A marketing perspective on the value of the social network site (SNS) relationship between selected South African Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and 'Digital Native' prospective students.
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Abstract
The landscape for Higher Education offers prospective students extensive choice
when it comes to furthering their education and this competition makes it essential for
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to market themselves via multiple platforms,
including online. The use of Social Network Sites (SNSs) as a marketing platform has
become increasingly necessary to engage the Digital Native prospective student. The
value of engaging this sector of the prospective student market can be significant as a
large portion of the young generation seeking to further their education fall within the
Digital Native generational group, and also utilise SNSs such as Facebook and/or
Twitter. This study focused on the South African context of SNS marketing
communication and the opportunities to build relationships with the Digital Native
market, especially in understanding the value for HEIs to recruit prospective students
via their SNS page. Ten different HEI SNS pages were selected for analysis, both
public and private across a wide geographical spread in South Africa. Both thematic
and reception analyses were conducted to understand the recurring patterns and user
responses to the marketing content. While the majority of the data was qualitative,
there were also quantitative data considered to understand which HEI posts and what
types of subjects attract high or low user engagement. The findings reveal that for an
HEI to build meaningful and continuous relationships with their market and to gain
the recruitment value from it, commitment and investment of time and resources are
required due to the demanding nature of SNS marketing. It is important for HEIs to
understand the advantages and disadvantages of the platform and then decide on their
strategy, design their post content and have skilled staff to execute and manage it in
order to effectively engage prospective student users on the page. A suggestion for
further research in this field would be through access to the HEI’s applicant databases
to track the success rate of SNS marketing communication to actual recruitment
results. The nature of SNSs is that they change, as would users’ demands and needs,
therefore these platforms should be continuously researched and analysed to optimise
on any new marketing opportunities that emerge.
Description
M.Soc.Sc. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2015.
Keywords
Social networks -- South Africa., College students -- Social networks -- South Africa., Internet marketing -- South Africa., Computers and literacy., Theses -- Culture, communication and media studies.