This study is dedicated to universities' strategic social media communication and focuses on the fan engagement triggered by Facebook postings. The study contributes to a growing body of knowledge that addresses the strategic communication of universities that have thus far hardly dealt with questions of resonance and evaluation of their social media messages.,Using the Facebook Graph API, the authors collected posts from the official Facebook fan pages of the universities listed on Shanghai Ranking's Top 50 of 2015. Specifically, the authors retrieved all posts in a three-year range from October 2012 to September 2015. After downloading the Facebook posts, the authors used tools for automated content analysis to investigate the features of the post messages.,Overall, the median number of likes per 10,000 fans was 4.6, while the number of comments (MD = 0.12) and shares (MD = 0.40) were considerably lower. The average Facebook Like Ratio of universities per 10,000 fans was 17.93%, the average Comment Ratio (CR) was 0.56% and the average Share Ratio (SR) was 2.82%. If we compare the average Like Ratios (17.93%) and Share Ratios (2.82%) of the universities with the respective Like Ratios (5.90%) and Share Ratios (0.45%) of global brands per 10,000 fans, we may find that universities are three times (likes) and six times (shares) as successful as are global brands in triggering engagement among their fan bases.,The content analysis was solely based on the publicly observable Facebook communication of the Top 50 Shanghai Ranking universities. Furthermore, the content analysis was limited to universities listed on the Shanghai Ranking's Top 50. Also, the Facebook posts have been sampled between 2012 and September 2015. Moreover, the authors solely focused on one social media channel (i.e., Facebook), which might restrict the generalizability of the study findings. The limitations notwithstanding, university communicators are invited to take advantage of the study's insights to become more successful in generating fan engagement.,First, posts published on the weekend generate significantly more engagement than those published on workdays. Second, the findings suggest that posts published in the evening generate more engagement than those published during other times of day. Third, research-related posts trigger a certain number of shares, but at the same time these posts tend to lower engagement with regard to liking and commenting.,To the authors’ best knowledge, the automated content analysis of 72,044 Facebook posts of universities listed in the Top 50 of the Shanghai Ranking is the first large scale longitudinal investigation of a social media channel of higher education institutions.

中文翻译：

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评估大学的战略性在线交流：上海大学排名前50位的大学如何通过Facebook帖子增加利益相关者的参与度？

这项研究致力于大学的战略性社交媒体交流，并关注由Facebook发布触发的粉丝参与。这项研究为不断发展的知识做出了贡献，这些知识解决了迄今几乎尚未解决其社交媒体消息的共鸣和评估问题的大学的战略沟通。作者使用Facebook Graph API，从官方Facebook粉丝那里收集了帖子在2015年上海排名前50名中列出的大学页面。特别是，作者检索了从2012年10月到2015年9月的三年范围内的所有帖子。在下载Facebook帖子之后，作者使用了自动内容分析工具来调查帖子的功能。总体而言，每10,000个粉丝的喜欢人数中位数为4.6，而评论数（MD = 0.12）和分享数（MD = 0.40）则要低得多。每10,000名粉丝的大学平均Facebook赞比率为17.93％，平均评论比率（CR）为0.56％，平均份额比率（SR）为2.82％。如果我们将大学的平均喜欢率（17.93％）和份额率（2.82％）与每10,000名粉丝的全球品牌各自的喜欢率（5.90％）和份额率（0.45％）进行比较，我们可能会发现大学是在吸引粉丝基础上的参与度方面，全球品牌获得了三倍（赞）和六倍（份额）的成功。内容分析完全基于公开排名的上海50强大学的Facebook交流。此外，内容分析仅限于在上海排名前50名中排名的大学。此外，Facebook帖子是在2012年至2015年9月之间抽样的。此外，作者仅关注一个社交媒体渠道（即Facebook），这可能会限制研究结果的推广性。尽管存在局限性，但仍邀请大学传播者利用研究的见解，使其在吸引粉丝方面更加成功。首先，在周末发布的帖子比在工作日发布的帖子要多得多。其次，调查结果表明，晚上发布的帖子比白天其他时段发布的帖子更具吸引力。第三，与研究相关的职位触发了一定数量的份额，但与此同时，这些职位在喜好和评论方面的参与度也较低。据作者所知，