Higher education social media marketing: 12 content types universities post on Facebook

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore and categorise how universities in the USA and Thailand use Facebook as a platform to engage their audiences. Although many higher education institutions (HEIs) currently use social media to communicate, research on how they use the platform is lacking. In this paper, the author studied the Facebook posts of three universities from the USA (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Stanford) and three universities from Thailand (Mahidol, Chulalongkorn, and Thammasat). A total of 1394 Facebook posts by the six universities in 2014 were analysed using content analysis. This study established 12 post types: research, faculty, curriculum, campus, students, alumni, industry, events, products, image and reputation, announcements, and others. The most common post type by USA universities is research, whereas the most common post types by Thai universities are events and announcements. From the findings, the author suggests that HEIs have to be both proactive and strategic on social media. Furthermore, to publish great content on Facebook, universities have to visualise and tell stories well.