This is the school year we embrace short-form vertical video for social 🎥📱
It’s October: Most colleges are well into their fall semester, and campus is buzzing again with palpable energy and fresh faces. Our content calendars are so neat and organized, filled with exciting start-of-semester events and moments. Let’s make this the year we finally start embracing short-form vertical video that the algorithms favor and our prospective students want to consume.
There’s a time and a place for the beautifully produced three-minute, landscape-oriented ode to campus, but the platforms and our audiences are craving a different type of content. (You have TikTok to thank for this 1080x1920px dominance on nearly all platforms, by the way, but it just makes sense.)
So, get yourself a tiny mic, find a student content creator and embrace the rawness. Let’s make stitched-together Reels and text-on-screen TikToks a majority of your social media content strategy, especially if your priority audience is prospective students (and whose isn’t in 2023?). With a couple of changes, these pieces can also be posted as YouTube Shorts.
Most social media managers would agree that reframing assets for each platform can be a time suck, so consider tools that are out there to help with this or encourage your office’s video team — if there is one — to be part of this process. Too often, MarComm video teams seem focused on other videos, such as donor pieces, longer institutional spots or presentations, but we fully believe video teams should also be making social-first, Gen Z-pleasing assets given how important this content is to enrollment efforts and the number of potential eyeballs on them.
In case you needed a visual reminder of why you must go vertical:
State of the social media marketer
Those working in social media are overworked, overwhelmed and under-appreciated. Anyone who has had this role has known that for a long time, but now we have research to back it up: The 2023 Social Media Career Report from Hootsuite is jam-packed with validating stats and anecdotes. The 3,800 pros who were surveyed said they juggle too many different tasks, work long hours and feel misunderstood by the people they report to. But what’s amazing is that despite that, 77% of those surveyed are happy to work in social media.
Perhaps the most alarming stat in the report is that 29% of devoted social media marketers have not advanced into management roles. This signals that social media as a career is still not respected among company leadership in most industries. What can we do in social media higher ed to ensure that the social media specialists and managers of today can become the CMOs and MarComm VPs of tomorrow? Starting now, we have to stop working on an island. We must be integrated into nearly every team in the office, and if that’s not the case, we must push to have a seat at the table. We should be transparent and collaborative with our strategy and processes and content plans, over-reporting the positive impact of social media and share our results to anyone who will listen, but especially to our leaders.
Hootsuite created this profile of the average social media marketer they surveyed. Does this track with who you are? ... If only bonuses were a more common higher ed practice đź’°
The rankings debate - and how it applies to our social media accounts
RWJ Research recently surveyed prospective college students and their parents, and discovered that rankings are not the most important consideration when deciding what institution to attend. Many of us in the higher ed MarComm world are not surprised by this, but it’s interesting to see it noted in research data. What does this mean for how we promote rankings on our institutions’ social media accounts? The survey did find other important factors students and their families use in their decision-making, so one step is to ensure you are planning content that hits these themes:
Academic programs, majors and whether they match the student’s interests
Cost of attendance
Campus safety
Academic quality
Ability to avoid debt
Job placement rates and preparation programs
We all know that if our senior leaders want a post on our social media about a ranking, that does not mean we will refuse, but it is handy to equip yourself with data to back up your reasoning for suggesting other messages in your enrollment-focused pieces.
This is not the first time I have mentioned Taylor Swift in my hot take — sorry not sorry to those who are tired of hearing about her — but I’ve been thinking, what is a dream Swiftie Effect scenario for a college or university? As soon as Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s name was paired with Taylor, he started feeling the love: He has gained nearly 900,000 new Instagram followers in that short time, his jersey sales are soaring and quarterback Patrick Mahomes even felt the pressure of getting his top receiving target a touchdown because of Taylor. The NFL is even enjoying increased mentions, viewers and StubHub ticket searches.
What can colleges and universities do to encourage excitement and momentum on their own scale that is similar? (For the record, her dad is an alum of the university I worked for and we were never able to figure out a way to utilize the Swiftie Effect, so it’s not easy!) I have my ideas — it involves leveraging influencers, maybe not Taylor Swift-level, but alums of your school, those who are visiting campus, family members of alums, current students … you do sometimes have to do some digging, be social listening at all times, put yourself out there and ask. It’s time we enter our edgy era in higher ed social media marketing.
This might involve getting your Mascot to do the “august trend” on campus, or hosting a #1989TV listening party where you encourage your students to post and tag you. When it comes to engaging the Swifties on your campus, the more fun you (and your leadership) have with it, the more they’ll say “Long Live” to your institution.
Around the socials
> Report: Referral traffic from Facebook and Twitter/X has tanked
RWJ Social helps higher ed institutions shape social strategy through a variety of services, including influencer engagement, benchmarking, monitoring and more.
