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

Abstract

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 (x̄ = 169.41) than university-shared content (USC) (x̄ = 126.18). This study explores the effect of universities' posting strategy dimensions on their follower's interaction.