Perfecting the HE marketing strategy on TikTok

The University of Chichester is killing it on TikTok. It’s secret? Being completely unhinged. You get a student doing a stealthy campus tour (in full camo) at the community’s request; the POV of the one building on campus that was built in 1839; and, my favourite, a reaction vid about not being in the Russell Group. You can’t play it safe on TikTok.

Nathan Monk
Welcome back to Most Clicked, every Monday 9am, we are here bringing you the latest in HE Digital Marketing news. And in fact, what we are actually doing is bringing you the most clicked item from the Education Marketer newsletter. I’m joined as always by good friends Kyle Campbell and Matt Lees. Kyle, what’s this week’s big story?

Kyle Campbell
Big surprise. It’s TikTok related. Yeah, well, it’s the channel at the moment, isn’t it? God knows what will replace it. Hope we’re still around, I’m sure we will be. So yes, it’s the University of Chichester. I came across a TikTok account the other day and also came across it in Nonsensical‘s recent report on the best universities on TikTok, it’s a really good report, I’d recommend it if you can get a hold of a copy. I really like their methodology actually. So they’ve looked at followers, but they’ve also looked like engagement rate on the platform. So if you’re the University of Oxford, and you get millions of followers, they acknowledge that it’s a thing but then they actually look at how people actually engage in your content. So it’s really great report have a look at it.

So the University of Chichester. So I think it just got the TikTok formula down. And I asked them for the videos on this. But you know, they followed that formula of being humorous, and also just being off the wall. You know, one for a better word nonsensical about the whole thing, a lot of it’s hilarious, because it’s just so out there. And one of the things that really stuck out to me is how they sort of turn campus tour on its head, and they got one of their, I think she’s an ambassador to do a campus tour and in full camouflage, and the video is shot with her kind of approaching all these weird things from like different angles. So she’s literally hiding in bushes and filming herself, and she’s hiding under the tables and pointing at things and oh my dod, it absolutely killed me. And I think that the wonderful thing about this channel is that it’s not just appealing to students at the university, but it’s appealing to students in general. And it’s actually TikTok’s on here that addresses that very point.

And there’s also this sense, it’s appealing to people in the education marketing recruitment space because they also take the piss out of how they behave at Open Days and things like that. So yeah, top marks on this one great engagement. Nath, you’re the TikTok expert. And I wonder what you thought about the quality of the content on this one and why it works?

Nathan Monk
I think this edge’s closer and closer every day to our idea of like a HE sitcom, you know, mockumentary style thing, and I love that the sectors got those tropes that even young people identify so quickly, and can take the mick out of you know? Yeah, it just made me giggle at that one in particular. But Matt, you had a really good point right about TikTok on websites.

Matt Lees
Yeah. And actually, it kind of came to me as I was looking at Nonsensical’s report. And early on in the report, they talk about how students can gather factual information from the website. So if you’re if your TikTok account is selling more of the experience, and I’m showing the almost the behind the scenes bits, which I think Chichester’s does really well, but it made me think a few years ago, we started to talk about social validation and how information published by the institution is only part of it and actually, validating that with the real social experience of the students is a really powerful thing to do. But I’ve not seen any examples where universities are using some of that content that’s proving really popular on TikTok in their main website and I wondered whether that’s something that that is worth exploring or whether they are strict they should be kind of kept strictly apart and should never meet kinda thing.

Nathan Monk
It’s funny though, isn’t it? Because so many universities like we must get Instagram on our course pages or something like that, but you don’t see it with TikTok and I don’t know whether it’s just it’s too early in, you know, in in the adoption of it or whatever. But well, Kyle, you’re the content man. What say you?

Kyle Campbell
I really liked the idea of building own channels, so might be a bit, my perspective comes from that angle. I like the idea of a university having a TikTok channel that serves that audience in that area, and it makes sense. And I think the art isn’t necessarily moving the content onto the website, moving the audience in some way and how you do that, there’s a range of ways. But I don’t know on a course page if I see a TikTok. I don’t know, it would feel a bit out of place for me. I guess it depends on where people come across it. But you know, the primary way people can discover you via TikTok is via the app itself, I would say. I haven’t given enough thought, but for me, it feels like it’s not, it wouldn’t doesn’t work as say embedding a YouTube video, does it? Because that experience is thought about. And it provides a different style of video. That’s my take on it.

Nathan Monk
Yeah, it’s a good point. I mean, they’ve got twenty-two and a half thousand followers. They seem to be doing okay without sticking it on their course pages. But I’m with you, though Matt, I think, you know, it could definitely add, last week, for example, we were talking about personality. And it definitely would add a layer of personality to course pages that are more often than not a little bit dry. So yeah, I think it’s a neat idea. It’d be interesting, to see if anybody explores that further, you know.

Kyle Campbell
We have spoken about how course pages highlight student work in the past as well, haven’t we, and that sort of mix up the content there. So yeah, I mean, it’s potential but you’re right. I hadn’t seen anyone doing it. But that means that why not try it, see how it goes?

Matt Lees
I think you’re right. And I think they’d have to be selective with the TikTok’s that they choose. I saw in Chichester’s, they had a campus dog with the kind of talking mouth thing going on as well, you know. That doesn’t necessarily feel on the same level as important course information, but if there are other bits out there that do help to provide that context and sell the wider experience, then maybe it’s something to look at.

Nathan Monk
There’s always been that thing as well, I guess, about universities having their tone of voice. And then they kind of have their social media tone of voice. And I remember years and years ago, people talking about how they can be a bit more colloquial, on Twitter or whatever. And I mean, obviously, TikTok is taking that to the nth degree. But there will always be that resistance of ‘our flagship is not the place for that sort of tone of voice’, for example. There are lots of things in the balance. But yeah, I think it’s it’s definitely an idea that I’d love to see more of.

And I mean, if anything, that the Nonsensical report shows that the adoption of TikTok in universities, it’s happening, and there’s all the news isn’t there at the moment as well, with kind of Facebook reporting, its loss of users and things like that, it definitely feels like in the same way that we’ve talked about the great resignation in hot in kind of hybrid working terms, this feels like the great migration of users from different social platforms. And I think what we’re seeing here is the emergence of a new dominant platform. And it’s really exciting, to see the kind of the beginning of that wave and see these emerging winners, and see what’s next. I think that probably a lot of awards this year might be covered in TikTok responses, you know.

Kyle Campbell
Yeah. And your point about migration, I can’t remember which report it was. But I definitely saw some statistics recently that showed engagement across social platforms, but I think every platform is down, but TikTok was up like 1,000%. So it’s not like people are losing engagement. It’s just you are right, it’s shifting to different places. There’s always the engagement and it just moves around.

Nathan Monk
Yeah, definitely. I mean, anybody that’s got that blasted app on their phone just knows that it’s a time hole.

Matt Lees
I think it surprises me how people engage with TikTok because for me when I started using it, it was almost a bit of mindless escapism you know, I wasn’t there to do anything in particular other than watch people falling over and other fun things. But as it’s gone on you Do you realise that people are starting to, the Nonsensical report talks about how they, youth audiences are researching institutions using the likes of TikTok and it seems to have expanded into this other mode of engagement now.

Nathan Monk
And I’ll end on this. Last night I was on TikTok and watch the TikTok about TikTok. And in this TikTok about TikTok, it said that the scary thing with the algorithm is that other platforms have been about you choosing what you want to see. But now TikTok is determining for you what it knows you want to see. So it’s not about your choice, it just kind of knows. And that is terrifying. But it’s a really interesting place for universities to start creating content that is to know that people are in that mindset, they are going to be looking at universities, what is the content that you’re going to be wanting to put in front of them because there’s every chance that that’s going to get served to them. So that’s why I think it’s such a fantastic marketing resource for universities right now.

And that just about wraps things up for this week, I think so thank you very much. Once again, Kyle and Matt, has been a pleasure. Remember, we are live every Monday at 9am. If you’ve enjoyed today’s show, please do consider liking and subscribing. For now, have a great week. See you soon.