Newsletter #75: How to get the most from TikTok’s chaos engine; Harry Potter studies is back; TikTok adds photo mode (because Instagram didn’t.)
✏️ From the Education Marketer desk
This chart from Adobe is nuts. Read
University of Chichester resonates so hard with its audience that students start DMs with "hey, bestie.” Read
TikTok confirmed it’s going after Google’s lunch. Read
📰 HE news
“The current system would rather our young people get a degree in Harry Potter studies, than in construction.” That’s about as close as we got to a higher ed policy from skills minister Andrea Jenkins last week…. Okay, I’ll bite. There are over 245,000 students studying architecture, building planning and engineering in this country. Currently, there are ZERO studying for a degree in Harry Potter. Yes, I get its hyperbole, but again it’s the humanities getting slammed, despite growing evidence that these graduates earn more (longer term) than their STEM counterparts. Jenkins also chastised universities for delivering education in “anti-British history and social Marxism.” Culture war. Culture war. Culture war. The reality of higher ed and the government’s perception of it has never been so at odds. Buckle up. Read
📊 Marketing and media news
There’s been a couple of flexes from TikTok and Meta this week. TikTok is hitting Instagram where it hurts with “photo mode” which - as you might expect - makes the app look and feel like its competitor. It’s nothing special: You can swipe through pictures to music, but it might be what Instagram’s increasingly jilted audience has been waiting for. In response, Meta released new ad inventory for (what feels like) every scrap of space on its platforms. Soon, it will be possible for brands to place adverts on personal profiles - which sounds horrible and like the homepage of Yahoo.com in 2007. If you’re working with media buyers, ask them to exclude this ad option. It won’t do your reputation any favours. TikTok photo mode | Meta ads all the ads
Google will now feature “discussions and forums” in its search engine results. The pivot to community marketing is real. Essentially, you get served conversations around topics, can discover online communities and see user-generated content in search. On LinkedIn, I mentioned how this was good news for The Student Room (and they didn’t disagree.) In fact, any site built on forums - like Quora or Reddit - is about to get a significant boost in search. If you’re not already actively posting on these sites, it’s worth considering them as part of a wider SEO strategy. Community marketing is only going to become more important in 2023 and it looks like Google is paying more attention. It needs to. Social search engines like TikTok and Instagram are stealing its market share. Read
🏫 What unis are doing
Birkbeck University has become the first to blacklist Fossil Fuel Companies from its career fairs. Bold move, especially with a recession on the horizon (😬). Apart from some awkward conversations with graduate recruiters, I don’t think this will make too much of a difference - it’s not like graduates are banned from applying. But I love it when universities take a stand. The key to creating a remarkable point of view is to first discover who you aren’t for - so fair play to Birkbirk for taking the risk. Read
Every new parent working for UAL is now entitled to six months’ leave at full pay. This is a breath of fresh air. I know new fathers who have been told that taking three weeks for their newborns (adding a week’s holiday on top of two weeks of paternity leave) is “a bit long.” We’ll see more updates like this. Post the boom of remote and flexible working, it’s becoming much harder to retain and recruit new staff. Policies like this sweeten the deal. Read
The Open University has partnered with Talk Campus, a new mental health app for students. Student counselling services have been overrun for years, so it’s good to see scaleable, digital services picking up some of the slack. In fairness to Talk Campus - the offer looks strong. Students get 24-hour access to mental health support and the delivery seems in tune with the high expectations Gen Z has for digital services. Look
Bonus: Arcadia University celebrated 170 years with a drone show. Fun fact: It’s the only campus I know of with a castle. Look
🧑🎓 What students are saying
“It was really cramped, no privacy at all. It was right next door to the freshers common room. There was nowhere to study and I feel like I fell behind because you would come back to the common room and people would be chatting." Students on the temporary accommodation being set up on campuses. Read
👾 Culture shock
A new website hosts hundreds of AIs based on celebrities and fictional characters. Annoyed with Elon Musk? Talk it out. Read
Decentraland, the darling of the metaverse and blockchain, has only 38 daily active users (but is still worth $1b.) Look
