacy for our campus.