Challenge

As the online education arm for Cornell University, eCornell offers a broad range of online certificates programs in specialized topic areas such as leadership, marketing, data science, hospitality, technology, and more. Given this varied portfolio of offerings, it’s especially critical for the university to engage defined subsets of prospective students. Key objectives for eCornell’s digital marketing team include engagement through value-add content and growing awareness around new and existing certificate offerings.

Solution

eCornell has deployed a comprehensive strategy on LinkedIn, with a strong mix of organic and paid elements. Part of this rationale comes from the platform’s sophisticated targeting capabilities, which allow the university to reach specific verticals and niches aligning with its programs. They also like the professional mindset that members bring. “We do a lot across all the social platforms, but people on LinkedIn are on their best behavior because it’s tied to their professional identity, and so you get really constructive and thoughtful conversations that unfold because of that,” says Megan Burke, eCornell’s Chief Marketing Officer. Her team’s efforts to drive these conversations include caption videos, webinars, longform posts from faculty members, quote graphics, and more. Growing the company’s LinkedIn Page has been a big area of focus.

Results

Through a balanced approach, eCornell has been able to drive its LinkedIn Page following up past 78,000 and counting. “One outcome of investing heavily on the paid side of things on LinkedIn is that it has increased organic following,” says Senior Director of Marketing Andrew Hamilton. “Even if people don’t inquire immediately, they might like our eCornell page, which in the long run means that they start to engage with more and more of our posts.” This has led to big engagement numbers for organic content. One of eCornell’s Women in Leadership videos scored 50,000+ impressions and 84 actions. eCornell has also seen success creating LinkedIn Groups around specific topics, where prospective students can connect with a community of existing students and graduates — one has more than 30,000 members.