Audience: Community College

In higher education, organic social media often serves as the front door of your institution’s brand. It’s the place where prospective and current students, parents, alumni, and donors first get a sense of your institution’s culture, values, and voice. 

Standing out in today’s saturated social media feeds requires more than just frequent posting. It’s about understanding what makes social media “social” and using it to connect with your audience in engaging ways. 

When prospective students research academic programs, they aren’t casually browsing — they’re making one of the most important decisions of their lives that will shape their future career. They want detailed, reliable information that helps them compare options, weigh outcomes, and feel confident before applying. In fact, for many students, their college choice entirely depends on finding the right academic program. But when they land on a webpage that’s vague, disjointed, or incomplete, they’re more likely to click away, taking their application with them.

Your teams just carried a higher education institution across the line from planning to reality: scheduling, advising, financial aid, bookstore, faculty, IT, the whole relay baton passed cleanly. If it feels like mile 25 of a marathon, that’s because it is. Every community college faces the same cyclical crunch: students juggling work and family, aid that finalizes late, holds that clear after add/drop, and life that doesn’t always start on the official day one.

In higher education marketing, it’s all about meeting prospective students where they are and guiding them every step of the way toward enrollment. That’s the heart of full-funnel marketing. It’s not just a buzzword; it’s a strategic way to nurture prospects from first touchpoint to final decision.

As summer comes to an end and new students head to campus, thinking about another enrollment cycle of prospects and parents could seem daunting. Or at least like starting over. At Carnegie, we hope the insights from the Summer Research Series can help to reduce some of those anxieties, and as we wrap up our series, we want to arm you with one final piece to the puzzle: personality in higher education storytelling.

TikTok might have started as a space for viral dances and trends, but that’s not how prospective college students use it anymore. Today, TikTok is influencing real decisions, and that includes where students visit, apply, and enroll.

Reddit awarded Carnegie with a prestigious Reddit Sales Partner Badge. The Sales Partner Badge is awarded to marketing agencies with exceptional achievements and expertise in leveraging Reddit’s advertising solutions to drive impactful results for our higher education clients.

Higher education websites are always evolving—whether you’re adding a new program, updating enrollment deadlines, or tweaking a form field. But many institutions still rely on fragile front-end code that wasn’t built for frequent change. Even small updates can cause big problems, especially when changes happen directly inside the CMS (content management system).

The college search process is a complex and often overwhelming undertaking, but with the rise of AI, it is beginning to transform the way students explore their higher education options. Results from Carnegie’s 2025 May Deadline Survey show that more students than ever are using AI to inform their college search process. In this blog post, we’ll explore AI use by students for college search and application materials, AI rules in high schools, the prevalence of AI use in high schools, and perceptions on the increase in access to and use of AI tools.

In today’s digital landscape, prospective students aren’t just skimming your website or reading brochures; they’re scrolling through your social media, looking for proof of what your institution is really like. They want to see real stories, genuine experiences, and student voices, not just polished ads. That’s why the most effective higher ed marketing strategies strike a balance: organic content that builds trust paired with paid campaigns that expand reach.