Instagram currently is the most important social media platform of THWS when it comes to communicating with students and prospective students. A big chance and yet at the same time a challenging task for the THWS social media team. Who is part of the team? What responsibilities are granted to students? And what is meant by "cat content"?
Social media has played an important role in higher education communication for years. What started a few years ago with Facebook, now mainly focuses on LinkedIn and the social media platform Instagram. Looking behind the scenes, we find out how a social media team works, what challenges they are facing and also about the advantages of a higher education account.
The aim is to convey a feel for THWS
For more than five years, the THWS channel has been used to post images, videos and stories on Instagram. "From the beginning, our aim has been to reach students and prospective students where they are when they are online", says Simone Friese, coordinator of the social media team and employee of the Department of Public Affairs and Communications.
Currently, the account has more than 7,300 followers. With nearly 49 percent, most users are aged 18 to 24 years. With 34 percent directly followed by users aged 25 to 34 years. For Friese it is particularly important that the target groups know about what's happening at THWS – from events and projects to important dates like examination and re-enrolment periods. While students also receive this kind of information via e-mail or via other channels on a regular basis, it often gets overlooked. "We want to show the University’s various facets: degree programmes, locations, areas of specialisation. By bringing awareness to the individual's activities, we want to create a 'sense of community'", Friese adds.
"We want to show that we are a hip higher education institution that has a lot to offer", emphasises Hanna Holzheid, student assistant in charge of managing the Instagram account. We also want to address prospective students. According to Holzheid, THWS aimed to give prospective students good reasons to choose THWS and also spark their interest in studying at a higher education institution. The internal statistics show that the current target group is mostly located in the cities of Würzburg and Schweinfurt. But also some users in Munich and Berlin are reached.
The account offers students the chance to work independently
"The special feature of this channel, that is not known to many, is that it is made by students", Simone Friese explains. As full-time employee of the THWS Department of Public Affairs and Communications (HSK), she is the only non-student member of the team. Not only is she responsible for coordinating the social media team but also for the prospective student marketing. "One of my tasks is to make student assistants familiar with their responsibilities. The aim always is for them to be able to work as independently as possible and also to enable them to grow with the task", Friese says. The student team fills the channel with contents. The HSK-employee is also responsible for daily coordination, for improving the concept and also for many invisible tasks.
At the moment, Simone Friese and four students from Media Management and Information Design form the social media team. The tasks are distributed according to individual aptitude: "For example my responsibilities are content creation, and community and story management", Hanna Holzheid explains. Anna Breuning is responsible for creating reels and posts. Carlotta Reif supports the post creation and plans articles for "Fokus Orange", the online magazine of THWS. Luca Bettinger's focus is graphic design.
Contents are planned months in advance
Simone Friese and her team see another major advantage in the primary visual communication of Instagram. You can show faces and post videos and pictures instead of presenting followers with long texts.
Every other week, the social media team meets to discuss the current state and to prepare new topics. The content plan is drawn up for up to three months in advance. This provides the team and the account with a structure. The plan contains recurring categories, which are to be filled every week. These include current news but also the so-called cat content which includes funny pictures and quotes about studying that are supposed to brighten up everyday higher education life.
Organising resources and content is a challenge
"Resource management is our top priority. It really is our biggest challenge", Simone Friese explains. In the beginning, coordinating work, time and money was not easy. Especially finding a suitable timeslot for everyone given the student assistants' deviating schedules was always a big challenge to Friese. However, these things have improved: "We have found our workflow now", she emphasises.
Hanna Holzheid names the content aspect in addition to resource management. Informative at all times, entertaining and up-to-date – a real challenge that she always keeps in mind. "Our contents are supposed to be interesting to students and prospective students but should not bore them either", Holzheid says. For this, you needed to find the right time for the posts and hit the algorithm. Furthermore, students would often be in the bubble of their own degree programme: in many cases they only followed their own faculty on Instagram without even knowing about the main THWS channel.
Instagram offers a lot but also has its limitations
According to Friese, Instagram offered many advantages and opportunities. "But what’s important to us: We don’t want to force anybody to use social media." This means that all information posted on the account must also be available on other channels.
Friese also states that there were no plans that THWS also join TikTok. "You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube."
