How Canadian universities use social media to brand themselves

Abstract

This paper explores social media marketing strategies applied by Canadian universities as a tool for institutional branding, recruitment and engagement of home and international students. The target sample involves the total population of Canadian university-status institutions (N = 106). Qualitative data were collected from two major social networking websites, Facebook and Twitter, over the span of six months to provide a comprehensive picture. Additionally, student enrolment data were compiled with the purpose of associating social media implementation with fluctuations of student enrolment. Results reveal that the Twitter platform is generally much more popular to carry conversations, but that Facebook remains the preferred website for university-initiated postings; most of these university-led postings, whether on Twitter or Facebook, relate to campus/student news and events. Findings point to institutions as only one of many message generators, while students and a host of third parties have become the dominant ones.

Keywords:

• social media
• institutional branding
• student engagement
• student recruitment