As schools compete to attract new students, they need effective social media marketing campaigns. Instagram is important in terms of reaching out to potential students since 61% of 12-to-17-year-olds use Instagram weekly.
If your university or college already has an Instagram account, you’re halfway there. Your task is to create content that engages your audience—current and prospective students, alumni and parents. You’ll need to think about mapping out your Instagram campaign strategically to increase engagement and results.
There are many innovative ways to market your school on Instagram. You can introduce academic programs, highlight campus life, share student-generated content, and feature college graduates’ success stories. This guide will cover effective university and college social media post ideas. It also includes tools for embedding your Instagram feed on your website to streamline the online experience for potential students.
9 Best University and College Social Media Post Ideas That Boost Engagement
Here are nine content ideas that any college can implement on its social media accounts:
1. Academic Programs and Activities
It is essential to present future students with various majors, courses, and potential careers in college marketing. Create videos that feature the unique aspects of your programs and how they are applied in real-world situations. Interview faculty members or students to introduce classes and spotlight extraordinary activities that combine college education with engagement.
Get inspired: The University of Auckland shares news about its new lab at Leigh.
2. Campus Culture and Student Life
Does your college or university have iconic buildings? Or favorite student hangout spots? Share sharp photos and videos of campus buildings, facilities, and daily student life. This kind of visual narrative can encourage potential students to imagine themselves being part of your campus life.
Get inspired: Brown University shared a recap of a surprise 2000s-style flash mob on campus.
3. City and Campus Tour
University life extends beyond college campuses. Share compelling video content about the surrounding community, highlighting popular restaurants, bookshops, parks, and cultural attractions that make your location special. This content is particularly valuable for prospective students considering relocating to attend your institution, as it helps them visualize the complete college experience.
4. Campus Event Promotions
Every campus event offers an opportunity to showcase your institution’s vibrant community. Share visual content from sporting events, art exhibitions, workshops, cultural celebrations, and academic conferences. Encourage current students and faculty members to capture and share photos or short videos that you can repost, expanding your reach while highlighting the diverse experiences available. User-generated content is extremely valuable, and you should try to get the maximum out of it. However, you need to come up with content ideas that are easy to pick up and follow. Don’t wait for students to come up with content for you — while they will eventually, you need to manage the process to ensure a consistent flow of user-generated content.
Get inspired: The University of Virginia announcing its speakers.
5. Competitions
To get more users involved and gain a larger audience, hold contests on Instagram that encourage users to create content. Photo contests, video challenges, or creative concepts that align with the values of your institution can really increase visibility and engagement rates.
Connect competitions with seasonal events like orientation week, graduation, championship games, or special campus events. Be sure to establish a branded hashtag and ask participants to tag your institution’s account when sharing their entries.
Get inspired: The University of Melbourne running a contest while having a survey.
6. Alumni Success Stories
Personal stories are compelling sales pitches for colleges and universities. Highlight alumni in video testimonials discussing how your school helped their career growth, their favorite campus memories, and what they would tell students today. These social posts will show other students the long-term value of your university.
Get inspired: The University of New South Wales created a short Q&A alumni video, asking about things they miss the most from their time at uni. The answers vary from building friendships to eating at a favorite place to going to sporting events.
7. Interactive Content with Polls and Q&As
Instagram Stories has awesome interactive tools that boost student engagement and provide valuable insights regarding your target market. You can create polls, quizzes, and question-and-answer sessions that encourage students to participate while gaining insight into what prospective students want and are concerned about. Such two-way communication converts passive listeners into active users.
Get inspired: Harvard University regularly uses Instagram Story polls to discover what students like about everything from courses to campus resources. They even host “Ask Me Anything” sessions with professors, where future students can get tips directly from the experts.
8. Course Spotlights and Faculty Highlights
Your professors are among the most important aspects of your institution. Produce video profiles that showcase their expertise, research accomplishments, teaching methods, and personal stories. Videos get people to care about your institution and show its intellectual richness. To have an even bigger impact, urge teachers to share short “micro-lectures” or research snippets on Instagram Reels. These short videos are perfect for grabbing attention and showcasing their expertise in an easy way.
Get inspired: Stanford University features its microbiologists and their discoveries.
9. Student Social Media Takeovers
Authenticity resonates with college students and prospective students alike. Allow current students to temporarily manage your Instagram account, giving followers a genuine glimpse into campus life from diverse perspectives. Student takeovers create relatable content that helps prospective students envision themselves at your institution.
Select students from various academic programs, student groups, and backgrounds to capture their individual experiences through photographs, videos, and Stories. Ask them to take you through a typical day—morning classes to study groups, club meetings, and social life.
Get inspired: New York University regularly invites students from various schools and programs to take over their Instagram Stories, sharing daily campus life from their campuses around the world.
5 Best Practices for Using Instagram for Higher Education
The nine content types above should keep your Instagram feed rich with different messaging. However, you still need proper marketing strategies to unlock the full potential of Instagram and attract prospective students. Here are five tips to keep your content creation process sustainable and effective.
Leverage User-Generated Content
The content you share on Instagram doesn’t always have to come from your marketing team. When college students capture their campus life using your branded hashtags, you’re receiving genuine content that speaks to prospective students.
Regularly search for posts where college students have tagged your institution or used your hashtags. Share these photos and videos (with permission) to showcase real campus experiences through the eyes of your students. This approach not only provides fresh content but also makes featured students feel valued, encouraging more sharing.
Vary the Content Formats
While traditional photos remain important, engaging today’s college students involves accepting alternative forms of social media content. Instagram Reels and other short-form videos have become essential in college marketing, offering the potential to showcase student life, academics, and campus activities in dynamic formats.
According to a survey, Gen Z makes up 70% of Instagram stories viewers, making the format highly relevant to engaging with prospective students. Enhance your Stories using engaging features such as polls, quizzes, and questions to attract more individuals. Additionally, incorporating music or voiceover will have a greater effect.
Develop a Strategic Content Calendar
Consistency is the most important thing in keeping people interested in content. Develop a comprehensive social media content calendar that coincides with the school year, including application deadlines, campus events, holidays, and other important milestones. Having your content planned ahead of time helps you to have a nice mix of different types of posts and to post consistently.
For university marketing, try to post 3-5 times a week on your main feed and post Stories every day to stay visible. Post your content when your target market is most active, usually evenings and weekends for students. Use content batching—producing several posts at once—to keep quality high and make your work more efficient.
Implement a Hashtag Strategy in Your Social Media Marketing
Come up with a hashtag strategy that enables you to engage more people and build your school’s brand. Make a custom hashtag for your college or university and urge students, teachers, and alumni to use it frequently. For even more exposure, include both broad higher education hashtags (#collegelife, #campustour, #universityapplication) and specific hashtags related to your fields of study and distinctive campus attractions.
Instagram posts with 5–9 carefully selected hashtags tend to generate the highest engagement. However, some sources suggest that the current recommended limit is 5 hashtags. Monitor which hashtags bring the most profile views and new followers, and adjust your strategy accordingly. Develop unique hashtags for large campus events and initiatives in order to group related posts and foster engagement.
Add Instagram Feed to Your Website
Get more exposure for your Instagram posts by displaying them on your school’s website, where prospective students and their parents first go in search of colleges. With a social media wall, you are giving visitors to your website a true feel for campus life.
To easily embed an Instagram feed on websites without requiring technical expertise, use a tool like Juicer. This allows you to select what posts appear on your site and automatically displays new posts as they are created. For universities and colleges concerned with what is being displayed, Juicer offers features for manual review to ensure that all content being displayed aligns with the values of the school. You can also add social media feeds from other platforms and posts with specific hashtags to showcase social proof to current and future students.
Measuring Success: Key Metrics for College and University Instagram Accounts
An effective marketing plan requires more than simply creating excellent content—you must also measure how well it performs. For universities and colleges, monitoring specific Instagram metrics enhances your approach and demonstrates the outcomes to stakeholders.
Essential Instagram Metrics for Universities
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Engagement Rate: Track likes, comments, saves, and shares relative to your follower count. University accounts typically aim for 1-3% engagement rates, with higher numbers indicating extremely engaging content.
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Reach and Impressions: Measure the number of new users who see your content (reach) vs. total views (impressions) to gauge your visibility to prospective students and other target audiences.
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Profile Visits and Website Clicks: These metrics report how effectively your content is directing users to your institutional website, particularly important during application cycles when conversion matters most.
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Follower Growth: While secondary to engagement, steady follower growth indicates increasing interest in your institution among your target audience.
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Story Completion Rate: The percentage of users who view your whole series of Instagram Stories—a solid measure of compelling content that holds attention.
When you showcase your Instagram stream on your university website with Juicer, you get extra tools for analyzing how social content affects website engagement. The platform dashboard shows you which one of your social wall posts is getting the most engagement on the site, giving you insight into what type of content is well-liked by visitors.
Leading universities such as Stanford and Princeton frequently consider these figures to enhance their content strategies. If faculty spotlights consistently outperform other content types, increase their frequency. If morning posts receive higher engagement than evening ones, adjust your posting schedule accordingly. Most importantly, always interpret metrics in relation to your specific goals and the needs of your target audience.
Wrapping Up
Instagram offers colleges and universities strong tools for engaging with potential students via photographs and stories. Through a smart marketing plan based on diverse content, regular updates, considered hashtags, and tracking their success, schools can showcase campus life and what they are offering in a good way. Do not keep your Instagram content on Instagram alone—share it more by putting your social feed on your website. Juicer, a social sharing platform that is used by Stanford, Princeton, and Georgetown University, can help you aggregate your Instagram content on your website. Get started from $0 – no contract, no risk, just a beautiful social media wall that showcases the authentic experiences your institution offers!
