Conversations in search of audiences: Prospects and challenges of marketing UK’s postgraduate higher education using social media

Mitra, Amit; Qi, Baomin

Abstract

It is no surprise that there are serious disparities between the rhetoric of education and the realities of education. Marketing of university curricula is a challenge that is increasingly becoming a difficult proposition as advances in social media (SM) are enabling prospective students to form opinions and inform their decisions like never before. Whilst the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) plays a central role in matching undergraduate students to courses in universities yet the same does not apply to postgraduate admissions which are sought after by a large number of applicants from overseas as well. As connectivity through the online world has rendered geography irrelevant at the same time access to course information and influence on the use of that information for deciding to register on it has become ubiquitous. This paper looks at some of the areas where SM has been successfully used. The paper then develops taxonomy of popular SM tools that are being widely used. Using this taxonomy it explores barriers and promoters that exist in the interface between universities and their audiences.

Citation

Mitra, A., & Qi, B. (2016). Conversations in search of audiences: Prospects and challenges of marketing UK’s postgraduate higher education using social media. In A. C. Simintiras, S. Al-Sharhan, N. P. Rana, E. L. Slade, M. Clement, M. Janssen, …Y. K. Dwivedi (Eds.), Social Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society. Taylor and Francis

• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2016
• Journal: Innovations in Education and Teaching International
• Print ISSN: 1470-3297
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Series Title: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Book Title: Social Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society
• ISBN: 9783319452333
• Keywords: social media, UCAS, higher education marketing, taxonomy
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45234-0_9