By skyforbes 
Why are the core principles of the world’s fastest-growing platform (brevity, visual storytelling, and immediate value ) the key to engaging students in your most important programmes?
Picture this: you’re in a meeting to plan the rollout of a valuable new leadership workshop for students. You’ve got the curriculum sorted and the facilitators lined up. Then, someone says,
“Our promotion strategy should be TikTok-first.”
You can almost feel the eyebrows raising in the room.
For many professionals and academics, “TikTok” is still synonymous with viral dances and fleeting trends. But to dismiss it on that basis is to miss the most profound shift in communication we’ve seen in a decade.
A “TikTok-first” strategy isn’t about forcing your faculty to learn a choreographed routine. It’s about understanding and adopting the communication principles of the platforms where your students already spend their time.
These principles are simple, powerful, and fly in the face of most traditional university marketing.
- Brevity: Information is delivered concisely and respects the audience’s time. The core message is front-loaded, not buried on page three of a PDF.
- Visual Storytelling: The default is to show, not tell. Impact is communicated through authentic human experience, not just text.
- Immediate Value: The content immediately answers the viewer’s unspoken question: “What’s in it for me?”
A Tale of Two Promotions
Let’s apply this to that leadership workshop. The Traditional Approach might involve a lengthy email sent to the entire student body, a formal poster with a wall of text, and a link to a webpage with a detailed syllabus. The focus is on the features of the programme. The result? It likely gets lost in crowded inboxes and goes unread.
The TikTok-First Approach is entirely different. It could be a 45-second vertical video, shot on a phone. It features a student who attended last year, speaking directly to the camera.
She doesn’t list the syllabus. She tells a story.
“I used to be terrified of speaking up in project meetings. But I learned this simple technique for structuring my ideas in the leadership workshop. The next week, I used it to lead my team’s presentation, and it gave me the confidence to eventually run for student leadership.”
That’s it. That’s the entire video. The focus is on a single, tangible outcome. It’s authentic, visual, and delivers its value proposition in under a minute.
This type of content is what drives interest. It makes students stop scrolling and think, “I want that feeling of confidence, too.” The work being done by innovators like Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences with their “TikTok University” is a brilliant testament to this principle in action.
This new approach doesn’t replace the need for a detailed webpage or a follow-up email. But it fundamentally changes the entry point of our communication. It suggests that our primary mode of generating initial interest needs to evolve to increase participation in the valuable life skills programmes we work so hard to offer.
We don’t need to dance. We just need to learn the steps.
Thanks for reading! If this idea resonates with you, I’d appreciate your 👏 claps and would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Follow me for more insights on the future of communication in higher education.