Nostalgia Works: Bears and Bells Boost Engagement 31% YOY with Colleges’ Social Posts

It's an old lesson in PR and marketing–people make purchases when they feel good about what they're buying. As such, it behooves companies and organizations to build and maintain good relations with stakeholders and prospective stakeholders. Sometimes, peppering communication about colleges and universities with nostalgia, history and mascots bolsters positive sentiment toward them.

Since for many schools, the new term begins in August, Shareablee powered by Comscore tracked academic-themed social posts for us.

In data it provided to PRNEWS exclusively, consumer engagement with college and university social posts rose 31 percent YOY.  The period examined was June 25-July 25, 2021, and this year.

In the charts below, consumer engagement is listed as actions, which is defined as the sum of likes, shares and comments a post receives.

Shareablee tracked posts that included words such as apply, application, visit, tour, contact, admission and admissions.

As you'd expect, major themes included schools touting their campuses and offering virtual tours, providing information about applying and highlighting favorable data and rankings, says Madison Busick, an analyst at Comscore.

Across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, there were 537K consumer actions, with more than half (358.2K) on Instagram.
Most Action on Instagram
However, the two most-efficient posts had only tangential connections with admissions.