BU on TikTok: A Sneak Peek into the Student Experience

By Dave McDonald, Assistant Director of Social Media

There’s no denying it, TikTok is here to stay. With the platform rising as one of the most popular video-based social media channels for Generation Z, and the COVID-19 pandemic sending the app’s usage into overdrive, we officially launched the Boston University TikTok (@BostonU) channel in September of 2020 as an unprecedented fall semester began. Our goal? Use the platform as an outlet to embody campus life and the BU student experience through a variety of creative, lighthearted, trending ways, and express BU’s unique culture on our three campuses.

Why now?

Believe it or not, Generation Z now makes up the majority of the undergraduate college population, and according to the demographics of TikTok, this is exactly who is using the platform. On TikTok, 60% of users are 16 to 24 years old, matching two of the University’s primary target audiences, current and prospective students. With these numbers in mind and also taking into account that the #BostonUniversity hashtag on TikTok has more than 23.4 million views, we knew there was already an appetite and presence on the channel for BU content and the time had come for us to create a channel.

Our Approach:

We knew our TikTok channel had to appeal to the platform’s youthful following and current trends. When establishing our strategy, we noticed many organizations posted videos that were meticulously manicured and had high production values. We opted for the opposite, going with a raw “phone in hand” approach to give viewers a sneak peek at what student life is really like at Boston University. To achieve this, We leaned on our student interns’ TikTok expertise to launch and create content for the channel that highlighted trending video concepts on the platform, campus events, and our students’ college journeys. Using grassroots efforts and our Instagram channel, our team of interns reached out to students with unique voices on campus to focus on what makes the BU experience different. This includes highlighting what life is like as a specific major, featuring student organizations, touring the campus, or creating a TikTok around an upcoming campus event or holiday.

This approach is innovative in that the videos are straight from the student perspective without having a highly edited feel to them. The content produced for our TikTok varies greatly while still consistently adopting humorous undertones the app caters toward, with easy-to-watch and simple stories that spotlight the BU experience for all involved. Also, by allowing our interns to take a heavy hand in content direction, it ensures the content will be well received by our followers on the platform, which is mostly students.

Building a following:

Relying solely on organic outreach, we used traditional social media relationship-building tactics within Tiktok to grow our follower base, such as commenting on posts of current and newly admitted students. We also cross-promoted our Tiktok videos using BU’s Twitter and Instagram channels.

Results to date:

When looking at our channel since its launch in September 2020 we’ve been able to produce 44 TikTok videos, gained 1,132 followers, received 8,700+ likes, and achieved 100k+ views to date. Some of our top engaged content include a student’s story on why they chose BU, a campus tour, a dorm room move-in transformation, and a student sharing their favorite spots to visit in the greater Boston area.

Have you started a TikTok channel recently? What strategies have you found successful? Sound off in the comments.