Analysis of universities’ integrated communication strategies on Twitter-X

Abstract

This study offers a comprehensive approach to the evaluation of communication strategy in social networks, which contributes to the academic field by means of a specific analysis methodology, while guiding professionals in their management of digital communication. The key dimensions of universities’ general communication strategy (posting, interactivity and content strategies) on Twitter (now X) are evaluated in a holistic and integrated manner. The level of interaction that universities achieve through their various strategies is also ascertained. To do so, 70 universities (25 from Europe, 20 from the United States, and 25 from Latin America) present in one of the three most prestigious international rankings were selected. A content analysis of 53,446 posts was carried out of their official institutional profiles on Twitter, applying a specific methodology to study the Posting Strategy (through two dimensions: level of Activity and type of Presence), the Interactivity Strategy (with 2 dimensions: level of Resources and level of General approach), and the Content Strategy (with 2 dimensions: Relevance of topics and level of Combination). Our data reveal that the communication strategies of the universities studied are within the recommendations made by experts and achieve fairly good interaction with users, in accordance with studies carried out in other sectors. Some variations are noted between regions, with Latin America being more active than Europe and the United States, also obtaining higher levels of engagement with their users. The combined results show that the integrated strategy with the highest interaction requires a low frequency of posts with an adequate degree of interactivity, but with a high dose of creativity in content creation.