Social Media Marketing For Education Sector – Benefits, Trends, Risks, And Methodology

Discussion

Discuss about the concept of social media marketing and its usefulness in the domain of education sector to gather potential clients and students.

Social media marketing has been a trend and seen both positive and negative results. However, a deeper analysis have proved how a thoroughly researched and planned launch of social media marketing can be beneficial for School of Business and Law. In this era of modernization, businesses are turning to popular social media platforms for promoting their products and services and enhancing their yearly revenues by marketing their product through social media.

Trend findings

Considering the fact that more than 90 percent of the youth generation is actively involved in social media usage, Higher education institutes are using social media for both promotional and marketing purposes (Armstrong et al., 2015). Some of the frequently used social media platforms are Facebook, Snapchat and LinkedIn. It can be noticed that social media trends are changing rapidly. Hence global Higher educational institutes are adjusting their social media strategies keeping in mind the current trends.

Two of the most popular social media platforms used by Universities are Instagram and Snapchat. In 2016, Instagram and Snapchat have recorded more than 250 million active daily users. Universities are found to be posting videos and photos that portray how a daily life of a 1st year student studying at their universities looks like (Sashi, 2012). Apart from that, frequent posts are evidenced, where a university writes about what makes a particular course interesting to study.

Augmented reality

Higher education markets are embracing augmented Reality. For instance, the Loughborough has created their own image filters consistent with their branding.

Instant Gratification

Universities are found to be using Facebook live for showing footage of their campus tours, sporting events and other activities associated with the lives of their students (Davis III et al., 2012).

Usage of social media for the growth and advancement of the university can be beneficiary as well as it can bring several adverse effects that takes lots of effort of the authority to resolve. The organization “the School of Business and Law” uses social media to attract students of different section and countries so that it can enhance its reach in global education market (Wendling, Radisch & Jacobzone, 2013). However, while doing so it might face several risks related to its business in the social media. These risks are related to its security of data, potential criticism and engagement through comprehensive dialogue, organizations reputation management, trust related concerns and the precious time of the company while serving for the generation as the leading educational hub. In this era of social media, there is a section namely trolls, that spreads negative publicity regarding anything famous (Rutsaert et al., 2013). Hence, if the trolls attack the organization and spread negative things about it, then the organizations reputation are put on stake. Further if the university mistakenly comments anything negative about some other institution, then legal issues arises that hampers the reputation of the university. Therefore, these are the risks and issues related to the use of social media for the benefit of the organization (Wendling, Radisch & Jacobzone, 2013).

Trend findings

In order to develop effective strategies for promotional purposes, it is highly crucial for the School of Business and Law to conduct an effective research. In order understand the current promotional and marketing trends through social media, both primary and secondary researches will be conducted. The research methodology that will be used by the mentioned Institute is Quantitative research methodology. This methodology will involve development of a close ended questionnaire consisting of 10 questions. The samples for this research method will include principals of three highly recognized universities in Australia (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016). Apart from that, close ended questions will be asked to 10 students of those universities. The secondary research process will include literature review of 4 journals and article associated with the usage of social media by International higher education sectors. After gathering information by both primary and secondary research processes, the data obtained from the research will be analyzed. The analyzing process will take approximately 3 to 4 months. 

The scenario of social media marketing is very prospective owing to a number of reasons like the creation of Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. In Instagram more than half of its users are daily active on the platform checking numerous numbers of times a day. This henceforth proves the advantages of using the platform as a potential tool for social media marketing and making users friendly with the advertisements in an authentic manner (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). Another potential platform for social media marketing especially so because of its user base comprising of students who are either unemployed or looking for better jobs. This naturally will facilitate a better flow of product information and generate growth of the advertising campaign. It keeps the users continuously updated and fills the newsfeed with relevant information into which they have previously showed interest. This assures for a successful social media campaign today in the 21^st century by ensuring a careful mixture of competitiveness and innovation while creating the brand image amongst the consumers (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). The social media managing team is at this juncture, responsible for creating the advertisement in a discernable fashion so that it can be accessed through the various forms of social media interactions, for instance the different communication activities that these social media platforms have opened up. The interactive level has further widened up the scope of advertising and has made possible the thorough distribution of information, this has also increased the participation rate of individual users, networked communities bringing together an interested gathering of people in the particular brand.

Augmented reality

While discussing about marketplace a social media advertising is also about the professional management of negative feedbacks and channelize them for making improvements to the product (Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2016). Customer-oriented news, information and images can propel the customers into choosing School of Business and Law the content generated should be infused with missions, values and ideals of to ensure the best possible outcome of the campaign for School of Business and Law.

The marketing approach and strategy is an important section while employing social media for the advertisement and marketing purpose in national and global market (Castronovo & Huang, 2012). Therefore, the university should implement several goals and strategies so that the approach can be properly applied on the process. The organization should firstly develop a social media marketing related goals, to solve the major challenges that the workforce will be facing while operating social media for marketing purpose (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). Secondly, the organization should research about the audience that will be watching the advertisement on the social media platform so that maximum reach can be accessed. The organization should develop a matrix of its most important aspects so that in a shorter campaign the entire benefit this organization is providing to the students can be incorporated (Castronovo & Huang, 2012). Further, the institution should focus on its competitive landscape so that before writing the content, the employees are aware of the goals they are going to be achieved for the university. Furthermore, the content should be engaging and interesting so that the audience watching this can understand the variety and depth of the subject related knowledge they will be acquiring by studying in the institute (Ashley & Tuten, 2015).

This is the most important section an organization should focus on as the entire staff might not be aware of the organizational needs and requirements regarding social media usage for marketing purposes (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012). For this assessment, the organization should be aware of the teams and departments that will be active over social media for marketing, the opportunities related to it, the social media policy so that no legal consequence can arise and finally for the time period the institute will be using social media for driving their campaign (Peters et al., 2013). Understanding the social media related risk of the institute will help the higher authority to identify the shortcomings within the system and they will be able to organize workshops for the teams and employees who will be dealing with social media campaign. This will help to solve the risks and the training provided to the employees will increase their ability to deal with positive as well as negative comments of social media posts that is a part of their campaign (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012). Therefore, by meeting organizational needs and requirements, the higher authorities will be able to identify the loopholes in the system and fulfill those so that compact system for social media campaign can be generated.

Instant Gratification

Pros

1. Dispersal of more information due to various social media marketing tools can be one of the advantages for the university. Since social media has become equally indispensable in both the developed and developing countries, educational institutes are at a flexible position for the distribution of information presented in a graphical manner for visual pleasure (Stelzner, 2014).
2. Due to social media marketing systems, the institutions are at a favorable position to create brand image and make it popular amongst the population. Due to the integration of search engine, the universities can also filter through the accounts of those users who are looking for a position (Selwyn, 2009). This improves the popularity of these advertisement campaigns and makes them gain relevant customers. Social media campaigns are primarily customer-oriented and therefore have the potentiality to make the business grow and prosper by the proper sharing of data and information.

Cons

1. Social media campaigns however have the potential to tamper with confidential business documents. As it is with social media campaigns, the comments and reviews are always online due to technological advancements, this can also come in the way of the organization’s popularity and competitive edge (Davis et al., 2012). The misuse of openness can be of potential advantage for the rival companies that the firm possesses.
2. Social media marketing when used by educational institutes however, requires them to put important information on the public domain which can therefore result in misuse of key information. This can naturally result in spamming of information for the purpose of security breach (Fuchs, 2017). It is true that with the system of social media marketing the consequences can range from loss of potential customers to spamming of university mails.

Owing to a fast paced technology driven world, it is imperative to consider social media marketing as a potential avenue to promote information regarding a product or service (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). With the development of internet and its accessibility even to the remotest of regions, social media marketing is the only viable way to reach up to the better part of the audience. Over the last one decade, the primary aim of social media marketing has been to explore in-depth the impact of social media marketing of either a product or an organization (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012). It has been the best way by far to create a loyal community of customers sharing same ideologies and beliefs concerning the product and amplified brand image. Without the creation of a strong brand image, it is natural that no product or service can thrive in the market. One can also conduct a brief analysis of consumer behavior or buying pattern and re-direct the campaign accordingly. Social media marketing campaigns have been responsible for the creation of user generated contend by making adequate usage of software tools (Macnamara & Zerfass, 2012). The university must be familiarized with technology in order to embrace the many-faceted benefits of social media marketing, which advertises a product through interactive marketing. With the introduction of Innovation Adoption Process, it has become easier to access information regarding consumer’s preference and acceptance for new technology. The tool provides accurate result with a careful consideration of factors like the relative advantage of the product and its suitability, compatibility of the innovation with the users, complexity surrounding the innovation that users may face, and the extend up to the which innovative can be made to use. This would also suggest further suggestions that would improve the innovativeness (Castronovo & Huang, 2012).

From the above analysis some of the core findings and recommendations of the service are:

1. It is evident that social media marketing increases visibility rate of a particular product and service and consequently increases the product awareness amongst the customers. However, as suggested it is best to include only relevant and information which can be put to common public knowledge.  
2. It is apparent that social media marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to carry out advertising and therefore adequate money should instead be invested in areas of recruiting employers for the management of social media content and advertising.  Major emphasis should be given on the content that is being published online since social media marketing centers round how two or more individuals relate to each other and function by creating a dialogue. The platform is about bringing people together over the sharing of a product and service and therefore generating a more sustainable form of marketing.  
3. Security updates and thorough checking are of utmost necessity since due to the easy access to information anybody has the power to create fake social media pages and campaigns. Sufficient emphasis should be given to ensure that the university has copyright to each and every content and information that are posting online to prevent misuse of the data.

Conclusion

Therefore it can be stated that social media has huge potential to draw prospective customers and students for School of Business and Law. The prospect of gaining new market and upgrade its reputation can be achieved by a careful consideration of some of the factors of social media marketing like budgets, allocation of resources and employees, advantages, disadvantages and the scope for creating a thriving market

Reference List:

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education,45-47

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Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130-1132.

Castronovo, C., & Huang, L. (2012). Social media in an alternative marketing communication model. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 6(1), 117.

Davis III, C. H., Deil-Amen, R., Rios-Aguilar, C., & Gonzalez Canche, M. S. (2012). Social media in higher education: A literature review and research directions. report printed by the University of Arizona and Claremont Graduate University, 8.

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Fuchs, C. (2017). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.

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Schivinski, B., & Dabrowski, D. (2016). The effect of social media communication on consumer perceptions of brands. Journal of Marketing Communications, 22(2), 189-214.

Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons, 12-15

Selwyn, N. (2009, July). The digital native–myth and reality. In Aslib Proceedings (Vol. 61, No. 4, pp. 364-379). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

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Wendling, C., Radisch, J., & Jacobzone, S. (2013). The use of social media in risk and crisis communication.

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