“We need someone to promote events and deadlines and create other admissions-related content on our social media channels. Can you do it?”
I was approached about contributing to the social media channels for the graduate school I work for about a year ago. I was thrilled. Creating and featuring more content on our channels for prospective students felt important, and I was ready to take on the task.
In the past, our channels were used only to connect with current students and alumni. However, I wholeheartedly believed that showing campus life and community on social media can help attract and enroll new students. Instagram is a particularly effective tool for this purpose. As HubSpot points out:
“Instagram is an undeniably important one for teens and young adults — in fact, 72% of teens use Instagram, and 67% of U.S. adults ages 18-29 use the social platform.
Plenty of universities and colleges have taken note of Instagram’s popularity, and now use the social platform as an opportunity to appeal to current students, alumni, and high school prospects alike. After all, when it comes to choosing which social platforms to spend time and resources on, it’s a best practice to go where your target audience goes.”
Instagram and Enrollment Marketing
Instagram is a perfect platform for enrollment marketing for a few different reasons. First, the platform’s visual nature allows an institution to put its best foot forward and highlight the beautiful spaces on campus that future students might otherwise not be able to see. You can share images, videos, and live content exhibiting what makes your school distinctive, whether that’s the surrounding location, campus grounds, or the students themselves. (Or likely all three.) Second, Semgeeks reports that, on Instagram, colleges and universities have an average of 10 times the amount of interactions per post compared to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. With higher levels of engagement, it makes sense for colleges and universities to prioritize developing organic content for this channel. Third, Instagram provides valuable insights within the app, helping marketers assess the effectiveness of their content.
When I agreed to join our social media team, a formal conversation about strategy, goals, and measurement did not take place. Like many other higher education institutions, staff and time were limited. It was difficult for our marketing and communications team to dedicate time to these discussions when they were already juggling many competing priorities.
Yet, even without formal strategy discussions or guidelines, I knew that my role was to help boost brand awareness and drive enrollment numbers. Because this work had never been done before at my school, I did not have benchmarks or previous work to draw from. I jumped in and decided that I would assess my work, goals, and strategy after one year of contributions.
Looking Back and Moving Forward
Upon hitting the one-year mark, I knew it was time to look back at my work to get a better sense of where I should go next. But first, I wanted to better understand which Instagram metrics are the most important for enrollment marketers to monitor to achieve institutional goals.
Instagram Insights
Within the app, Instagram Insights provides vital information on your account’s followers and overall performance. These insights show how often audiences view content, the best times for engagement, and how often content is shared.
But, with so many different metrics, it can be challenging to determine which insights to look at to measure the success of enrollment marketing efforts. I wanted to fully understand each metric before deciding which ones to prioritize measuring in the future.
1.) Reach
Reachis defined as the number of unique users that saw your Instagram post or story on any given day
2.) Impressions
When it comes to impressions, Sprout Social explains that: “While commonly confused with reach, impressions are the total number of times your content could have been seen. If your impressions are higher than your reach, it’s a sign that your audience is viewing your content multiple times. Look for posts with a high impressions-to-reach ratio for an indicator of what’s performing well.”
3.) Engagement Rate
As I dug deeper into my research on Instagram metrics, I noticed that engagement rate was mentioned in several different articles. For instance, HubSpot describes the Instagram engagement rate as “a quantitative measure of how users interact with the content on your profile. It takes into account your number of followers, likes, comments, and shares.”
Yet, that metric is not available in the Instagram app. I soon learned that social media managers must calculate engagement rates by using the following formula.
4.) Audience
Instagram gives content creators a lot of valuable data about their audience. By taking a quick look, I discovered that most of our audience is local and that 65% are between 18 and 34. While this is not particularly surprising, it is critical data considering that students of all ages apply to our graduate programs. Moreover, I also gathered additional detail about our audience’s gender and most active days/times. These specifics will help guide strategy for future content.
Knowing these details may also assist with creating algorithm-friendly Instagram content. College Marketing Group states that, “algorithms on Instagram determine the priority with which your posts show up in your followers’ feeds. And this is determined by the type of posts and the other Instagram accounts that your audience engages with the most. Other factors include the timeliness of your posts, how often you use your Instagram account, and how many people you follow.” If we know that a large portion of our audience is based in the Buffalo area and is most active on Mondays at 3 p.m., we can use this knowledge to develop content in the future.
5.) Story Analytics
Socialinsider believes the future of Instagram is in the app’s stories feature. Creating engaging Instagram stories to deepen the connection with your audience is of utmost significance. Social media managers can utilize stories by hosting Instagram takeovers, offering polls, or developing other attention-grabbing content. As with all other aspects of Instagram, it’s essential to track the performance of your stories.
You can do this by looking at impressions, follows, and navigation:
Next Steps
After gaining a better grasp of these metrics, reviewing the effectiveness of my content, and researching what is currently working for other colleges and universities, I had a clear idea of the Instagram tactics I wanted to employ to raise school awareness and boost enrollment numbers.
These tactics include:
- Posting more consistently and intentionally concerning day and time
- Sharing more stories and including more video content in our feed
- Experimenting with shorter captions
- Prioritizing geotagging, account tagging, and more intentional hashtag usage to maximize exposure
- Posting more about Buffalo while also pulling for user-generated content about Buffalo (and other topics)
I have also begun setting S.M.A.R.T social media goals to help track my efforts.
After becoming more familiar with Instagram Insights, I had a much better idea of where to look and how to measure the effectiveness of new tactics. I also had benchmarks reflect on when trying and measuring new approaches on our social media channels. The only thing left to do? Jumping in and experimenting all over again… but, this time, a little bit smarter thanks to Instagram Insights.