The times of counting on conventional prospectuses and scholar festivals for worldwide scholar recruitment are over. However universities and third-level establishments throughout the UK nonetheless depend on worldwide college students to spice up scholar numbers and funds.
Dependable worldwide scholar recruitment methods have additionally developed within the digital age. Younger individuals are more and more reliant on social media to study and uncover. Based on Sprout’s 2025 Pulse Survey, Gen Z (right this moment’s scholar candidates) are utilizing social media as their primary search engine, forward of conventional web sites like Google and new applied sciences like AI.
To draw new worldwide college students, your establishment’s social media presence is an important software for recruitment that requires an lively and strategic strategy.
The position of social media in worldwide scholar recruitment
Social media performs a major position in younger folks’s decision-making course of and that is still true within the UK’s larger schooling market. Sprout Social’s Pulse Survey discovered that 52% of Gen Z usually tend to belief info from manufacturers and organisations on social media than they’re by conventional search or AI. Universities within the UK and overseas are utilizing their social media channels to create a variety of content material, together with:
- Day within the life
- Campus excursions
- Visitor lectures
- Scholar guides and extra
Selecting a college, notably in case you’re going to review overseas, is a prolonged and punctiliously thought-about course of. Potential worldwide college students need to really feel seen by their college of alternative, whereas their dad and mom need to be assured they’re making the precise determination for his or her future. Social media content material can assist this determination throughout each step.
Worldwide scholar recruitment methods for each stage of the journey
Your social content material ought to concentrate on a selected stage in your potential scholar’s journey. We’ve defined how your content material can assist college students each step of the way in which.
Analysis your viewers: Prioritise your worldwide scholar teams
Earlier than you begin creating content material, you should perceive your viewers. Decide which nations you’re hoping to recruit from, and create distinct personas primarily based on these areas. Personas must also be tailor-made to sure levels and ranges of research.
Feed this analysis into your platform selections. For those who’re concentrating on China, you’ll have to focus your efforts on platforms like Weibo. The College of Bristol manages a Weibo account particularly for Chinese language college students and has over 200,000 followers.
When you’ve created your personas, conduct additional analysis to raised perceive them and the kind of content material they want. Use superior instruments like Sprout Social Listening and aggressive evaluation to raised place your account, and to uncover knowledge that may show you how to refine your content material technique.
Consciousness: Showcase the coed expertise
Throughout the consciousness stage, you should make potential college students conscious that your college exists. Institutional methods like boosting your rankings on international college lists will help, however you may also depend on social media to construct an efficient consciousness marketing campaign.
The simplest content material sorts right here embody something that highlights the coed expertise. That may embody:
- Course breakdowns
- On and off campus life movies
- Spotlighting golf equipment and societies
- Campus excursions
Concentrate on creating high-quality, skilled content material and circulating it as broadly as doable to extend your attain.
Mix this with scholar UGC campaigns to maximise your attain and belief. By encouraging your college students to additionally create content material round college life, you may attain a wider pool of potential college students and make extra folks conscious of what you may supply.
Consideration: Spotlight worldwide scholar assist
As soon as college students know who you might be, present them why they need to take into account selecting you. Content material at this stage ought to showcase your assist companies and the distinctive programs or communities you may supply worldwide college students.
Q&As and livestreams will help reply particular questions college students might need at this stage. For those who’re struggling to maintain up together with your social inbox, implement a chatbot to filter queries.
Create content material that speaks particularly to worldwide scholar experiences at your uni. If doable, do that by distinctive accounts. Right here’s an important instance from the College of Glasgow, who has an Instagram account for its worldwide scholar assist staff.
Choice: Create personalised interplay
At this stage, college students could have determined to use to your college. Social content material right here ought to contain a mixture of common content material and direct engagement, similar to with the consideration stage.
Your common content material for college kids who’ve chosen your college ought to make it so simple as doable for them to use and be a part of your establishment. Create guides to assist them by the appliance course of and inform them of what occurs subsequent.
Engagement is much more essential. Fastidiously handle your social inbox, and attain out to any college students trying to transfer to your metropolis straight. Use superior instruments like Sprout’s Good Inbox to make it simpler on your purposes staff to handle and reply to messages, and create a simplified course of for connecting with college students through cellphone or in particular person after you’ve messaged them.
Onboarding: Construct group
Scholar onboarding is the method of scholars transferring to your college to start their research. This is a crucial a part of every scholar’s life, so it’s important that you just’re available to assist them.
Create content material like price range guides, metropolis life recommendation and scholar corridor excursions so college students know what to anticipate when transferring. Showcase your golf equipment or directs them to occasions like scholar festivals. It is best to create particular content material for Freshers’ week, which is when a number of UK college students be a part of golf equipment and begin making mates on their course.
It’s additionally essential to construct a group on your worldwide college students. These communities make their scholar life simpler and extra fulfilling, as it may possibly assist them join with different college students and assist companies. Social platforms like Discord will help create a protected house for interplay. The College of Brighton manages a protected on-line group on Discord to assist new college students settle into the town.
Retention and alumni: Steady engagement post-admission
Your social content material assist shouldn’t finish when worldwide college students start their first 12 months or graduate. Create alumni teams that show you how to communicate with them after uni on networks like LinkedIn. It’s additionally value utilizing LinkedIn to retain present college students, by sharing recommendation content material and discovering methods to incorporate worldwide college students in content material methods. This has a double impact of bettering retention while additionally showcasing the worldwide scholar expertise to potential college students.
Use these teams to share information about alumni occasions and to encourage new content material from profitable alumni college students that may encourage the following technology. By leveraging your alumni community, you may create a snowball impact that retains your social content material related and extra impactful over time.
Find out how to differentiate worldwide scholar recruitment campaigns by social community
An efficient worldwide scholar recruitment technique entails selecting your platforms. Since not each social community is offered in each nation, tailor your selections to the nations you’re recruiting from. That is notably essential in case you’re recruiting from China, which has its personal group of common platforms, resembling WeChat and RedNote (Xiaohongshu), amongst others.
Based on The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, Gen Z are most probably to have Instagram (89%), YouTube (84%) and TikTok (82%) profiles. These are a few of the principal channels it’s best to have in case you’re recruiting internationally, as they continue to be common throughout the US, Europe, Center East and different areas.
Instagram for worldwide scholar recruitment
Instagram is an efficient community for visual-driven content material, which makes it wonderful for displaying off what unilife is like on and off campus by model and scholar ambassador content material. Potential college students are additionally doubtless to make use of Instagram as a search engine, which means an optimised profile can get your college seen.
Some helpful approaches embody:
- Embracing Reels: glimpses into campus life, and so on.
- Scholar-led content material: a day within the lifetime of a global scholar
- Constructing group: answering questions, showcasing golf equipment, and so on.
- Visible storytelling: high quality pictures, cultural occasions, scholar societies, and so on.
Utilizing location tags and hashtags improves searchability and makes it clear the place your college is predicated, which might be useful for worldwide customers. Additionally benefit from actual scholar experiences. Take a look at how one can encourage present college students to movie POV guides or create social content material about your golf equipment, occasions and the tradition/actions in your metropolis.
Right here’s an instance from the College of Nottingham, the place one among their worldwide college students from Korea filmed a video that shares recommendation about transferring to the town.
YouTube for worldwide scholar recruitment
Alongside being the second largest search engine, YouTube is the proper place to share longer movies about your college. Widespread content material sorts that may enchantment to worldwide college students embody excursions (some UK universities are even experimenting with VR/AR excursions on the community), in addition to lectures and interviews with employees and worldwide scholar alumni.
To make your movies accessible, be sure to’re all the time optimising them for search and together with multi-language captions. In case your college is making an attempt to recruit from particular nations, take into account making a regional account with content material that’s notably related to college students from that area.
YouTube content material ought to concentrate on what units your uni other than others—right here’s a preferred welcome video from Cambridge College, which has achieved over 2.6 million views. While this can be a conventional tour-style piece of content material, Cambridge makes it distinctive by displaying the variety of its college areas and world-renowned options like their rowing staff amenities.
TikTok for worldwide scholar recruitment
TikTok stays common with youthful generations; the most important demographic on the community is customers aged 18-35. That is the standard goal age group for undergraduate worldwide college students, which is why TikTok is turning into an important place for these trying to entice college students from abroad.
POV-style recommendation movies and trending content material work notably nicely. Unibuddy discovered that 78% of potential college students discovered talking to present college students useful when selecting the place to review, so creating these conversations by TikTok Q&As will help together with your recruitment efforts. Ensure to work together with your present worldwide college students so you may present these alternatives, whereas additionally creating related content material that potential college students will discover helpful.
As a comparatively newer community, TikTok additionally represents a major progress alternative for UK universities. Presently, just a few establishments are utilizing it to its full benefit. Maybe the very best instance is the College of Oxford, which has achieved virtually 750k followers because it began specializing in TikTok a number of years in the past.
LinkedIn for worldwide scholar recruitment
LinkedIn is an indispensable community for attracting mature college students and for holding in contact with alumni. Each LinkedIn messaging and adverts can be utilized to advertise graduate packages in particular fields, that are important profession development alternatives.
It’s the best place to share profession success tales from prior college students, in addition to to share college or college awards. Reap the benefits of LinkedIn Teams to construct a robust alumni group, who you may faucet to create content material alongside you sooner or later. It’s additionally doable to create networking alternatives on your college students throughout LinkedIn with recruiters.
It’s also possible to promote occasions by your LinkedIn profile. Right here’s an instance from UCL, which hosted an unique alumni occasion for former college students who’re now primarily based in Boston or NYC.
Measuring ROI and optimising your social media for scholar recruitment
The one strategy to know for positive in case you’re utilizing social media for scholar recruitment successfully is to measure your outcomes. Listed here are a number of methods you may observe and optimise your efficiency.
Set objectives and KPIs
Determine metrics that you could observe to measure your success. Some widespread KPIs for worldwide scholar recruitment embody:
- Engagement charges in your posts
- Your attain
- Variety of UGC posts generated
- Click on-through charges (CTR)
- Web site site visitors
- Leads generated by downloads or sign-ups
- Began or accomplished purposes straight from or influenced by social media
Mix these KPIs together with your extra recruitment objectives, just like the variety of worldwide college students you’re trying to recruit in a given 12 months. By combining each measurements, you may hold your social technique aligned to wider enterprise objectives and the general impression of your college.
Monitoring your key metrics may also show you how to establish social campaigns to refine or reuse. The College of Sheffield launched its overarching worldwide scholar advertising and marketing technique, “We’re Worldwide”, in 2013, and continues to make use of its messaging right this moment to advertise inclusion and to draw new worldwide college students.
Implement hyperlink monitoring
By monitoring hyperlinks, you may simply calculate key metrics like clicks and conversions, which present you which ones posts are influencing worldwide college students to interact straight together with your college and even take the following step.
Use a software like Sproutlink to create a hyperlink in bio in your social profiles. Create further tracked hyperlinks each time you’re linking to a sure web page, like occasions pages, admissions pages, course outlines and extra. By monitoring these hyperlinks, you may see how nicely your general account is performing in direction of your recruitment objectives.
Use a social media administration software to observe and refine your methods
A social media administration software makes it simple to put up throughout your whole accounts, handle your social inbox, observe the outcomes of your campaigns and extra.
By managing everyting social in a single place, your staff can save time on guide process and spend extra headspace on launching new inventive and focused campaigns. It’ll even be simpler to refine your campaigns over time by amassing historic and real-time knowledge to match and analyze as wanted.
A number of UK universities depend on these instruments to assist all of their social advertising and marketing efforts, together with the College of Newcastle. They use Sprout Social to gasoline their full funnel social advertising and marketing technique. Right here’s a latest instance of how they’re persevering with to create social content material to recruit worldwide college students.
Join your social knowledge to your complete journey
When you’re monitoring social knowledge throughout your worldwide scholar recruitment advertising and marketing, join it with every stage of your candidates’ journeys.
With Sprout, you may join your social knowledge with CRM instruments like Salesforce and customer support instruments like Zendesk, so you may centralise your whole knowledge to get a full view of the worldwide scholar journey. You possibly can additional rework your social knowledge into social intelligence by integrating with Tableau, utilizing Sprout Listening and using Sprout’s AI capabilities to assist deep analyses.
Connecting your knowledge helps you perceive not simply the information you’ve gathered, however the place it comes from, why it issues, what behaviors are being influenced and how one can adapt your socials to raised meet the person calls for you’ve uncovered.
Create a well-rounded worldwide scholar recruitment technique on socials
Recruiting worldwide college students by your social channels isn’t a static course of. It calls for a well-rounded strategy and a method that evolves over time.
Preserve your establishment aggressive by adapting to present tendencies, and making use of the newest social advertising and marketing applied sciences worldwide college students are utilizing. Because the state of UK academia and the way we use digital platforms evolve, you’ll have to hold experimenting with socials to remain related, and discover new methods of attracting and recruiting new college students.
Sprout presents tailor-made options for UK larger schooling organisations. Discover out extra by requesting a demo right this moment.
