Using Social Network Sites for Higher Education Marketing and Recruitment

In this paper, the author examines how the rapid penetration of Social Network Sites (SNSs) into everyday life affects higher education marketing. Among unique features offered by SNSs are unprecedented trackability of students’ interests, immediacy in responses, targeted personalization of marketing efforts, and low institutional financial obligations. Growth in Internet Penetration Rates and strong international SNSs membership suggests further globalization of marketing strategies and inclusion of lower income countries into targeted markets. Concerns associated with the use of SNSs include dearth of fluency in the sites’ content and operation among admission personnel, lack in users’ privacy, and absence of control over the content. The skyrocketing evolution of SNSs surpasses the corresponding research as do applications of SNSs for higher education marketing. As the result, this qualitative study had to draw information from the variety of secondary sources including blogs, web reports, group discussions, comments, forums, videos, etc. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-4014-6.ch010