August 10, 2026 · Blake Mischley
Pick an Emoji + Follow the Line & Posts That Are Kinda Chic | Reach Report No. 21
August 06, 2026 | The Weekly Reach Report | Diving into recent social media news and trends, along with what happened this week in higher ed social.
Good morning everyone!
This is the first issue of the revamped Reach Report.
Same idea as always, everything a higher ed social team needs to know in one place, once a week. What changed is the structure. Every week you'll get what's happening across social and higher ed, how accounts actually performed the past 7 days, a few posts that stopped my scroll, and what's new in Reach.
This week we've got Disney handing its IP to TikTok creators, a new trend that's kinda chic, and why most enrollment leaders say their biggest problem isn't price.
Let's dive in!
What’s New In Social Media
TikTok Forms Partnership with Disney
Disney and TikTok announced a first of its kind global content sharing deal this week. TikTok is giving creators access to assets from hundreds of Disney films and series, and opted in creators will have their videos live on both TikTok and in a section called Verts inside the Disney+ app, covering Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, FX, and more. It pilots in the US in the coming months with other markets to follow. What makes it notable is that Disney has historically been aggressive about protecting its IP from creators, so this is a real shift. The bigger signal for the rest of us is that fan made content is being treated as a distribution channel, not a liability. Worth thinking about how that applies to the student content already being made about your campus.
🚨 Trend Alert: Kinda Chic
There's been a new trend going around and, well, it's kinda chic. The format is dead simple. A photo, and one line starting with "kinda chic to." The whole point is skipping the expensive, traditional version of chic for stuff like personal growth, peace, and body positivity. Easy way to think about it is pulling from the aesthetic photos or candids you already have sitting in your camera roll. Works on campus without much effort. Kinda chic to go to office hours in week one. Kinda chic to change your major. Kinda chic to eat alone in the dining hall. Low lift, no one needs to be on camera, and it runs as a carousel or a Reel.
Who Was First | Who Engaged The Best |
Tip: Research in Reach lets you filter by keywords across captions, hashtags, and alt text, so it's super simple to find inspiration on how other institutions have hopped on this trend.
What’s New Across Higher Ed
Only 61% of Institutions Anticipate Hitting Enrollment Goals
Inside Higher Ed shared new Niche survey data this week on where fall 2026 enrollment landed. 61 percent of enrollment leaders expect to hit their goals, dropping to 50 percent at colleges under 2,000 students. The interesting part is what they named as the biggest problem. 30 percent said brand recognition and differentiation, with one respondent putting it as "our competitors are seemingly everyone." Only 18 percent said affordability, and colleges that increased marketing budgets were more likely to meet their goals. Hard to read that and not conclude the bottleneck is being known and being memorable, which is squarely a social problem.
Weekly Higher Ed Social Snapshot
Here's how higher ed accounts performed this past week. Averages across the board, who grew fastest, who got the most engagement, and the posts that pulled the biggest numbers.
Weekly Social Media Benchmark Averages
How the average higher ed account performed over the past 7 days on each platform.
| Metric | TikTok | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| % Follower Growth | +0.17% | +0.06% | +0.37% |
| Engagement Rate | 1.7% | 0.2% | 3.8% |
| Posts Made | 4.1 | 5.4 | 2.0 |
Top Growers This Week
The accounts that gained the most followers over the past 7 days, ranked by % follower growth.
| TikTok | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. @tamu_victoria +14.9% +1,023 followers | 1. @colbycollege +16.1% +5,115 followers | 1. @eckerdcollegefl +14.6% +437 followers |
| 2. @westernunews +3.3% +257 followers | 2. @WashU +4.8% +6,281 followers | 2. @stonybrookuniversity +7.0% +671 followers |
| 3. @lasierrauniversity +2.6% +339 followers | 3. @SCState1896 +0.8% +388 followers | 3. @ut.martin +7.0% +390 followers |
Top Engagers This Week
The accounts whose posts from the past 7 days earned the highest average engagement rate — engagements (likes, comments, shares) on a post as a % of followers, averaged across the week's posts. Minimum 3 posts.
| TikTok | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. @mvnu1968 9.6% 4,016 engagements | 1. @GonzagaUniversity 2.7% 15,151 engagements | 1. @stan_state 23.4% 1,609 engagements |
| 2. @scsuhuskies 9.4% 2,510 engagements | 2. @michigantech 1.6% 2,956 engagements | 2. @northeasternu 18.4% 65,337 engagements |
| 3. @usmspires 7.9% 870 engagements | 3. @ColoradoSchoolofMines 1.2% 1,892 engagements | 3. @universityofdayton 11.2% 2,181 engagements |
Top Instagram Posts This Week by Engagement Rate
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Top Facebook Posts This Week by Engagement Rate
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Top TikTok Posts This Week by Engagement Rate
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Trending Hashtags in Higher Ed
Campus milestone season is in full swing — schools posting res-life move-ins and white coat ceremony recaps are seeing big spikes, while others are riding the Spider-Man: Brand New Day trend for a pop-culture reach boost.
| 1. #reslife | ▲ 700% |
| 2. #whitecoat | ▲ 700% |
| 3. #spidermanbrandnewday | ▲ 450% |
Blake’s Bookmarks
A few posts that stopped my scroll this week and why I think they worked.
 | Mascot MashupTo celebrate Friendship Day, mascots from Sacred Heart University, Central Connecticut State University, University of New Haven, Southern Connecticut State University, Fairfield University, and Montclair State University came together, capitalizing on the Netflix documentary trend. Collaborations are always fun to see, and they created even more content together besides this one reel. |
Josh and Jase CutawayI'll be honest, I had never heard of these creators until they were traveling throughout Michigan — since then, they've always been in my feed. I thought this was going to be a repost of them mentioning MTU. Instead, it was a creative cutaway showing off unique research being done on campus, doing well not just on Instagram but also Facebook, which you don't often see. |  |
 | Showing Off Campus Via Pokemon GoWhile Pokémon Go might not have the hype it did when it came out in 2016, to celebrate 10 years since its launch they showed off PokéStops around campus. I thought this was not only funny, but a very creative way to tour campus. Makes me think about what other creative options there are besides a traditional walk-around video. |
What’s New At Reach
New Template In Asset Library: Pick an Emoji & Follow the Line
An older format but it still works. Pick an emoji, follow the line, land on your answer. Schools have run it for majors, dining hall rankings, dorm assignments, pretty much anything with a list of options. Our team built a Canva template for it, so make a copy, swap in your own options and colors, and it's ready to go. It's in the Asset Library if you want a starting point.
Insights in Action: LinkedIn Posts Improving AI Visibility
Reach officially went live last week. In case you missed it, here is a link to our launch video.
We are starting from zero in terms of our own visibility in results, brand recognition, etc. A part of our strategy to go from nothing to being seen is heavily relying on social. As you've seen, I frequently mention social and its place in search, so to practice what we preach we are increasing our output across not just LinkedIn but all platforms (cross posting content beyond LinkedIn to Instagram, YouTube, and even X), so the keywords we want to be searched for are in as many surface areas as possible.
The result: just 34 hours after our launch video, the LinkedIn posts we released to support the launch put us on top of Google. While it's more of a niche search, it's only up from here, and with the content we have planned to target search intent, I'm excited to see results this quickly.
Here's a link to a full LinkedIn post I did on the subject.
That's it for this week.
I want to hear what you thought. What was actually useful, what you skipped, what you'd want more of. If there's a section missing, a metric you'd rather see, or a post you think belongs in Blake's Bookmarks, send it over. Just hit reply, I read all of it.
And if something in here was useful, forward it to whoever on your team needs it.
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Until next time.
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