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With learning at the heart of all things communication, Unacademy claims to be a contemporary brand with an aim to be a learner’s only go-to platform. Taking cues from the edtech company’s social presence and insights from Karan Shroff, we parse the Unacademy social media strategy and marketing blueprint.
For a brand like Unacademy that resonates with the youth, social media opens up a wide array of marketing opportunities since the primary consumer of content on these platforms comprises the student community. Harnessing this insight, the Unacademy social media strategy has been constantly changing gears with the evolving times upgrading itself at every level. We take a detailed look.
The Unacademy Social Media Strategy
Leveraging the diverse creative capabilities that platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer, Unacademy’s communication strategy is skewed towards visual appeal in the form of fun creatives, riddles, relatable posts, and video content for learners and educators. On Twitter, the platform keeps it minimal with one-liners and campaign announcements while on Youtube, long format content forms the crux.
Facebook: 1 million+ followers and likes
Twitter: 133.1k followers
Instagram: 981k followers
Youtube: 719k subscribers
Key hashtags: #LearnerLife, #LetsCrackit, #Funacademy
The Social CMO
Apart from sharing the company’s work and accolades, Karan Shroff, Partner & CMO at Unacademy is an avid social media user and closely follows other creative work that gets produced and trends that keep surfacing every minute.
Unlike many other marketers, Shroff’s social profile also boasts of a mix of content getting shared across brands and various initiatives. “Social media engagements act as a window into the minds of your target audience. As a marketer, I learn a lot from the comments that I receive on my posts,” he comments.
There's more to marketing than what meets the eye. #Ariel built this amazing campaign that shows you a stain on the shirt from a distance but as you drive by it’s gone, that fast, that simple, showing the best use of the product using #oohadvertising I’ve seen in a long while! pic.twitter.com/s8qOTJQlNs
— Karan Shroff (@TheKaranShroff) July 28, 2021
In his opinion, it is important to applaud good work and empower your peers to grow. The brand believes it's all for naught if you don't share what you have learned with others, thus all of Unacademy’s initiatives are centered on doing that.
He adds, “From a marketing standpoint, it is interesting to share the work done by other brands to foster an environment of mutual respect and growth.”
Unacademy- Social Communication and Engagement
“Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been the most effective social media platforms for marketing,” Shroff highlights. With the vision to democratize education, Unacademy’s communication strategy has been to create relevant content that is relatable for its Learners, claims Shroff.
“Through all our communication, we always try to tell our Learners how we plan on making their learning journey more meaningful. We put our Learners at the heart of everything that we do and all of our communication efforts are directed towards addressing their needs,” he adds.
A significant focus on Facebook is seen around creating riddles and trivia posts for the target audience of Unacademy along with some cross-posting of content from Instagram.
Considering a significant number of its target audience present on Facebook, the platform ensures that it posts daily trivia, academic and posts general knowledge and must-know questions for its followers to engage.
Unacademy also leverages the mass reach of Facebook for campaign launches, #DidYouKnow snippet content, video posts around celebrity collaborations, and brand announcements.
A visual showcase of an average learner's life and back-to-school days depiction canvasses the platform’s Facebook profile complemented by a bunch of video tutorials.
As mentioned by Shroff earlier, Instagram is one of the social media platforms that has been proven effective for brand communication. Harnessing the diverse and targeted features that it offers, Unacademy has explored content in almost all formats provided by Instagram.
Reels, IGTV, still creative, video posts form the basic content formats for Unacademy’s Instagram strategy. It looks for uploading a maximum of 3-4 posts and 2 minimum to engage their audiences.
Conversation starters, guides, learning tutorials, educational sessions, training videos, expert live sessions, talks with the industry leaders, collab announcements are the main content divide on the photo-sharing app.
“Students use social media for a number of reasons, but the most common one is the need to take a study break, or to just destress. Keeping these factors in mind, we aim to create content that inspires, engages, and helps our Learners unwind,” Shroff adds.
According to Unacademy, its social media strategy has been to be more approachable, quirky, and relatable. So all the posts are curated to ensure that they are relevant in the daily lives of our Learners, and offer value from a learning standpoint.
The brand’s Instagram presence imbibes a mix of topical posts to inspirational quotes, types, and kinds of learners, content that triggers nostalgia, creativity that speaks stories, reels that define friendships, a guide to a learner’s paradise, web series associations, relatable content.
While the brand keeps it quite elaborative on Instagram and Facebook with an eye for detail, on Twitter, Unacademy engages its followers in some one-liners and minimal content that sounds equally relatable.
Pros and Cons of staying up all night to score 100/100:
— Unacademy (@unacademy) August 21, 2021
Pro - 100/100
Con - Staying up all night
What feels like a crime but isn’t?
— Unacademy (@unacademy) August 25, 2021
We’ll go first.
Being the first person to submit an assignment.
Spewing creativity just through words and picturization of trending memes complemented by on fleek copies, Unacademy twitter peaks into the learner’s mind and skills. Filtering insights on a daily basis, the team puts trending moments, punchlines and disseminates important company announcements via Twitter.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where does your handwriting stand during exams? pic.twitter.com/F1jofdINSu
— Unacademy (@unacademy) August 20, 2021
Also Read: #SMLive: Karan Shroff shares insights into Unacademy’s marketing strategy
Youtube
Youtube is largely utilized for uploading long-form campaigns and highlights from the expert sessions conducted on the platform.
Its recent marquee campaigns include, ‘The Greatest Lesson,’ ‘Let's Crack It,’ ‘Unacademy Believe’ and ‘Legends on Unacademy.’ Shroff highlights that every marketing campaign from Unacademy tends to focus on an ethos that Learners should imbibe for success.
While ‘The Greatest Lesson,’ featuring cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, encouraged Learners to instill resilience, our ‘IPL - Let’s Crack It’ and ‘Cracking The Game’ urged Learners to be innovative and taught them that learning can be found anywhere.
Similarly, ‘Unacademy Believe’ encouraged Learners to be grateful to those who have played a part in their learning journey. Its flagship initiative ‘Legends on Unacademy,’ brought stalwarts like Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, Anushka Sharma, Kiran Bedi, Shashi Tharoor, Sudha Murthy, and others on the platform to offer life lessons to our Learners during the pandemic.
For ‘Let’s Crack It’, Unacademy created a 360-degree campaign, tapping into the pulse of young India. The film went viral and remains one of the most-watched TV commercials in 2019-20, with over 150 million views.
Its recent 'Believe film,' garnered 57 million views on Youtube within hours of its release.
Content, Influencer And Moment Marketing
As per Unacademy, the teams reach out to influencers when it launches a major campaign. Shroff shares, “Content marketing is at the heart of what we do, and I believe it will become increasingly important in the future. Successful marketing enables a brand to seamlessly integrate itself into the lives of its consumers, and content plays a significant role in achieving this.”
In the traditional sense, according to him, marketing will continue to build awareness and top-of-mind positioning, while content will enable you to gain a stronghold in the hearts of your consumers.
Also, in Shroff's view, moment marketing is a great way to capture eyeballs as long as it doesn't offend or disparage any business, industry player, or individual.
On the sidelines, commenting on the upcoming IPL season, Shroff thinks that the break-in this edition of IPL gave marketers a unique opportunity to create a second burst when the event recommences. During the initial 3-4 weeks when the campaign was live, Unacademy managed to garner significant momentum, which started to dwindle as the season progressed.
"We expect the second half of the tournament to be high-impact from a marketing perspective, which will enable us to create brand visibility and top-of-the-mind recall for Unacademy," he says.
All in all, Unacademy has crafted an articulate social media strategy targeted towards learners and the potential audiences out there, their needs, and demands - staying true to the brand purpose. It paves an easier way for students to engage with the brand directly through these platforms and build more cohesive associations.