Social media engagement and Chinese international student recruitment: understanding how UK HEIs use Weibo and WeChat

ABSTRACT

Using a novel longitudinal methodological design, this is the first study to investigate how and to what extent UK higher education institutions (HEIs) use Chinese social media platforms to engage with users. The data was gathered from examining 163 UK HEIs’ use of Weibo public accounts in 2012 and 2018 and WeChat in 2018, combined with student data and university ranking data from secondary sources. The analysis demonstrates a positive association between HEIs’ social media engagement and increase in Chinese student numbers studying at those institutions, after taking into account of university reputation. This study identifies effective social media strategies to gain popularity with Chinese users. Interaction and public replies to followers may generate trust and electronic word-of-mouth to attract more users to follow HEIs’ social media accounts. The findings contribute to the knowledge in the field of higher education research in relation to cross-cultural communication and social media marketing.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media marketing
• student recruitment
• international students
• Chinese students
• Weibo
• WeChat

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Dr Nick Pearce, Ms Lisa Cunningham and Dr Wei Cui for their support with data collection. The author thanks Dr Kaitlynn Mendes, Dr David Bartram and Dr Ellen Fry for their critical review and comments. The author is solely responsible for the analysis and presentation of the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Three HEIs (Universities of the Arts London, Kingston University and the University of Cambridge) had number of Weibo followers greater than three standard deviation of the mean.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by research support  grant of the School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester.