We examine and analyse the Canadian higher education social media landscape and the five major social media networks Canada’s colleges and universities use to reach their audiences.

1. The Canadian Higher Education Social Media Landscape
Social Media Content and Engagement Data for
Canada’s Colleges and Universities
March 2019
eQAfy.com

2. About 500 people work in social media roles at Canada’s
higher education institutions or consulting or freelancing to
the sector.
That number has grown over the past decade, as social
media has become a basic element of university and college
digital marketing and communications.
One of digital marketing’s benefits is that it is data-informed,
allowing campaigns to react and adapt as new information
emerges. But, in the tumult of tactical execution, broader
strategic shifts can get missed.
This report examines the landscape and analyses in more
detail the five major social media networks that Canada’s
colleges and universities use to reach their audiences.
Those audiences are large. Across the networks we can
measure about 17.2 million accounts are listening to higher
education’s social media output.
And institutions are generating significant amounts of
content for their audiences, close to 50,000 videos uploaded
to YouTube, watched over 130 million times. More than 1.8
million tweets and 5.2 million likes on Facebook.
But there is substantial variation in content production and
engagement and the report’s data provides some
benchmarks for use in planning future social media
campaigns.
CANADIAN HIGHER EDUCATION SOCIAL MEDIA - LANDSCAPE
The Canadian Higher Education Social Media Landscape 2

3. 67
Colleges
107
Universities
12 Social networks
1,265 Accounts
3,750 Data points
17.2M audience
5.2M Likes
1.8M Tweets
270K Photos
50K Videos
30K Pins
We surveyed 173 Canadian post-secondary institutions’ official social media accounts merging
the results with their publicly available content and engagement data.
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4. Service launched: Aug-2004
Jul-2006
Feb-2005
May-2003
Oct-2010
Jun-2011
Nov-2004
Jan-2010
Feb-2004
Feb-2007
Sep-2011
Aug-2010
Proportion of institutions with
an official account on each
social media network (n=173
institutions)
Total number of accounts: 1,265
5 networks dominate Canadian higher education social media activity. All institutions have
official Facebook accounts and even late-to-the-game Instagram has over 90% up take.
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5. Total number of followers,
subscribers or members for
official accounts on each social
media network (n=173
institutions)
Total audience: 17,214,627
One surprise is LinkedIn has 8 million followers, 45% more than Facebook and 350% more than
Twitter.
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6. Estimated relative share of the available alumni
audience – as measured on LinkedIn – and the total
follower numbers for official accounts on each social
media network (n=173 institutions)
Read this as: Twitter has 2,251,942 followers across all
accounts. LinkedIn records 6,268,574 Canadian PSE
institution alumni. Twitter’s reach is 36% of the alumni
group.
We used LinkedIn’s alumni as a proxy for addressable audiences. LinkedIn reaches almost 1/3rd
more than each institution’s alumni. Facebook and Twitter don’t match that reach.
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7. 0
40
80
120
160
200
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160
NumberofAccounts
Elapsed Months
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Twitter vs YouTube Account Growth
20 months to reach 50 accounts
2 years 4 months - 100 accounts
3 years 10 months - 100 accounts
Higher education rapidly adopted YouTube and then Twitter as part of its social strategies.
Twitter played the hare, while YouTube was the tortoise.
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8. The vertical axis measures the
posts/pins/videos for each social
network. The shaded areas shows
each network’s breadth: YouTube and
Instagram >90% share.
Canadore
College:
>9,500 Pins Western University:
>1,900 videos
University of Manitoba:
>4,000 posts
The chart shows the social networks with lower content volumes – posts/pins/videos in the
thousands rather than tens of thousands – and the top producing institutions.
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9. The vertical axis
measures the
photos/tweets. The
shaded areas show
Twitter’s ubiquity and
reflect Flickr’s low
market share.
British Columbia Institute of Technology: >67,300 photos
Northern Alberta Institute of
Technology (NAIT): >67,000 tweets
The social networks with the highest content output – tweets and photos by the tens of
thousands along with the top producing institutions. Note Flickr’s narrower adoption.
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10. We’ve established some of the high-level characteristics of
how higher education uses social media.
While we readily identified a dozen different networks in
various stages of use or disuse, only five of those networks
have a material presences across colleges and universities.
In this section we’ve merged the publicly available content
creation and engagement data with each institution’s
account to build a picture of how Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are used in practice.
Social media is a basic component of university and college
digital communications and marketing, but while networks
offer detailed analytics it’s harder to see the context.
The charts in this section are intended to provide basic
performance benchmarks.
Your Instagram account only has 4,500 followers? That’s a
median account. What’s the return on investing more to
boost that number?
You’re tweeting five times a day – the median account
tweets twice daily. Are you getting the incremental return
from the extra activity?
You’ve produced and uploaded 1,000 videos to YouTube –
too many or too few?
It’s hard to plan and execute campaigns without realistic
targets and much of that data is on the following pages.
CANADIAN HIGHER EDUCATION SOCIAL MEDIA - CONTEXT
The Canadian Higher Education Social Media Landscape 10

11. 0.0%
2.0%
4.0%
6.0%
8.0%
1,000 3,000 5,000 7,000 9,000 11,000 13,000 15,000
NumberofFacebookAccounts
Number of Facebook LIKES
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Facebook Likes
Group I
Mount Saint Vincent University
15,974 likes
Median = 5,775 likes
Group I comprises 85 institutions with fewer
than 16,000 Facebook likes.Min = 85 likes
The numerical range of Facebook likes is too wide to readily fit on one chart. Above are the 85
institutions with cumulatively fewer than 16,000 likes for the official account.
11

12. 0.0%
4.0%
8.0%
12.0%
16.0%
20.0%
25,000 45,000 65,000 85,000 105,000 125,000 145,000 More
NumberofFacebookAccounts
Number of Facebook LIKES
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Facebook Likes
Group II
University of Toronto 426,819 likes
University of British Columbia 242,325 likes
McGill University 229,282 likesMedian = 35,485 likes
Group II comprises 88 institutions with more
than 16,000 Facebook likes.
Group II shows the 88 Canadian post-secondary institutions with official Facebook accounts
cumulatively attracting more than 16,000 likes – along with the small outlier group.
12

13. 0.0%
4.0%
8.0%
12.0%
16.0%
20.0%
200 600 1,000 1,400 1,800 2,200 2,600 3,000 3,400 3,800 4,200
ProportionofInstitutions
Number of Posts
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Instagram Posts
University of Manitoba 4,028 posts
College median = 787 posts
University median = 663 posts
Total of 132,825 posts by Canadian
higher education institutions over
8 years 3 months
From its October 2010 launch Instagram has gained 90%+ adoption in Canadian higher
education and largely replaced Flickr for posting images. Colleges post more than universities.
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14. 0.0%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
25.0%
1,000 4,000 7,000 10,000 13,000 16,000 19,000 22,000 More
ProportionofInstitutions
Number of Followers
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Instagram Follower Count
College median = 3,354 followers
University median = 4,666 followers
Total of 1,197,142 Canadian higher
education institution followers on
Instagram
University of Toronto 82,000 followers
University of British Columbia 45,400 followers
Western University 41,100 followers
Instagram has built an audience of 1.2 million followers of official higher education accounts:
about 20% reach, using our LinkedIn alumni numbers as the denominator.
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15. 0.0%
4.0%
8.0%
12.0%
16.0%
20.0%
2,000 6,000 10,000 14,000 18,000 22,000 26,000 30,000 34,000 38,000 More
ProportionofAccountsinEachCategory
Number of Followers
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Twitter Account Followers
McGill University 130,025 followers
University of Waterloo 82,631 followers
University of Alberta 80,256 followers
Median = 6,231 followers
Min = 92 followers
The median official higher education Twitter account in Canada has 6,230 followers. Adoption
was rapid, but Twitter shows signs of stagnation and few institutions have large followings.
15

16. 0.0%
4.0%
8.0%
12.0%
16.0%
20.0%
2,500 10,000 17,500 25,000 32,500 40,000 47,500 55,000 62,500
PercentageofInstitutions
Total Number of Tweets Sent
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Number of Tweets Sent
Northern Alberta Institute of Technology 66,909 tweets
Median = 7,483 tweets
Total of 1,810,100 tweets from
Canadian higher education
institutions over 11 years 6 months
Canada’s post-secondary institutions have fired out 1.8 million tweets to their 2.2 million
followers. And, NAIT is the tweetiest school with close to 67,000 tweets.
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17. 0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
Sep-2007 Mar-2008 Sep-2008 Mar-2009 Sep-2009 Mar-2010 Sep-2010 Mar-2011 Sep-2011 Mar-2012 Sep-2012 More
ProportionofTwitterAccountsActiviated
Twitter Account Activations by Quarter
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Twitter Account Activation
Simon Fraser University
09-Aug-2007
Median Account
University Canada West
09-Jun-2009
Time elapsed for 50% of Canadian
higher education institutions to open
an official Twitter account: 22 months
Twitter grew from its first university user in August 2007 to 50% adoption within 22 months.
90% of institutions were on Twitter by March 2012.
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18. 0.0%
4.0%
8.0%
12.0%
16.0%
20.0%
0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5 5.5 6.5 7.5 8.5 9.5 More
ProportionofAccountsinEachCategory
Number of Tweets Per Day
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Tweets Per Day
Northern Alberta Institute of Technology 16 tweets/day
Median = 2 tweets/day
1 in 6 institutions tweet once daily
It’s hard to know the appropriate cadence for Twitter, but the median higher education account
tweets twice daily. Others are way more productive.
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19. 0.0%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
25.0%
5,000 20,000 35,000 50,000 65,000 80,000 95,000 110,000 125,000
ProprotioninEachCategory
Number of LinkedIn Alumni
Canadian Universities and Colleges - LinkedIn Alumni Count
University of Toronto 281,647 alumni
University of British Columbia 200,522 alumni
York University 183,088 alumni
Median = 18,193 alumni
Total of 6,268,574 LinkedIn
alumni from Canadian higher
education institutions
LinkedIn is the original social network. 95%+ of Canadian post-secondary institutions have an
account. LinkedIn holds education history and thus has a comprehensive alumni database.
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20. 0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
50% 100% 150% 200% 250% 300% 350% 400% 450% 500%
ProprotioninEachCategory
LinkedIn Follower/Alumni Ratio
Canadian Universities and Colleges - LinkedIn Follower:Alumni Ratio
Institut national de la recherche scientifique 643%
Median = 123%
Official LinkedIn accounts at Canadian
higher education institutions have
7,973,621 followers. These institutions
have 6,268,574 alumni with LinkedIn
accounts. Many institutions reach
audiences well beyond their alumni.
LinkedIn likely reaches a non-undergraduate audience and half of all institutions are followed
by more than just their alumni. In some cases followers exceed alumni by 3X or 4X.
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21. 0.0%
2.0%
4.0%
6.0%
8.0%
10.0%
12.0%
30 90 150 210 270 330 390 450 510 570 630 690 More
ProportionofAccountsinEachCategory
Total Number of Uploaded Videos
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Uploaded Video Count
Median = 184 videos
Canadian higher education institutions have
uploaded 48,456 videos over 12 years 9 months
Western University 1,970 videos
University of British Columbia 1,823 videos
University of Waterloo 1,749 videos
Video is a key higher education content type and most of that video output is on YouTube.
About 50,000 videos have been collectively uploaded, as of February 2019.
21

22. 0.0%
4.0%
8.0%
12.0%
16.0%
20.0%
15,000 60,000 105,000 150,000 195,000 240,000 285,000 330,000
ProportionofInstitutionsinEachCategory
Total Number of Uploaded Video Views
Canadian Universities and Colleges - YouTube Uploaded Video Views
Group I
Vancouver Island University
328,914 views
Median = 86,793 views
Group I comprises 88 institutions with fewer
than 350,000 views of their uploaded videos
Engagement with YouTube video content, as measured by views, spans a massive range. We
split institutions into those with less than 350K views and those with more.
22

23. 0.0%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
25.0%
500,000 950,000 1,400,000 1,850,000 2,300,000 2,750,000 3,200,000 3,650,000
ProportionofInstitutionsinEachCategory
Total Number of Uploaded Video Views
Canadian Universities and Colleges - YouTube Uploaded Video Views
Group II
University of Manitoba
12,823,801 views
Median = 915,357 views
Group II comprises 83 institutions with more
than 350,000 views of their uploaded videos
The median institution in Group II has had its video content viewed over 900K times. However,
some institutions have seen exceptional success: University of Manitoba.
23

24. 0.0%
3.0%
6.0%
9.0%
12.0%
Dec-06 Sep-07 Jun-08 Mar-09 Dec-09 Sep-10 Jun-11 Mar-12 Dec-12 Sep-13 More
ProportionofActivationsPerQuarter
YouTube Account Activation
Canadian Universities and Colleges - YouTube Account Activation
University of British Columbia
02-Apr-2006
Median Account
Douglas College
06-Apr-2009
Time elapsed for 50% of
Canadian higher education
institutions to open an
official YouTube account: 36
months
YouTube’s rise has been slow and steady rather compared to Twitter’s pile on. Twitter requires
little infrastructure compared to video, but video engagement now predominates.
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25. 0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
5% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
ProportionofTotalViewsofUploadedVideos
Proportion of All Videos
Canadian Universities and Colleges - YouTube Views
13% of uploaded videos account for
80% of all uploaded video views
29% of uploaded videos account for
90% of all uploaded video views
Pareto curve for uploaded video content for Canadian higher education
institutions, plotting total views against the number of videos.
Mirroring trends seen elsewhere, only a portion of all content engages with its audience. And,
for YouTube video about 13% of uploaded videos have generated 80% of all engagement.
25

26. 0.0%
4.0%
8.0%
12.0%
16.0%
20.0%
00:00:30 00:02:30 00:04:30 00:06:30 00:08:30 00:10:30 00:12:30 00:14:30
ProportionofUploadedVideosinEachCategory
Uploaded Video Duration in hh:mm:ss
Canadian Universities and Colleges - YouTube Video Duration
1 in 8 uploaded videos are
longer than 10 minutes
Median Duration = 00:01:51 Longest videos record
convocation ceremonies
We were unable to find a statistically significant correlation between video length and the
number of views. Duration has shortened and the median video runs for under 2 minutes.
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27. -
50
100
150
200
250
-
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
MedianVideoDurationinSeconds
MedianNumberofUploadedVideoViews
Year Video Uploaded
Canadian Universities and Colleges - Median YouTube Views and Duration Trends
Median number of views for
uploaded videos has declined
markedly over 9 years
Median duration of
uploaded videos has settled
around 00:01:30
We sampled 25% of all videos to produce the above analysis. Median engagement, in views,
has fallen and stabilized, while duration has settled out at around 100 seconds.
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28. We collected the data for this report using our web estate management solution for higher
education.
Social media is just one example of the content, user experience and risk insights our
solution can provide from comprehensively scanning college and university websites.
The Canadian Higher Education Social Media Landscape
info@eQAfy.com
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