The impact of social media engagement on university student recruitment

Abstract

Education marketing managers are increasingly becoming aware of the benefits of social media engagement in recruitment marketing for colleges and universities. Today's prospective student is tech-savvy and information driven. Despite a general emphasis on social media engagement in a university marketing strategy, there is minimal research on the influence it has on university student recruitment and the amount of effort that universities should dedicate to social media engagement. Therefore, this study focuses on the influence of university social media engagement, particularly Facebook, on university student recruitment in the form of student applications.This study compares two Canadian public universities to examine how strongly their social media engagement on Facebook influences university student recruitment. This study aspires to shed light on the importance of social media engagement, whether it is a strong factor or merely a contributing factor to student recruitment.To conduct this study, the researcher analyzed two Canadian public universities: 1) a research-intensive university with a paid social media engagement focus, and 2) a comprehensive teaching university with an organic social media engagement focus. Social media engagement data was extracted from Facebook Insights and student application data proxy to the university student recruitment was collected from the Office of Registrar for the respective universities. Pearson's r coefficient correlation and Linear Regression methods were used to analyze the data in terms of linear relationships and interactions effects to draw conclusions.The study tested three different social media metrics in three hypotheses to examine the influence of the university social media engagement: the university social media user engagement, the university social media content engagement, and the university social media

Social Media Impact on University Reputation and Enrollment

“…However, the association between effective social media strategies and platforms and student enrollment decisions was not statistically significant. This implies that while effective social media strategies and platforms play a role in shaping student perceptions, they may not directly impact their enrollment decisions (Y Ahmadi, 2019). In addition, the study found a positive and significant association between university social media presence and effective social media strategies and platforms.…”