Social media branding strategies of universities and colleges in Canada: a mixed-method approach investigating post characteristics and contents

ABSTRACT

Higher education institutions (HEIs) invest substantially in their social media presence for marketing, branding, student engagement, and recruitment purposes. To better understand HEIS’ current social media strategies, this study developed a mixed-method approach to analyze Facebook content and posting practices of postsecondary institutions in Ontario, Canada. A total of 13,467 Facebook posts from 42 HEIs were collected using the Napoleon Cat application, and subsequently coded and analyzed. Applying descriptive statistics and regression analysis alongside content analysis, results demonstrate that HEIs generally followed similar practices concerning posting frequency, length, types, and timing. Although HEIs employed all five main branding positions – namely Elite, Nurturing, Campus, Outcome, and Commodity – HEIs were found to concentrate on promoting Nurturing elements and Campus activities. Moreover, results revealed several significant differences in strategies of institutions with different sizes (large, medium, and small) as well as different types (university and college) in both marketing activities and branding positions.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• brand positioning
• marketing communication
• social media
• differentiation
• engagement

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Henry Duong, Kevin Le, and Ahmad Movarelkh for their dedicated research assistance to this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).