Viewing universities through the lens of Instagram
According to a recent report from EAB, commenting on a piece in Time, applicants to university in the US are using rather unconventional means to assist with selecting the right place to study. Rather then using official websites and university social media challenges potential students are looking at current students’ instagram accounts to get a feel for what life is really like on campus. Given the prevalence of instagram use among students this perhaps doesn’t seem like such an unlikely move:
“I definitely went through a bunch of people’s Instagrams just to see what the life of an average student was,” says Jackson Barnett, a 19-year-old now at Wesleyan University. “It’s like having a tour of the school by a real student who isn’t paid to show you the school and tell you the things the admissions office wants you to hear. It’s like you’re getting a tiny slice of that college and it’s real and raw,” he says.
Barnett says he first checked out the official Instagram accounts of schools and then searched by geo-tagged locations on campus. This gave him a sense of school culture and feel at the institutions he was not able to visit, he says.
“We’ve all been using Instagram to see the authentic side of the college, beyond the pretty, glossy brochures,” says 18-year-old Isabel Song, a senior in Colorado.
Some schools have taken note. At Bowdoin College, Holley Sherburne, director of digital and social media, has a “student digital media team,” five members of which chronicle their daily lives on Instagram.
Depictions of parties, school protests, and underage drinking do not generally concern Jeannine Lalonde, University of Virginia senior assistant dean of admissions. Students frequently make their accounts private in case a future employer looks at their profile and see illegal activities, she says. And in terms of protests against the school, “I want a prospective student to know that a protest is OK,” she says.
In fact, Lalonde even encourages prospective students to check Yik Yak anonymous message feeds on campus to get an even better sense of school culture.
Undoubtedly there will be images and activities which prospective students would not see in a prospectus or an on official website but it is unlikely that Instagram will present a wholly unreal impression of an institution. So, why not embrace it? It may be of limited real value in itself but along with more traditional recruitment methods Instagram may just offer a little bit extra which helps sell the institution to potential students.
Hi Paul
This was exactly one of the concepts that we pitched to the University of Warwick over two years ago when putting forward an idea for their undergrad prospectus redesign. It was a way to encourage students at Warwick to participate in the marketing process and help deliver a genuine approach what Warwick offered. The concept had great potential for further linking of print and social media with additional campaigns.
The concept was not chosen and a ‘safe’ option was opted for by another agency.
Ironically, relations between the administration and students at Warwick appear to be at an all time low, with the recent dissent by students on the recent Warwick rebrand (with the logo resembling Madonna’s famous Jean Paul Gaultier bra). And this is only the most recent in a string of episodes.
I wonder if relations would have been more amicable if they’d engaged students more actively in their marketing approach such as we’d recommended.
(apologies for delay in responding)
Interesting stuff Tim – does sound like you were way ahead of the curve at that time. Still a great idea though!