Quantitative Content Analysis of Clark University Social Media Publicity

Quantitative content analysis of Clark University social media publicity

It’s no surprise that colleges have embraced social media. Today, from students to faculty members, from parents to staff members, everyone is using Facebook, YouTube, and other social media websites. If colleges want to reach their audience, of course consider using social media, too. Clark University has been using social media as early as 2009. This paper will analyze the posts that Clark University issued on social media Facebook during May 2016 and try to find out how Clark utilizes social media to advance educational mission; what kind of content Clark issued on social media platform; whether the social media convey the educational mission; how to improve social media publicity in future.

The educational mission of Clark University

From Clark’s official website, I know that the mission of Clark university marketing and communications is: Elevating Clark's standing and reputation as a global university of consequence—in undergraduate and graduate education, transformative research and community partnerships—with prospective students, alumni, educators, public and private leaders, media, employers and foundations.

The mission has five key objectives:

• Institutional Identity: Develop a unified brand strategy and create a compelling messaging platform that positions Clark as a small, urban, liberal arts-based research university that empowers action on critical human concerns and powerfully and distinctly prepares its students to pursue their passions with a purpose in the world
• Awareness and Distinction: Advance awareness of the value and appeal of a Clark University education to elevate our academic profile and more effectively target, reach and attract ideal students
• Thought Leadership: Position Clark University as an innovator in the delivery of liberal education and use-inspired research to gain peer and public recognition as a new model of higher education
• Visibility: Promote faculty research and scholarship through targeted media and peer outreach campaigns to position Clark at the center of global issues and enhance our national reputation
• Alumni Engagement: Intensify alumni pride and inspire deep personal, professional and financial connections with Clark's vision and mission, resulting in more significant giving and lifelong involvement

Target audience

The target audience for colleges is students. A successful social media strategy for colleges should look at the many angles of a student’s life. The purpose of using social media for schools is to attract potential students, interact with current students and stay connected with alumni. If Clark has built strategies for those core audiences, it can expand to other segments such as prospective faculty, donors, government stakeholders, industry, and community.

Clark’s social media overview

Except official website, Clark has a multiple new media for publicity, include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Flickr. I collected some numbers about Clark social media, which can give you general information about the posts and followers. Also, I list numbers of WPI, a college in the same city as Clark, and make a simple comparative analysis.

Facebook: Clark receives 14,160 people like, and 41,411 people have been here. Clark also gets 141 reviews, 4.6 of 5 stars. WPI has 20,531 people like, 53,314 people have been here, 4.4 of 5 stars from 187 reviews.

Twitter: Clark has posted 7147 tweets, 6,378 followers, following 350 others and received 607 like. WPI has 14,295 tweets, 10,352 followers, following 5,276 others and received 6,542 like.

Instagram: Clark has 670 post, 3,332 followers, and 70 following. WPI has 1,294 post, 3,819followers, and 2,099 following.

YouTube: Clark has issued 37 playlists, including 1,134 videos, 829 subscribers. WPI has issued 48 playlists, including 1,613 videos, 2,046 subscribers.

Graph 1： Posts of Clark and WPI

[pic 1]

Graph 2: Followers of Clark and WPI

[pic 2]

Besides, Clark has Pinterest, posted 25 boards, 884 pins, 14 likes, 481 followers, 93 following. Clark also has joined Flickr in 2010, and issued 4,400 photos and gets 44 followers. But WPI doesn’t use Pinterest and Flickr.

From Graph 1 and Graph 2, we can see that WPI has much more posts and followers than Clark. Clark has 3,395 students and 197 faculties (Clark.edu), and WPI has 6,057 students and 478 faculties (WPI.edu), twice as many as Clark. More population, more posts, and more followers. However, on Facebook Clark gets 4.6 of 5 stars, higher than WPI that gets 4.4 of 5 stars. What does the star-rating mean? A spokesperson from Facebook explained the blue star-rating:

 “We’re extending star ratings on Facebook from mobile to desktop – to make it easier for people to discover great businesses around them. This is beneficial for both businesses and consumers. Star ratings encourage more people to rate a business, making it eligible to appear in News Feed and help others discover a business they didn’t know about previously. For businesses themselves, this also leads to greater brand awareness. (Sophie Curtis 2013)

The blue star is an average rating from reviews by fans on Facebook (this includes reviews consisting only of star-ratings and no text). It’s good for Clark to have a high star-rating from fans, which let Clark know exactly what fans think of Clark’s posts.

It’s hard to evaluate effect of all social media of Clark. This paper focuses on one social media of Clark --Facebook. Facebook is “a social utility that helps people communicate with the people they know, and it is used by people to share comments, opinions, photos, and videos with their friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues. Facebook’s platform enables people to share information through their social graph, the digital map of people’s real-world connections.” (CiPr, 2012: 61). Also, some earlier studies of Facebook usages among students have shown that students who used Facebook intensively the more they noticed “they were integrated into their university community and the more con dent they were in their ability to secure support from distant high school and hometown relationships.” (manago et al., 2012: 370) Based on this, Facebook is a good tool among those social media above for content analysis to discover how Clark engages with fans.