Recruiting Renaissance: Unveiling the Potential of Lemon8 in Student Engagement and Recruitment Strategies
As weâve already discussed in one of our earlier blogs (Blog: Lemon8 – Blog 1 – Google Docs), Lemon8 is a social media platform which uses only photos to post about specific topics, for example, fitness, food, and fashion.Â
Letâs talk about the reach and influence of Lemon8 for education marketing. How influential and popular is Lemon8? Can Lemon8 be used for recruitment of students?Â
Can Lemon8 recruit students?
Surveys state that 68% of students globally use social media and 97% of education organisations use social media as a platform to recruit students. So, there is obviously a market and need for social media to be used for recruitment purposes, but how could you do it on Lemon8?
There is currently no advertising available to organisations to monetise products or initiatives on Lemon8, however, there is access available to organically promote on the platform. Current users on Lemon8 arenât used to seeing advertisements, and perhaps gravitate to the platform to get away from platforms that heavily promotes brands and products, like TikTok and Instagram. Therefore, if users start seeing advertising, will they leave Lemon8 as the platform no longer feels authentic?
From research we know that âpopularâ influencers still have adopted Lemon8 as a platform, however, lower-level influencers have moved to Lemon8, therefore, is there an opportunity here for influencers and education to collaborate and use Lemon8 as a platform to recruit? Even though this may be cost effective for education, as lower-level influencers will charge less than âpopularâ ones. Students may be more likely to follow the âpopularâ influencers across to another platform than a less popular one.Â
How to engage students with Lemon8
Across platforms like TikTok and Instagram, reels and videos have proven extremely effective when influencing, promoting, and engaging to users. Since Lemon8 is strictly photos, will this content be as engaging as whatâs available on other platforms? Young people follow trends, for example, dancing viral TikTok videos or transition videos, as these arenât available on Lemon8, will it be as appealing for influencers and young people to transition to?Â
Lemon8 forces the users to choose topics that they want to see content about, which is perfect if someone wants to really streamline their content, however, it could become tedious viewing the same topics when scrolling on a platform. Currently, Lemon8 does not have education as an option, this doesnât mean to say it wonât be in the future. However, if a young person is already using Lemon8 and have chosen their categories they would need to opt in to seeing content regarding education. Furthermore, it would be difficult to persuade young people to opt in to view education content, however, on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, if you have liked or searched for something then it will appear on your feed, which would mean a potential student is viewing content about universities without knowing they are beforehand.Â
Opinion Piece:Â
From this research it has become apparent that it would be very effective for education to use social media to attract and recruit students. However, I donât think Lemon8 is the platform that education should currently use to do this. This is due to the content being very streamlined, and I think it would be very difficult to get young people to choose to view education content on social media. Also, the content available on Lemon8 is only photos which may not be as engaging to some people as a reel, video or audio post would, which therefore, wouldnât be as effective to recruit students. Furthermore, due to the more popular influencers not yet using Lemon8 thereâs no desire for younger people to leave the platforms that they are currently using.Â
Other social media platformsÂ
In order, students use these social media platforms the most, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Obviously Lemon8 is not yet in this list, however, it is a fairly new platform and therefore, may eventually end up this list. Currently, it wouldnât be effective to use Lemon8 as a platform to recruit students.Â
It is important to note that all these social media platforms allow videos, reels, and audio, therefore, could be a selling point for its users and be difficult to get young people to move away from the content they are used to.Â
Education can really utilise platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram to create content that will engage its users. For example, following trends like âa day in the life of a Swansea University studentâ, viral dances by sports societies, âget ready with me for a full day of uniâ and transition videos, especially of the landscape of Swansea (beaches). This would make the user feel like they want to be a part of this community. They could use influencers to follow trends and then create the landscape and transition content themselves to be cost effective.Â
SourcesÂ
Lemon8 App Guide | SmartSocial.com
What is Lemon8 & How Does It Work? (tinuiti.com)
How to Use Social Media to Recruit Students on Their Favorite Platforms (mention.com)
