Does universities' posting strategy influence their social media engagement? An analysis of the top‐ranked higher education institutions in different countries

Bibliographic Data

ID21592482
AuthorsPaul Capriotti (0000-0002-9398-5886, Department of Communication Studies Universitat Rovira i Virgili Tarragona Spain), Rodolfo Martínez Gras (0000-0002-7423-4374, Department of Sociology II Universitat de Alicante Alicante Spain), Ileana Zeler (0000-0002-5550-1000, Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Audiovisual Communication Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Barcelona Spain, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume77
Issue4
Pages911-931
Publication date2023-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHigher Education Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0951-5224 • E-ISSN: 1468-2273
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/hequ.12439
OpenAlexW4378220966
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited46

To ensure the widespread dissemination of information and to foster interaction and dialogue with users, higher education institutions need to develop an active profile on the social networks. This paper analyses the influence of universities' posting strategy on their followers' engagement (reaction, virality and conversation) by measuring the level of activity and type of presence on their social networks. A content analysis was conducted to analyse 90,000 posts by 70 universities from Europe, the United States and Latin America on their institutional profiles on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The universities' posting activity on their social media is moderate (with an overall mean of 7.04 posts per day), but the interaction rate is very low (0.237), far below the recommended levels of engagement. Notably, increased activity by universities on social networks does not lead to greater engagement but points to an inverse relationship between the two. Our findings also indicate that university‐created content (UCC) achieves a higher level of engagement ( = 169.41) than university‐shared content (USC) ( = 126.18). This study explores the effect of universities' posting strategy dimensions on their follower's interaction

Business · Conversation · Higher education · Latin Americans · Microblogging · Political science · Public relations · Social engagement · Social media · Social science · Sociology · Digital Marketing and Social Media · Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Psychology · Social Media and Politics

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