September 8, 2026 · Blake Mischley
TikTok Reinvents the Comment Section & College Colors Day Takes Over the Feed | Reach Report No. 25
September 8th, 2026 | The Weekly Reach Report | Voice, photo, and poll comments hit TikTok, Snapchat opens its black box, and College Colors Day floods campus feeds.
Good morning everyone!
Hope you all had a great extended weekend. We're a day late this week for the holiday, but welcome back to the Reach Report.
This week is all about the comment section. TikTok just added voice, photo, and poll comments, which opens up a bunch of new ways to get students talking on your posts. And if you're wondering why every feed turned into spirit wear on Friday, College Colors Day took over the trending hashtags heading into the break.
Let's dive in!
What’s New In Social Media
TikTok Adds Voice, Photo, and Poll Comments
On September 3, TikTok started rolling out voice comments up to 60 seconds with auto translated text, photo comments with up to nine images in a carousel, and comment polls with up to five options. Polls and single photos are live now, voice and carousels arrive over the next month, and voice is 18 and up only. Lots of new ways to seek engagement!
Snapchat Opens Unified Attribution to All Advertisers
On August 31, Snapchat expanded Unified Attribution worldwide after a May test with select partners. It combines Snap's campaign data with mobile measurement partners like AppsFlyer and Adjust in one view, so a signup or install traces back to the campaign that drove it. Snap still reaches a massive share of 13 to 24 year olds, and most admissions teams have never run a dollar there because measurement felt like a black box. With Meta removing placement controls, Snap is quietly becoming the more transparent way to reach the exact age you care about.
What’s New Across Higher Ed
Texas Is the New Enrollment Battleground
The Chronicle reported September 4 that Texas is one of only 12 states projected to graduate more high schoolers in 2041 than in 2023, and recruiters have noticed. Recruiter job postings mention Texas three times more than any other state, the Dallas Fort Worth recruiter network has nearly doubled to about 100 institutions, and Wichita State, Oregon, and Marist each tripled Texas enrollment after placing a regional recruiter. The share of Texas grads staying in state slipped from 87 to 84 percent, more than 30,000 students a year.
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 | +0.32% | +0.05% | +0.64% |
| Engagement Rate | 2.3% | 0.2% | 4.0% |
| Posts Made | 5.3 | 6.7 | 2.6 |
Top Growers This Week
The accounts that gained the most followers over the past 7 days, ranked by % follower growth.
| TikTok | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. @lonestarcollege +5.1% +712 followers | 1. @uhclearlakehawks +4.8% +64 followers | 1. @PurdueUniversity +15.6% +317 followers |
| 2. @kcartinstitute +3.2% +1,355 followers | 2. @Morehouse1867 +1.2% +1,965 followers | 2. @nwnazarene +8.7% +113 followers |
| 3. @occollege +3.1% +264 followers | 3. @uwwhitewater +1.2% +601 followers | 3. @uofmemphis +8.3% +900 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. @belmontabbey 592.0% 301,078 engagements | 1. @clarkeuniversity 2.0% 568 engagements | 1. @clemsonuniv 59.1% 227,148 engagements |
| 2. @madonnauniversity 31.9% 11,026 engagements | 2. @Bowdoin 1.9% 1,592 engagements | 2. @robertmorrisuniversity 23.8% 3,423 engagements |
| 3. @leesmcraecollege 29.3% 7,738 engagements | 3. @bonaventure 1.7% 1,365 engagements | 3. @csbsju 18.6% 1,343 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
National College Colors Day (the Friday before Labor Day) had campuses flooding feeds with spirit-wear and "guess our shade" posts under both tags, while the first football weekends of the season put marching bands back on the field and back in the feed.
| 1. #collegecolorsday | ▲ 2,422% |
| 2. #nationalcollegecolorsday | ▲ 1,750% |
| 3. #marchingband | ▲ 333% |
Blake’s Bookmarks
A few posts that stopped my scroll this week and why I think they worked.
 | Showcasing a Free Resource for StudentsYour campus probably has lots of underutilized resources that students aren't aware of. I felt this type of video was a great way to show off a bus that's free to students, and based on the comments, it clearly engaged current students. |
Cool Art ProjectsArt programs always have cool projects going on. This style of showing off everything worked really well. I'm sure there are many different programs, even outside art, where you can highlight what's happening and create interesting content. |  |
 | Mic’d Up PresidentI'm starting to work on an analysis around presidents and their presence on social media, because it's super interesting. The institutions where they can leverage their president as a personality will see outsized returns on their socials. This video is a great example of why it works. |
What’s New At Reach
College Colors Day Template
A post that popped up again for National College Colors Day, and one that consistently drives engagement, is the "Do you know our school's colors?" post. It's simply your real main color next to a few slightly off shades, and it's a great way to get comments. We made a template available in the asset library, so feel free to save it. If you have a gap in your calendar, it makes a great filler post you can customize to your own colors.
New Creative Support in Testing
We want to encourage brainstorming and keep the creative process going after you've found an idea. We are currently testing a new tab besides the Network Preview, a whiteboard with each idea where you can add text, sticky notes, draw, and even drag in media or inspiration. What do y'all think about this? Would this be useful? Why or why not?
If you’d like to test it out, let me know, I can get you a development preview link!
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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