Attracting MBA Candidates Using Social Media
Today social media is an important part of marketing strategy for MBA programs. Statistics show that 85% of MBA applicants use social media when searching for schools. With this in mind, many MBA programs now have an obligation to maintain a social media presence. However, many schools struggle to develop compelling social media content.
Admission deadlines, school events, and school rankings are typical topics MBA programs post on social media. However, one of the more critical topics which many schools do not take advantage of is current business trends, which my competitive analysis shows to have a significant impact on the number of fans each school has.
Below I’ve listed the current number of Twitter and Facebook followers for the top 5 MBA programs according to Bloomberg Businessweek (the analysis was conducted on October 13, 2011).
On Twitter, current business trends make up a significant portion of content on Wharton, Harvard, and Kellogg’s pages. On the other hand, Stanford and Booth only talk about topics related to school admission, events, and rankings. This difference in content strategy has an obvious effect on the amount of followers, as you can see from the chart.
However, what really supports this assumption is Kellogg’s Facebook page. They have significantly less Likes on Facebook compared to Twitter followers. When we examine the content on each of those pages, we see that they do not talk about current business trends at all on Facebook, even though they do on Twitter.
From this analysis, you see that sharing news on current business trends is a great strategy for MBA programs to use in order to attract followers on social media. General information about topics such as admission deadlines, school events, and school rankings is still important; however, such information will give only students surface knowledge of the school. The type of news that schools choose to post gives students a view into the character of the program and its faculty. For instance, Harvard posted a link to a blog post about how Lady Gaga markets herself in the music industry. This type of content would be more likely to engage someone looking to work in the music or entertainment industry, and would make them more inclined to choose Harvard over other schools.
Using this strategy of posting relevant news on current business trends, MBA programs could better engage their social media followers and attract top candidates from the industries that they are targeting.
Mari Tanaka is a project manager intern at VisionPoint Marketing. She is originally from Japan and moved to the United States in 2009 for school. She loves learning and gaining new experience, and meeting new people!