Instagram marketing to attract international students in an age of internationalisation : A case study of KTH University Instagram from the perspective of Southeast Asian students

Sammanfattning: This exploratory study identifies the importance of Instagram to market universities in Southeast Asia and the strategies to make interesting content to reach more Southeast Asian students. According to the statistics in 2020 by Statista, Southeast Asia is ranked second in the world’s most active social media users, and Instagram is now quickly catching up with the giant platform Facebook and becoming the rising star. In the study, the main Instagram account of KTH Royal Institute of Technology @kthuniversity was analysed. Three main points were the center of attention: the visual power of the posts, the engaging captions, and the best timing to post. The study’s methods are focus group discussion with current KTH students from Southeast Asia and an online survey distributed to Southeast Asian students in general. The results, first, indicate that Instagram influences the choice-making of Southeast Asian students’ study destinations. Second, based on the first finding, several strategies to make interesting content to catch their interest are proposed. Southeast Asian students are more interested in photo-based posts with shorter captions and emojis. Photos showing university buildings, Stockholm/Sweden, and students’ life are more attractive. Regarding the timing, the study shows that the students do not have any specific days or time to check their Instagram, but universities should stick to the previous study mentioning that the best posting time is during breakfast and lunch.