How to Engage Students using Social Media
The proliferation of smartphones in the classroom and the stats on social media usage by college students showcase the overwhelming influence of social media on students’ communication habits and their inclination to the network. Data from the Harvard Institute of Politics indicates that 87% of students use Facebook, 47% Twitter, 37% Pinterest, while 34% make use of Snapchat.
As students now turn to social media to as well as to air their ideas, we look at how manufacturers and businesses who are looking to reach out to this market segment can take advantage of this trend.
The whole paradigm behind successfully communicating with the students utilizing these platform is to determine what the students want. The article below provides some insights into a successful engagement.
Table of Contents
- 1. Creating thriving social media channels
- 2. Create incentives to use these channels
- 3. Create challenges and competitions
- 4. Provide a one-stop location for educational resources
- 5. Create price incentives, gifts packages, giveaways and treasure hunts toward educational objectives
- 6. Provide news and updates on their favorite interests
- 7. Post regular updates
1. Creating thriving social media channels
Most businesses and organizations do have a social media presence, however, these are not maintained on regular basis, leading to disinterest by customers.
Two objectives are required here:
- Create regularly updated social media channels
- Regularly communicating the availability of these channels to consumers
As an example, English football club, Manchester United, in spite of the domestic MUTV, is seeking out other channels i.e. the YouTube channel, to reach fans more regularly and consistently.
2. Create incentives to use these channels
“The 1000th post gets a free Bluetooth device”.
For students to commence using this channel, incentives have to be in place to motivate the behavior.
VPN software provider, TunnelBear, provides an additional 1GB package to free subscribers, to tweet about TunnelBear services.
3. Create challenges and competitions
Ranked as one of the most famous challenges in history, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge attests to the fact that challenges do work. Aimed at a nonprofit objective, and garnering a healthy 115 million dollars for its foundation, businesses can take advantage of the utility of challenges to connect with students’ market segment.
4. Provide a one-stop location for educational resources
Linking these with the primary reasons college students are in school, companies can provide resources to ease the anticipated challenges or workload. For example, for students facing essay writing challenges, writing services like https://writingpeak.co.uk/ essay writing service UK could be recommended. Students with math problems can be directed to WiseChalk or Mathematics Stack Exchange.
5. Create price incentives, gifts packages, giveaways and treasure hunts toward educational objectives
The company that successfully links students’ social media preoccupation with college objectives, is the company that is going to hold the students’ attention for a very long time.
To ensure that students not get distracted by social media, companies can link students’ progress in school with rewards to be gotten from the company. With the ease in transferring rewards, incentives and other packages via e-channels, regular and easily attained reward packages can be created to motivate students to improve in school performance.
6. Provide news and updates on their favorite interests
What would be the primary reason college students log on to social media? To stay up to date on subjects that interest them!
Definitely, all work and no play might not lead to a highly productive student.
Whether it is news, sports, movies, music, fashion or entertainment, keeping the students up-to-date on what is going on in the world around them, and especially in topics that pique their interests, would keep them coming back to the media channel to stay updated.
7. Post regular updates
The essence of social media is to keep subscribers engaged. Engaged means to regularly communicate with the target audience.
In a highly competitive business environment, customers are demanding to be let in on how companies carry out processes to the creation of products and services, the measure in pricing, and requests for improvement in product and service offers. They require instant updates on product fixes, relay product suggestions, and receive information on new products.
Through social media channels, customers can be successfully kept engaged.
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