12 November 2014 at 9:00 am
Building online brand ambassadors
Social media has become an integral part of most marketing efforts these days and when you are marketing to students, a strong online presence is a must.
In June this year, to make sure we were getting the best out of our social media we merged 11 local Facebook pages into one global Facebook page – www.facebook.com/studyinnewzealand
This move was important to both grow our online community of brand ambassadors and deliver a consistent global message to prospective students.
At the time of the merge, our Facebook community had 120,679 ‘likes’. The global page has well and truly surpassed all our initial goals, rocketing to 268,300 fans in just five months. On average we reach 3 million fans a week, including 80,000 engaged fans each week.
Breaking it down, our Facebook audience is 45 percent female, 55 percent male and is aged between 18 and 24. Our largest audience is in India followed by Thailand, Brazil, Malaysia and Colombia.
Compared to competitor countries, Study in New Zealand is performing very strongly with more ‘likes’ than Australia, Canada and the UK – we just have the USA to catch.
In recent weeks our global community manager has noticed a significant shift in the conversation among prospective students on Facebook. When we first launched the global page, most of the questions were very high level – ‘how do I study in New Zealand?’ and ‘what is New Zealand like?’ The questions we’re getting now are much more specific and qualified;
“I am from Bangladesh. I am interested to pursue a diploma at SIT, will Invercargill be an affordable place to live?”
“What is the different b/w diploma and masters? Which is more job oriented?”
“I want to know how’s New Zealand for aeronautical engineering in bachelor program & what is the cost for it?”
Another notable change is that our community is starting to self-moderate – answering each other’s questions with great advice or helpful links. We have a number of New Zealand institutions and agents who are joining in to provide great support through this channel to prospective students with questions.
In November a social campaign will be launched to further grow and stimulate this online audience with further activity planned for 2015. With an absence of Facebook in China, we are currently developing an equivalent social media platform on the popular site Weibo .
Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/studyinnewzealand.
