Journal of Marketing for Higher Education

ISSN: 0884-1241 (Print) 1540-7144 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wmhe20

Universities engaging social media users: an

investigation of quantitative relationships
between universities’ Facebook followers/
interactions and university attributes

Brady Lund

To cite this article: Brady Lund (2019): Universities engaging social media users: an investigation
of quantitative relationships between universities’ Facebook followers/interactions and university
attributes, Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/08841241.2019.1641875

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08841241.2019.1641875

Published online: 16 Jul 2019.

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JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/08841241.2019.1641875

Universities engaging social media users: an investigation of

quantitative relationships between universities’ Facebook
followers/interactions and university attributes
Brady Lund
Emporia State University, Emporia, KS, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Social media is an important component of a university’s marketing Received 30 January 2019
plan. It has become one of the most efficient and cost-effective Accepted 1 July 2019
avenues for reaching a large, targeted population, which makes
KEYWORDS
knowledge of how to attract more followers and interactions Universities; Facebook; social
important in the competitive world of higher education. This media; marketing;
study investigates the quantitative relationships between engagement; information
universities’ Facebook pages and interactions (reactions, behavior
comments, and shares) and a variety of university attributes (year
the university was established, number of students enrolled at
university, etc.) using Pearson Correlation and ANOVA tests.
Findings indicate several attributes that hold moderate-to-strong
correlations with Facebook followers and interactions. This study
identifies several areas for further investigation.

Introduction
As an omnipresent, democratic information resource of the past decade, social media has
been adopted broadly by marketers as a cost-efficient marketing tool (Jaman & Anshari,
2019). This extends to universities, where social media like Facebook, Twitter, and
YouTube is found to be an effective tool for engaging potential and current students,
alumni, and other supporters and donors (Reddy, 2014). Among higher education social
media, there is limited information about what factors are associated with an increased
number of followers or interactions with universities’ social media posts. This information
is immensely important, as it may be used to inform the information sharing behavior of
universities on social media to produce the greatest marketing impact.
With Facebook celebrating its 15th year in 2019, it appears to have become an integral
facet of global information society and is likely to only become more integral and ubiqui-
tous globally (Gerlich et al., 2012; Chugh & Ruhi, 2018). This study contributes to a body of
growing, interdisciplinary literature that has implications in information science, market-
ing, and education.

Theoretical framework
Habibi, Laroche, and Richard’s (2014) theory of social media marketing, along with the
work of Dahl (2018) contextualizes this study and the interpretation of the findings.

CONTACT Brady Lund Blund2@g.emporia.edu

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 B. LUND

Generally, any organization – whether for-profit corporation or a nonprofit university –

that uses social media does so for marketing purposes (not just for public service infor-
mation ends). Social media is often handled by the marketing department and directed
to the end of supporting marketing efforts. This may not be direct marketing, e.g. ‘send
in your application today!’ ‘pledge to our new endowment fund.’ It may be (and often
is) about brand image. A good comparison is social media use by sports teams. Sports
teams post much more frequently about the team in general and its accomplishments
than about purchasing tickets, but all posts are published for the purpose of increasing
the viewers’ excitement about the team so that they will purchase tickets and team
gear. The assumption in the present paper, inspired by Dahl, is that universities use
social media for the same end. It is not just about offering a service to current students
and alumni; an ultimate end is always to bring in more funding to the university. This
understanding makes the quantitative analysis of Facebook posts an important area of
insight for university marketing strategy.
Inherent to the theoretical perspective of Habibi et al. (2014) is that engagement
signifies strengthening relationship between organization and ‘customer,’ which in turn
results in greater spending/support. Engagement can be quantified (to a fair extent) in
social media outlets like Facebook via reactions (likes), comments, and shares. There are
two approaches in which to investigate what independent factors might hold a relation-
ship with greater engagement: qualitative methodologies, such as analyzing the content
of posts and associating what types of posts (those about campus activities, those about
alumni, those about sports) result in greater engagement; and quantitative method-
ologies, such as analyzing what factors of universities and their social media (number of
Facebook followers, number of students, prominence of the university) are related to
higher engagement across the entire corpus of posts. While the former method is
useful for content developers, the latter can test significance of relationships and
predict engagement based on the attributes of the university. Neither method has been
used in great detail in social media marketing research, so the need for more studies in
this area, and especially within the field of higher education marketing, is needed.

Literature review
This literature review investigates the topic of universities’ use of social media for market-
ing from a multi-disciplinary perspective, by constructing an understanding using litera-
ture from marketing, psychology, information technology, information science, and
education. It follows a roughly chronological and thematic path that demonstrates how
the need to market universities evolved, the role that social media currently plays in mar-
keting universities and affecting student choice, and why it is important to know more
about how Facebook users interact with University accounts and posts.

The evolving nature of university marketing

The nature of university marketing has evolved dramatically in the past century. Before the
early-twentieth century, universities did not much emphasize marketing (Hirsch, 1895; Wil-
liams, 1913). The focus was more so on ensuring the high quality of students. Transpor-
tation was not as easy and universities were more specialized, with normal schools
 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION 3

(teachers’ education), agricultural colleges, and technical universities having greater signifi-
cance than today, or even the world of just two decades later (Wood, 1939). By the 1920s
and 30s, competition among universities intensified, so much so that scholars referred to it
as a quasi-corporate-type marketing environment (Blackwell, 1936; Wood, 1939).
Scholarship on the topic of university marketing emerged in full force during the 1950s,
60s, and (especially) the 70s (Blau, 1974; Fram, 1973; Krachenberg, 1972). At this point, uni-
versities began to apply (and in some instances create new bodies of thought and litera-
ture pertaining to) marketing theory in higher education (Krachenberg, 1972).
Competition for student enrollments reached a new height, as the end of the Vietnam
war and compulsory military service resulted in a new pool of potential students who
would have otherwise been obligated (Discenza, Ferguson, & Wisner, 1985). Students
also became less interested in a ‘liberal education,’ and more interested in a field that
would lead to employment opportunities, leading universities to sell students on their
ability to successfully place graduates in jobs (Doyle & Newbould, 1980; Neustadt,
1994). University endowments expanded, particularly in the United States, as wealth
among a college educated population grow.
Internet technology presented a new landscape for university marketing in the late
1990s and early 2000s. This landscape was addressed by a new swath of interdisciplinary
research, building off an understanding of technology, psychology, and marketing (Gomes
& Murphy, 2003; Klassen, 2002; Margolis, 1998). Virtually all major U.S. universities had a
website by the year 2000 (according to the Internet Archive). These website were not
static information sources, but actively tried to draw potential students into the school,
and encourage alumni to provide continued support, as they still do today (Gomes &
Murphy, 2003). As marketing and higher education literature continued to grow, new per-
spectives on economical and ethical marketing emerged (Gibbs & Murphy, 2009; Hemsley-
Brown & Oplatka, 2006).
Social media was treated with hesitation by many universities early in its development
(Charnigo & Barnett-Ellis, 2007; Ganster & Schumacher, 2009; Raineri, Fudge, & Hall, 2015;
Reuben, 2008). Originally, it appears, many universities believed social media was not an
appropriate forum to participate. As the social and information value of social media (par-
ticularly Facebook and Twitter) was demonstrated, more universities began to join these
services (Raineri et al., 2015). Gaps persist in our understanding of how effective social
media platforms are for marketing university programs, many of which have not yet
been thoroughly addressed. Whether effective or not, there is no doubt that most univer-
sities today have and maintain social media for marketing purposes, if for no reason other
than to maintain a prominent brand image (Dahl, 2015; Belanger, Bali, & Longden, 2014;
Parameswaran & Glowacka, 1995).

Why Facebook?
Facebook became popular for marketing businesses, non-profits, and universities, because
of the absence of a cost barrier and broad adoption of the platform by the general public
(Caers et al., 2013; Carter & Levy, 2012). It reaches an audience where it is at without
(ideally) being intrusive and uses a democratic model to disseminate information, rather
than expensive advertising on television or print. For several years early in the history of
social media (back in the MySpace and very early Facebook days), companies (and
4 B. LUND

universities) appeared hesitant to expand into the market (Lewis & Candito, 2011). To an
extent these concerns were well-founded, as many students recognized that universities
may present unwelcome oversight over personal affairs by following the students’ Face-
book feeds (La Roche, Flanigan, & La Roche, 2009). However, these concerns were even-
tually abated as a greater number of businesses and universities adopted the medium.
Recent studies have found that Facebook is an effective platform for marketing univer-
sities and programs to potential students (Rutter, Roper, & Lettice, 2016; Smith, 2016;
Wazed & Ng, 2015). Students seem to believe that Facebook is a non-intrusive information
tool that can provide valuable communications (Smith, 2016). The ability for students to be
able to interact/ask questions to the university and having them answered by a university
official via Facebook is a touch that could not exist with traditional campus marketing
except during a campus visit (Rutter et al., 2016). Further, Facebook is also useful for enga-
ging current students and alumni, both of which offer financial opportunity to the univer-
sity through retention (of current students), purchase of university gear, and pledges to
university endowment funds (Wankel & Wankel, 2011).

How universities use social media for marketing

Universities appear interested in using social media for two interrelated purposes: (1) to
market the university and create a sense of community for alumni and current students
(who will hopefully recommend the university) and (2) to disseminate information (such
as campus warnings) (Alexa, Alexa, & Stoica, 2012; Holmberg, 2015; Lovari & Giglietto,
2012). The first of these purposes is more common. One way that universities frequently
market themselves is by promoting the work of faculty (Alsurehi & Al Youbi, 2014; Taechar-
ungroj, 2017). Occasionally, exemplary work becomes ‘viral’ and/or gets picked up by a
news agency which helps spread word about the research (and the university that sup-
ported it). This can be an efficient way to publish an ‘ad’ that is not really an ad but
brings the same level of brand awareness for the university.
Another popular type of marketing post is that pertaining to ‘happenings around
campus’ (Taecharungroj, 2017). This might include photos from around campus, news
about a new project or faculty member, new grants or policies. Also frequent are posts
about extracurriculars, whether it be sports, clubs, or performing arts performances. Uni-
versities like Alabama or Kentucky particularly have a high number of these posts. Some
universities have taken to having a second page just for sports (but this is not necessarily
common).
Some studies have indicated that the ways individuals react to posts on social media
(their behavior) may vary based on geographic or other factors (Alexa et al., 2012;
Kuzma & Wright, 2013; Taecharungroj, 2017). In other words, the psychological response
of viewing and reacting to a post may be influenced by sociological and political factors
(geography; prominence of the university). The findings in these studies are supported
by research in information seeking and use behavior, which demonstrates that what infor-
mation is sought, how it is sought, and how it is used can be influenced by contextual
factors for the individual (Johnson, 2003; Wilson, 1999). There is insufficient evidence pre-
sently to give a clear indication in any direction as to the effect of geography and other
factors on social media interaction. The present study will examine some of these
factors in greater detail.
 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION 5

Do the target audiences follow the universities on Facebook?

Who is the primary audience of university social media? Does it meet the target audience
of individuals who will financially support the university through attendance at the univer-
sity, purchase of university gear, and endowment support (potential, current, and former
students)? Several studies indicate that these target populations are indeed reached (Con-
stantinides, 2012; Frey, Ebner, Schon, & Taraghi, 2013; Karcher, 2011; Voss & Kumar, 2013).
Studies have also shown that if an individual does follow a university of Facebook, it will
increase the likelihood of that individual attending that university, purchasing its gear, or
pledging a donation (Krishman & Sajilan, 2014; Reddy, 2014; Rowan-Kenyon, Alemán, &
Savitz-Romer, 2018; Wandel, 2008; Yang & Lee, 2018). This suggests that university market-
ing on Facebook is indeed successful, yet little remains known about what factors
influence the effectiveness of this type of marketing.

Is interaction/engagement with Facebook posts important for marketing?

There are many indications in psychology, information science, and marketing research
that interaction/congruity/engagement/positive emotional response is positively corre-
lated with further interaction and spending behavior (Habibi et al., 2014; Kressmann
et al., 2006; Pike, 2006; Sirgy, Lee, Johar, & Tidwell, 2008). Facebook post interactions (com-
ments, reactions, shares) are one way to quantify the interactions/response impact that a
university’s Facebook page has on an audience. These interactions indicate a level of
engagement with the post beyond simply viewing it (i.e. a level of emotional response/
agreeability). These levels of response/engagement are sufficient to build bonds and
brand loyalty that position universities well to receive greater financial support (sales/
donations/etc.).
Several recent research publications have indicated the value of engagement on social
media in communicating information and marketing ideas and academic programs to
potential, current, and former students (Stewart & Walker, 2018; Stvilia & Gibradze,
2014, 2017). Many of these publications focus on how academic libraries use social
media to attract students to the library and engage them in library activities. Findings
include that posting alone is not sufficient to acquire a useful audience; rather, engage-
ment (reactions and comments) is necessary to see substantial change. Stvilia and
Gibradze (2017) found that the type of content shared in a social media post (e.g. infor-
mation about study support, events, etc.) can affect the level of engagement and, conse-
quently, the effectiveness of the information in the post to effect change in the social
media user (e.g. think differently, enroll in a course/program, etc.).

Central research problem

The central problem in this literature is a lack of knowledge about relationships between
valuable followers and engagement with social media posts and the attributes of univer-
sities. To what extent does the information sharing behavior of universities (the number of
posts) influence interactions? To what extent does factors like the size of the university
relate to interactions? To what extent is the number of interactions out of the universities’
control (e.g. based on the year the university was established)? Further, what might be the
6 B. LUND

role of larger social and political factors (like the differences among countries) have? Do
meaningful relationships exist at all? Answers to these problems are sparse and incom-
plete. The statistical analyses in this paper aim to investigate these relationships in
depth and contribute to a more complete understanding of how one university variable
may relate to a change in Facebook followers and/or interactions.

Research questions
This quantitative research study is guided by one central research question and three sub-
questions that help inform the statistical analysis of Facebook use and interaction among
top-ranked institutions of higher education:

(1). What attributes of top-ranked universities are associated with a greater number of
Facebook followers and interactions?
(a). Are there geographic differences in university Facebook followers and interactions
that should be noted in future research in social media and higher education?
(b). Are there significant relationships between university attributes/Facebook infor-
mation sharing behavior and the number of Facebook followers and interactions?
(c). What opportunities exist for expanding our understanding of how social media like
Facebook can be used as an effective marketing tool for institutions of higher education?

Methodology
Methodological framework
The methodology of this study is informed by the existing literature pertaining to
social media use among institutions of higher education, as described in the literature
review, as well as the findings from a brief pilot study. This pilot study started with 30
potential university attributes – identifying throughout various publications – that
might have a relationship to Facebook engagement, sampled from fourteen university
members of a Midwestern United States collegiate association over a one month
period. Based on the findings in this pilot study, five variables were selected as
having the greatest/most robust relationships for the sample: number of students
enrolled at the university, year the university was established, endowment of the uni-
versity, global Alexa rank for the university’s website, and the year the university’s
Facebook page was established. These were the initial five variables selected for the
present study.
Belanger et al. (2014) offer the use of a six-month sample of Facebook posts for analysis.
These researchers collected Facebook posts over this time period for analysis and pro-
duced robust and meaningful results; thus, it was determined that the six-month
sample for the present study would be satisfactory. Chatterjee and Maity (2014) provide
grounding for the idea of using QS World Ranking to select a sample for studying Face-
book posts of institutions of higher education. With so many universities around the
world, and so many different rankings of top universities, it can be difficult to select a
random sample; as QS World Rankings have been used in a prior study to produce mean-
ingful results, the present study uses this same method.
 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION 7

Kuzma and Wright (2013) suggest a possible variance in Facebook use among insti-
tutions of higher education based on geography (one of the research questions for the
present study). This prior study provided impetus for using an international sample (as
opposed to selecting universities only within a single country) and performing ANOVAs
to determine variation of means based on the nation/continent in which universities
reside. Peruta and Shields (2017) study the frequency of interactions among institutions
of higher education and use a sample of ‘top’ universities (as with the present study);
the general methods of Peruta and Shields study strongly informed the present study.
Peruta and Shields examined how institution type (public, private, liberal arts) and the
number of posts per day related to higher engagement with posts. As with Peruta and
Shields’ study, the present study uses ANOVA for comparison, finding it to be the most
suitable inferential statistics tool for the data.

Methods
The purpose of this study is to investigate relationships between the number of followers
and interactions on top-ranked universities’ Facebook pages and the attributes of those
universities (the age of the university, the number of students enrolled at the university,
the year the Facebook page was created, the QS World ranking, the university’s endow-
ment, and the global Alexa rank for the university’s main website). Specific attributes of
universities selected for study were based on the review of literature, which identified attri-
butes most important to consider in marketing. To investigate these relationships, data
was gathered from the Facebook page for each university included in the study, as well
as from the universities’ websites (about university attributes). Multistage sampling was
used to select the universities studied. The top 1000 ranked universities globally was pur-
posely selected based on the ease of access to information about these universities and
the practicality of using a standardized, publicly accessible list for a sample (as was
done in Chatterjee and Maity’s study). A random sample of fifty universities from the
top-1000 universities listed in the QS World rankings was selected for study (random
number selection was used to choose the fifty based on their ranking). From the initial
sample, one university (Fudan University) did not appear to have an official, regularly
updated Facebook page, so it was removed from the sample and another university
was randomly selected from the top 1000 list.
The two most critical (dependent) variables in this study are the number of Facebook
followers for a university and the number of interactions on the Facebook page, calculated
as the sum of the number of reactions, comments, and shares on posts over a six-month
period from 1 July 2018 to 31 December 2018 at each of the 50 universities sampled. Other
variables are attributes of the universities, selected (as noted previously) based on those
factors determined from the literature review and pilot study to be most likely to
influence followers and interactions with the university. This study seeks to determine,
using Pearson correlations and standard, one-way ANOVAs, what attributes are most
strongly associated with an increased number of followers and interactions.
Data were collected within a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and then transferred into Stat-
istical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for analysis. All statistical operations were per-
formed using SPSS functions (Descriptive Statistics/Compare Means). The statistical test
used to investigate relationships among two variables in the data is dependent on the
8 B. LUND

variables selected. For two variables that are ratio data, like the number of enrolled stu-
dents and the annual endowment, Pearson correlations are used. For variables where
one of the two is nominal data, such as the continent in which the university is located
(seven nominal options) and whether a university is public or private (dummy variable,
0 for public, 1 for non-public), a one-way ANOVA is used. For the ANOVA tests, Tukey
HSD is used for post hoc analysis.

Results
Descriptive statistics for the data sets
Table 1 provides the mean values for the each of the data categories as well as break-
downs of mean by continent (North America, Europe, Asia, Australia – Africa and South
America not represented in sample), and by the size of student populations (20,000
enrolled students or less/more). Facebook followers for the universities sampled have a
mean of approximately 500,000 and a range from 11,000 (Kyoto University) to 5.1
million (Harvard). The mean year in which the universities sampled were established is
1835 (which is hundred years earlier than the first universities established in many
African, South American and Asian countries), with a range from 1096 (Oxford) to 1998
(King Khalid University), while the mean year in which Facebook pages were established
is 2012 (range = 2008–2017). The universities sampled published a mean number of 220
posts over the six-month period examined: 1.21 per day, with a minimum of 0.2 and a
max of 2.84 per day. The mean number of interactions (reactions, comments, shares) is
approximately 58,000 over the six-month period, with a range from 1913 (Seoul National
University) to 458,801 (Harvard).
The means for this data vary widely based on continent. In Asia and Australia the mean
for year founded is located in the twentieth century, while in Europe the mean is located
three centuries earlier. Australia also has far more students on average than those in the
sample from North America, Europe, Asia (which all have roughly similar means). North
America far exceeds the other three continents in terms of endowment and global
Alexa rank for the university website (thanks, in large part, to the large number of Ivy
league and private universities like Harvard, which have particularly large endowments

Table 1. Mean statistics for data, breakdowns by continent in which universities are located and by size
of student population.
Size of student pop.
By continent (20,000)
Variable Total N. Amer. Europe Asia Australia Above 20 Below 20
Number of Facebook followers 505,216 758,945 668,920 132,845 381,794 362,729 714,323
Size of student population 27,868 22,859 25,175 27,281 47,220 35,108 12,744
Year university established 1835 1831 1690 1934 1905 1848 1815
Endowment (in USD) 3.89 Billion 9.1 Billion 1.4 Billion 1.0 Billion 958 Million 1.92 Billion 9.49 Billion
Global Alexa rank 11,919 2411 8552 14,049 7204 7662 20752
Year FB page established 2012 2010 2012 2014 2012 2012 2011
Number of reactions 49,768 70,982 33,790 13,827 118,372 45,635 58,550
Number of comments 2254 2698 2009 744 5822 2192 2386
Number of shares 5960 10,739 4436 1678 5192 4299 9490
Total number of interactions 57,982 84,419 40,235 16,249 129,387 52,126 70,426
Number of posts 220 253 231 149 299 230 199
 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION 9

even compared to elite universities in other countries). Universities in North America also
established their Facebook page earlier on average than universities in other continents,
with Asian universities established on average in 2014 (with one university in the sample
having its Facebook page established only in 2017). The number of followers and number
of followers per enrolled student has a higher mean for universities in North America and
Europe than Asia and Australia; however, Australia has a higher mean number of total reac-
tions and total interactions. It is worth noting that Australian universities post more on
Facebook than universities in any other continent (299 posts in Australia vs. 211 in
other countries), but the mean number of reactions and comments per post is still
much higher than the other continents (while North America has a much higher mean
for the number of shares per post).
The division of student population size at 20,000 is, admittedly, a mostly arbitrary
delimitation, so this breakdown should be taken with a grain of salt (the Pearson corre-
lations in below are perhaps a more useful examination of relationships with student
populations). However, the results are compelling to examine. Though the average
student population of universities under 20,000 is almost three times smaller than the
average of those over 20,000, these ‘smaller’ universities have twice as many Facebook
followers, four times the endowment, three times as many reactions and comments and
six times as many shares, with twice as many posts. As described above, these findings
appear to be greatly influenced by the ‘American Ivy League (private university) effect.’
Harvard university, for instance, included in the data, has 19,000 students (at the time
the data was collected) but over five million Facebook followers and over 400,000
total interactions (plus an endowment of nearly $40 billion). Harvard proves to be the
single biggest outlier in the data. The universities in Australia buck this relationship to
some extent, with large mean numbers of enrolled students and interactions (though
fewer Facebook followers).
For each post over the six-month period examined in this study, there was on average
226 reactions, 10 comments, and 27 shares. The variance on these statistics is high, par-
ticularly from university to university and region to region. In Australia, the number of
reactions are higher than that average, but the number of shares are below that
average. In the United States, the number of reactions per post is within one standard
deviation of that mean, but the number of comments and shares per post are much
higher. So it appears that how individuals interact with a Facebook post may vary
based on geographic region – particularly among continents (at least within this popu-
lation of top-ranked universities).
On average, for each student enrolled at a university, there are 18 followers. Again,
this varies greatly. The average is higher for private universities and slightly lower for
public universities. In Australia, the mean is about 8 followers per students (and about
4 in Asia), while it is about 27 followers per student in Europe and 33 followers per
student in the United States. Harvard and Cambridge both have over 100 followers
per student. Several Asian universities have less than one follower per student (and,
again, China is actually more of a positive outlier than one that drags the numbers
down by restricting access to Facebook, with Peking University having 21 followers
per student).
10 B. LUND

Tests of correlation
Table 2 displays the Pearson correlations for the data set (the table may read either left-to-
right or top-to-bottom). It is important to note that, with some variables, a smaller number
does not mean lesser amounts. For example, with ‘year university established,’ a smaller
year means an older university. A smaller rank (QS World or Alexa) means that it is
more highly regarded/visited. Thus a positive correlation on Year Established/Ranking
means that the older the university the lower (better) the ranking. Conversely, with fol-
lowers/ranking we see that as the number of followers goes up, the ranking goes down
or improves (this is reflected with a negative correlatin). Again, it is important to remember
that these are correlations and do not imply causation. For all statistical tests (Pearson and
ANOVA), outliers (ala Harvard) were removed.
The number of students and the number of Facebook posts of a university lacks any
more than a very minimal relationship with any of the other variables studied. Although
the researcher hypothesized a relationship the number of Facebook posts and the total
number of reactions, comments, shares, and followers, this hypothesis does not appear
to be supported by the data. The strongest relationships with the number of Facebook
posts over the six-month period are the year in which the Facebook page was created
and the Alexa ranking of the universities’ websites. The number of students is most
strongly (negatively) correlated with endowment (again, appears to be the Ivy League
effect and the fact that prestigious private universities tend to have fewer students but
much larger endowments). The findings of Peruta and Shields (2017), that posts are mod-
erately correlated to the number of followers/interactions, was not further substantiated
by this study; rather, it was found in the present study that such relationship is negligible
among top-ranked universities, though it is worth noting that the definitions of ‘inter-
actions’ and ‘engagement’ in the Peruta and Shields study and the present study differ
somewhat so direct comparisons are flawed.
Universities with greater numbers of Facebook followers also were older, had a higher
endowment and were more highly ranked by QS – all three show a strong correlation. The
year the universities’ Facebook page was created also had a good relationship with the
number of followers. Alexa ranking for the universities’ websites had only a negligible cor-
relation, as did the number of posts. There was a small (negligible) negative correlation
between the number of followers for a university’s Facebook page and the number of stu-
dents enrolled at that university.
In looking specifically at Facebook interactions, reactions and comments are found to
be very strongly correlated (0.94). Reactions to shares and comments to shares were both
strongly correlated, but less so than with reactions and comments. Thus, the relationship
between reactions and comments appears to be linked more so than shares with either.
There is a strong relationship between the number of Facebook followers for a university
and the number of interactions, but this relationship does not exist for the number of stu-
dents at a university. Endowment has a good-to-strong positive correlation with the
number of interactions, particularly reactions and shares.
The QS World Ranking for the universities is only strongly correlated with the number of
followers for a university (and this relationship is the strongest only with universities
ranked in the top 100–0.63). There are good, significant correlations with the university’s
endowment and the year the universities’ Facebook pages were created. The relationship
Table 2: Pearson Correlations for Statistical Measures
Followers Students Posts Reactions Comments Shares Uni. Est. Endow. Alexa FB Ctd. Ranking
Followers −0.08 0.14 0.71 0.71 0.86 −0.64 0.65 −0.14 −0.46 −0.56
Students −0.08 0.21 0.17 0.24 −0.03 0.09 −0.33 −0.18 −0.04 −0.33
Posts 0.14 0.21 0.24 0.27 0.22 −0.12 0.22 −0.35 −0.32 −0.23
Reactions 0.71 0.17 0.24 0.94 0.81 −0.24 0.49 −0.16 −0.29 −0.18

JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

Comments 0.71 0.24 0.27 0.94 0.73 −0.36 0.38 −0.17 −0.27 −0.14
Shares 0.86 −0.03 0.22 0.81 0.73 −0.32 0.69 −0.15 −0.36 −0.38
Year Uni. Established −0.64 0.09 −0.12 −0.24 −0.36 −0.32 −0.26 0.15 0.32 0.35
Endowment 0.65 −0.33 0.22 0.49 0.38 0.69 −0.26 −0.16 −0.46 −0.49
Alexa Rank −0.14 −0.18 −0.35 −0.16 −0.17 −0.15 0.15 −0.16 0.37 0.23
Year FB Page Created −0.46 −0.04 −0.32 −0.29 −0.27 −0.36 0.32 −0.46 0.37 0.47
QS World Ranking 0.56 0.33 0.23 0.18 0.14 0.38 0.35 −0.49 0.23 0.47
For all correlations, p-value < 0.01.

11
12 B. LUND

between ranking and Facebook statistics (number of posts and interactions) was negli-
gible-to-weak.

Analysis of variance (ANOVA)

ANOVAs were conducted both for the number of Facebook followers and the number of
Facebook interactions for all fifty universities. Three sets of these ANOVAs were conducted:
public vs. private universities, by continent, and by country (focusing on those countries
represented by at least 10% - 5 - of the universities sampled). The results for all of the
ANOVAs are shown in Table 3.
Among public and private universities, the mean number of Facebook followers is
515,832 followers for private universities and 226,600 for public universities. The F-value
is 10.17 with a p-value < 0.01. This denotes a potentially significant difference between
the two sets, with private universities have a significantly higher average than public univer-
sities in the sample (post-hoc analysis was not needed, since only two groups existed). As for
interactions, private universities have an average of 56,856 interactions and public univer-
sities have an average of 25,773 interactions. The F-value is 11.7 with a p-value < 0.001.
Among the four continents represented in the data, the North America and Australia
have the highest average of follower, both over 380,000, and Asia has the smallest, at
66,598. The F-value is 8.28 with a p-value < 0.001. This indicates a significant difference.
Post-hoc analysis reveals that Asian universities likely have a significantly lower number
of followers than North American and Australian universities, while European universities
show no significant difference from any of the three other groups. With interactions, the
range is from 12600 for Asia to 129,386 for Australia. The F-value is 7.85 with a p-value <
0.001. Post-hoc analysis reveals that Australian universities likely significantly exceed the
mean number of interactions for all other continents (North America, Europe, and Asia).
Four countries represented at least 10% of the universities in the sample: the United
States, the United Kingdom, China, and Australia. The mean number of followers in

Table 3. ANOVA results for data.

Data Set Average Variance SS MS F F-Crit P-value
10 11 11
Continent/Followers (NA, EU, AS, AU) 386,926 6.48e 8.35e 2.78e 8.28 2.85 <0.001
172,304 1.44e10
66,598 5.11e9
381,793 2.33e10
Continent/Interactions 59,771 1.42e9 5.7e10 1.9e10 7.59 2.83 <0.001
23,079 1.23e8
12,600 1.43e8
129,387 1.92e10
Public vs. Private Followers (PU, PR) 226,601 3.86e10 7.87e11 7.87e11 10.17 4.05 <0.01
515,832 1.84e11
Public vs. Private Interactions 25,772 4.51e8 8.85e 9
8.85e 9
11.70 4.07 <0.001
56,856 1.52e9
Countries /Followers (US, UK, CN, AU) 558,573 1.62e11 4.71e11 1.57e11 0.78 2.96 0.51
511,582 5.1e11
220,791 4e10
381,794 2.33e10
Countries/Interactions 110,338 1.5e10 4.93e10 1.64e10 1.70 2.99 0.19
49,468 1.89e9
17,522 3.05e8
129,387 1.92e10
 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION 13

these countries ranged from 220,791 in China to 558,574 in the United States; however,
the F-value is only 0.78, far less than the critical F value of 2.96, with a p-value of 0.51.
This suggests no statistically significant difference in the means for these four countries
in regard to Facebook followers (i.e. fail to reject null hypothesis). With Facebook inter-
actions in the four countries, while range is greater (17,521–129,387), the F-value is only
1.70 with a p-value of 0.19. While there is a large difference between China and Australia,
the sample are perhaps too small for the difference to be found statistically significant.

Discussion
This study contributes to a body of literature pertaining to how institutions of higher edu-
cation use social media and the factors that suggest greater or lesser success in attaining a
sizeable social media following. The data from the present study indicate that an increase
in a university’s social media following and interactions correlates poorly with greater fre-
quency of posts. This finding likely supports the claim by Frey et al. (2013) that the quali-
tative aspects (what information is being communicated and how) of the posts plays an
important role in engagement. This theoretical perspective may suggest, practically,
that universities would be best suited to spend their time developing a few exceptionally
high-quality posts as opposed to many posts that contain little meaningful information or
lack engaging elements (like images/video).
There are also many factors outside of the university’s control – such as the year the
university opened and when it joined Facebook – that have a positive association with
number of followers and interactions. This may indicate that some of the popularity of
a university on social media is not something that can be improved by a rebranding or
marketing campaign. Popularity of universities, in general, cannot be described comple-
tely by tangible factors (Bok, 2009). It is unlikely that anything can be done to make the
University of Michigan, for instance, have a larger Facebook following than Harvard.
Harvard simply has a status – like Walmart or CocaCola – that makes it synonymous
with excellence in the human consciousness.
Geography generally has a strong relationship to Facebook followers and interactions,
which aligns with the finding of Kuzma and Wright (2013). Among Asian universities, Face-
book does not appear to be popular. This may seem logical from the perspective that Face-
book and the People’s Republic of China have a contentious relationship, where access is
restricted in most of the country (Hobbs & Roberts, 2018); however, it is not China (which
actually raises the mean numbers of Facebook followers and interactions for Asia), but
rather the other countries in Asia, that bring down the averages. The United States has
the most followers by far, but Australia has far more interactions. Europe tends to be
the perennial second or third place – always at the top of the continents in every category,
but never the top continent. This may indicate that some geopolitical, social, or other
factors affect the extent to which social media users in different continents follow and
engage with posts made by universities.
The data also reveals a strong relationship between a university’s ranking (at least for
the top 1000 worldwide) and the number of Facebook followers attained by that univer-
sity. While it is a leap to suggest that QS World Rankings sway the number Facebook fol-
lowers, it is peculiar that QS World Rankings are more strongly correlated with Facebook
followers than QS is with the age of the university or its endowment, or followers is with
14 B. LUND

the number of years since the Facebook page was created or number of posts. There is no
tangible evidence in these results alone to suggest the correlation between QS Rankings
and Facebook followers necessarily equals causation.
There are a few limitations/opportunities to extend the generalizability of these
findings beyond the QS World top-1000 universities. As referenced throughout this
paper, there appears to be some ‘Ivy League effect,’ where top-ranked private universities
consistently exceed the mean by two or more standard deviations. While these private uni-
versities appear frequently in the top-1000 rankings and are fairly evenly distributed
throughout the rankings, this would obviously not hold true for a sample of all universities
across the globe. There were four of these universities in the sample used for this study;
while that might not severely affect the findings, it likely does have an influence on
some of the results that wouldn’t be generalizable to – for instance – small, rural colleges
(except with the Pearson correlations and ANOVAs, where these outliers were removed).
Future research may also pair the type of quantitative analysis used in the present study
with a qualitative analysis of the content of posts. The weak relationship between the
number of posts and the number of interactions suggests that a stronger relationship
may exist based on the content of the post; while Taecharungroj (2017) has conducted
a study using this methodology (and could serve as a strong theoretical framework for
further study), there has not been a thorough study of universities worldwide (many
studies of social media in higher education focus on a particular country/region).

Conclusion
This study provides evidence of relationships between the popularity of and interaction
with top-ranked universities’ Facebook pages and attributes of these universities. As
social media continues to grow and serve as a marketing information resource, the pro-
spect of identifying these relationships for the sake of broadening the impact of university
marketing campaigns is of great importance. Concrete solutions have the potential to give
universities a competitive edge. While this study does not reach this level, it presents pre-
liminary findings that may springboard future focused and applied research.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Brady Lund http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4819-8162

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