Universities turn to Snapchat to tempt Freshers

A number of British universities, including Warwick, are beginning to use Snapchat as a promotional tool to engage prospective and current students.

Newcastle University was one of the first UK universities to use Snapchat as a means of communication with its students. Their Snapchat account is mainly used to document campus events, like Open Days, and to give ‘mini campus tours’. This summer the university also encouraged future Freshers to send in any questions they had that were then answered by two recent graduates, all via Snapchat.

Newcastle has over 1000 followers and said that their Snapchat account gets much more engagement level than Twitter, according to the university’s Digital Marketing and Social Media Officer, Matt Horne.

The trend is catching on. Last year, Coventry University got its own geofilter which features the university’s name and their engineering building. Coventry University uses Snapchat to document campus life and advertise competitions.

The University of Warwick does not currently have a Snapchat account, but have not ruled out using the app in the future alongside their existing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts.

Loughborough University started a Snapchat competition during ‘moving day’. Students could send in snaps of their moving day and the ‘most inspired’ won 500 Loughborough Students’ Union loyalty points to spend in the campus’s bars and shops.

This summer, The University of Staffordshire used Snapchat to send congratulation messages from its Vice Chancellor to students who had just been accepted.

The University of Warwick does not currently have a Snapchat account, but have not ruled out using the app in the future alongside their existing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts.

The university does, however, have its own geofilters. The first came out in 2015 and featured Warwick’s logo. This year, a stencil of the Koan was released.

Generally we only use it behind the scenes during the shoots, on any publicity tours we do and any training camps or preseason training.

Tom Martin, Warwick Men’s Rowing Calendar Officer

Warwick Wind Orchestra Society plan to use Snapchat to show clips of their rehearsals and performances, alongside their ‘windstagram’ account. Lego Society (WAMB) have and will continue to snapchat their free Lego building sessions. The society’s President, Holly Richardson, says it allows followers to see “how much fun we have and the variety of models we create” in the hope that more people will be interested in coming along.

Warwick Rowing Society uses Snapchat to show fans the behind-the-scenes of their calendars. Sophie White, the women’s Calendar Officer, stated: “[Snapchat] offers a more personal relationship with our customers and Snapchat enables us to demonstrate that we are just students living normal lives.”

Tom Martin, the men’s Calendar Officer, says Snapchat is used “as something fun to see the boys in a more natural way”. He commented: “Generally we only use it behind the scenes during the shoots, on any publicity tours we do and any training camps or preseason training.”

Their Snapchat account has approximately 10,000 followers and, although their other social media accounts have many more followers, Tom considers Snapchat “the most fun and also the most interactive with fans as they can reply to your story very easily”.

Matilda Onono, Publicity Officer for Women for Women International at Warwick, explains they plan to use Snapchat more in the hopes it will “help foster more of a community within the society as more behind the scenes moments can be recorded and can be used for funnier content such as nights out or film nights that we wouldn’t necessarily put on Facebook.”