Why HigherEd should delete all those feeds

When I do 3E Digital Roadmaps for clients, I tell people that I have a bell in my office that I ring when someone shuts down a feed. As the algorithms change on all social platforms, it is worth wondering if that Career Services Facebook Page – or TikTok, or Instagram feed is helping, or hurting.

Here are 10 reasons why the decision to use finite marketing resources might not be the best move for the school as algorithms change.

#1: A prospective student = a student = an alum. 

A school does not need an admissions page, a school page, and an alumni page because the person is the same person, just at different times in the journey. When a school attracts people to the page, they become students and then alums. Schools with separate pages need to waste marketing energy attracting people – again – to a page.

Like our page to see how you'll fit in. Like our Instagram to see how events for students. Like our page to see events for alumni!

The algorithm will begin to feed content to cohorts who care about said content.

#2: Confusion.

Marketing is simple, the hard part is keeping it simple. If the school has a Facebook page, an athletics page, a department page, a career services page, or a page for food…it confuses people. If people don’t know what to follow, the school is probably doing it wrong. At many schools, first-year students have way too many things they could like and follow. Simplicity is better.

#3: Changing algorithms.

Facebook and Instagram are moving from a "follow graph" (follow our feed to get content) to an AI graph based on who you are. Instead of "follow this page to get content" Meta is attempting to use events, groups, and content in DM's to deliver content to people. Facebook is aware that prospective families are talking about schools on DM chats, and also aware that schools have content. The algorithm will most likely take content from feeds with a lot of likes, and deliver it to people who might be interested in it.

#4: Bad copy.

The social feeds were smart. They made it dead easy to start one. So study abroad has one. So does career services and the dining halls. This gives a social platform more content to sift through to find a good post. Some of these platforms even say, "your audience hasn't heard from you in a while, you should post." They get more content – even bad content. And the school doesn't get anything. Except, of course, bad content with the logo on it.

#5: Reach.

The English Department Facebook page has 150 likes. The main page is on the first page of a Google Search for the school and has thousands of likes. Why not work with the people who have access to thousands of people to market your thing to more people?

Caveat: a department tea, posted on Facebook, will not get people to your tea. It isn’t a magic platform, it is a marketing platform with billions of pieces of content it can send to students. Your tea will NEVER be one of them.

#6: Location. 

Prospective families check in on Facebook when they tour the campus. At this point, there isn’t anything we can effectively do with check-ins, but events on the main page for prospective students could get them to like the page. Events by career services on the main page could get traffic to those events. One page means less confusion on where to check in, especially tours. One page means that data is taken into consideration when determining whom to deliver content to. Meta is more likely to deliver Instagram content to the kids of a dad who checked in on Facebook – and less likely to deliver that career services content to new students.

#7: The good times are over. 

There was a time on Facebook when your English Department Tea could get people to your tea. It was the early days of Facebook, and people at conferences talked about the power of “conversations” and “engagements.” Those days are over. Social platforms are not magic. They are marketing platforms that you can decide to not use.

#8: There are already too many pages.

The Meta Business Suite says you can manage up to 50 Pages from your smartphone or tablet. No human should ever do this.

#9: Analytics.

Facebook Insights are amazing but very detailed. The csv page download has more than 50 tabs. To download a year’s worth of data is 4-page downloads (50 tabs each), 4 post downloads (10+ tabs each), and 4 video downloads. That’s 12 csv documents with more than 250 tabs. Trying to analyze the success of 10 Pages is a dystopian nightmare, so no one does it. No one looks at the best-performing post or the worst-performing post. No one can really tell what that is for a school because there are so many pages. No one can really identify a strategic goal for a Facebook page other than “get the word out” which is like doing an honor thesis on “Things on the Internet.” It isn’t remotely specific or strategic. So it isn’t “getting the word out” it is getting in the way of the institution's strategic efforts to convince prospective students to visit, apply, and enroll.

#10: Meta is becoming a better content management system.

Higher education is cyclical. Each fall, a new batch of undergraduates seek the “word” of the school. Schools can create “why visit”, “why apply,” and “why attend” posts that include the gym, career services, athletics events (spirit), and academics. Placing those things on siloed Facebook pages that don’t get prospective student traffic means you’re trying to distract people whom the enrollment department seeks to nurture.

Facebook is a good keeper of content. Posts can be reused, reappropriated, and/or repurposed. The new algorithms mean that no one has seen that, yet.

You can talk to the people who manage the Page and ask for your content to be placed in front of prospective students and students and that content can be reused at strategic times in the year. You can go back to doing what you do, instead of trying to get the “word out” on social platforms about what you do.

The reasons to attend your school are the same things that generate nostalgia from your alumni.

Get your enrollment content in the place where alumni are going to engage with it. Use Facebook Events for prospective students, and use Facebook Live to get additional viral reach. All those goals are impacted when there is more than one Facebook page.

Shut it down an experiment.

If you're a social media person for career services, shut it down and experiment with content. You probably have a bunch of employees coming in the next few months, shout them out on LinkedIn. Write a post with an image showing all the logos that come to campus recruiting students. Let the main feeds figure out when and where to post it.

This isn't about not telling stories, it is about not building a platform to tell stories. It is harder because you have to work together. But when you do, you'll tell better stories.

What do you think?