Social Media between High-School Graduates and Higher Education Institutions

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1.0, Campus02 University of Applied Sciences Graz (Marketing), course: International Marketing, language: English, abstract: The topic of this bachelor thesis is social media between potential students in their last secondary school year and higher education institutions. The aim of this thesis is to analyze whether social media networks are relevant for potential students when they search for information on higher education institutions. The thesis is structured using a theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part deals with two main topics social media and higher education marketing, which are finally connected to form social media marketing in higher education.§Through Web 2.0 technology, it is possible to create a dialogue on the Internet. Fur-thermore, it is possible to create, consume and participate in content in different networks. Consequently, social media networks can be used for entrepreneurial purposes. Social media marketing pursues marketing objectives through the use of social networks and management of social media. For years, higher education institutions have been forced to undertake marketing efforts with the aim of raising awareness and creating a positive reputation among all target groups. Promotional tools are used to fulfil the marketing objective, which are adapted to the special target group such as potential students. Traditional com-munication forms like information leaflets, fairs as well as open days are used to at-tract potential students.§The final theoretical part deals with social media marketing as a possible instrument of the higher education marketing strategy. Through social media networks, higher education institutions benefit from the possibility of providing information for poten-tial students. However, results show that there is no awareness among potential students to use social media networks for gathering information. On social media pages of higher education institutions, the content is often the same as on the statis-tical website, but the aim of social media is to enable interaction. The use of social media as a higher education marketing tool for potential students has only just be-gun.§The practical part tries to verify the theoretical part and reviews the acceptance of social media networks as a source of information on higher education institutions through market research of 85 high-school graduates. Results show that high-school graduates use traditional promotional tools rather than social media. [...]