The influence of the author's content of students in social networks on the processes of promoting the brand of an educational organization

Background: The high level of competition in the educational services market in the Russian Federation is due to the large number of offers from public and private educational organizations of higher education. In accordance with current legislation, an applicant has the right to apply to several universities in the country at once and, as a rule, upon admission, gives preference to those whose brand is most famous. All this dictates the need to actively promote the brand of an educational organization using the capabilities of the mass media. At the same time, the budgets of regional educational organizations are often limited in the ability to conduct full-fledged advertising campaigns and do not provide funding for marketing activities to promote the university brand.

Aim: to determine the impact of students’ original content on social networks on the processes of promoting the brand of an educational organization.

Materials and methods: An analysis of modern open access literary sources on the problem of forming the image and promoting the brand of an educational organization, as well as a content analysis of publications in social networks and the media, was carried out. The empirical basis of the study consisted of materials from a sociological study carried out using Googleforms, N = 520, average age (22.2 ± 2.37). The author's questionnaire underwent sociological and ethical examination; the norms of confidentiality and autonomy were observed in relation to the respondents. Mathematical data processing was carried out using variation statistics methods using the Excel for Windows Statistica 21.0 application package.

Results: In just one month, students published 25 gaming videos on their personal pages for Russian Student Day. Each of them received from 2 to 20 thousand impressions during the competition. Students accompanied their publications with the hashtags specified in the competition conditions, which made it possible to systematize the posted material, and when searching for information about the university on a social network, quickly find the necessary content.

Conclusion: It has been shown that systematization in the collection, planning, and dissemination of information contributes to the rapid promotion of a positive image in the external and internal environment due to the displacement of negative information reasons from the agenda, provides the ability to manage information flows, and minimizes information risks.