Building authentic relationships with students on social media

Our social media manager, Jordan Wyatt, shares her insight into how to build trust with student followers.

Authenticity is a core value of today’s young people, as social media platforms remain saturated with polished, curated, and filtered portrayals of life.

Gen Z were the first generation to grow up navigating today’s sophisticated digital landscape. They can tell the difference between ‘real’ content and a sales attempt in a matter of seconds, and are sceptical about what they see online.

Having an authentic voice online signals to this audience that a creator is transparent and trustworthy – and is essential for any brand hoping to connect with today’s students.

Here’s how to gauge how well your brand is building these trusted relationships, and how to boost your efforts to reap the rewards.

Building personalised relationships with vast social media audiences might seem like an impossible task – but plenty of brands are doing a great job of fostering authenticity and a sense of community in their posts.

Instead of viewing social media as another channel for their glossy, corporate marketing campaigns, brands who are being truly authentic reserve social platforms for more human, unpolished content. The focus is less on pushing their brand name and products to people, and more on starting a conversation and being engaging.

Hootsuite and RSPB are two great examples of brands who have established a separate voice for their socials that resonates with that audience and forms a connection. 

For some brands, authentic content might look like behind-the-scenes footage showing the real faces and personalities behind the brand – particularly effective for brands with a physical presence, where customers might interact with people from the videos. For others, being quick to get involved with trends is their way of putting a less formal face to the business.

There are a few easy ways to understand how well you’re currently doing with establishing a relationship with your audience online.

Firstly, look at how your audience is engaging with your content. Focus less on how many low-effort engagements your posts have – such as views and likes – and more on the volume of quality engagement. Are people commenting, resharing, and tagging others? Are you getting involved in those conversations? How are they responding to you?

Another great indicator of engagement is whether people are making user-generated content (UGC) about your brand, such as reacting to something you posted or including you in a discussion about your subject area. If they are, it’s a great opportunity to engage and be a part of the conversation. 

It’s easy enough to start small with building relationships on social media.

Potential quick wins include engaging with followers in the comments with witty replies, or getting involved in conversations already happening. This will not only help to humanise the brand, but in many cases means more people will comment in the hope of getting a response.

Meanwhile, take a look over the numbers on your recent content. Pull out which posts have received the most high-quality engagement over the past 12 months, for example, and try to understand what it is about these content pieces that spoke to your audience. 

With this information, developing a brand voice and deciding which content to post more of becomes clearer. Continuously repeating this process of evaluating and learning will help you to understand what you do best with your content, and put out more of what your audience wants to see.