Social media are a communication phenomenon which is becoming more and more influential in business. Online social media can be defined as ‘’a service based on web which allows individuals to (1) build public or semi-public profile in enclosed system, (2) create a list of users they are linked to and (3) observe and use their own lists of connections and other people’s lists of connections inside the system.’’ (Danah and assoc. 2007) . According to Kušić (2010) , the central part of social media are Profiles as unique pages where every individual can introduce to others through personal information like age, gender, interests and other, as well as multimedia and applications which personalize and enrich any profile. Social media are becoming the central communication tool especially among younger generations who use it to express attitudes and opinions, share events and create groups with similar interests. The big advantage of social media is the possibility it provides to analyse buyers, their opinions and experiences (Helkkula and Kelleher, 2010) . As Ružić, Biloš and Turkalj (2009) mention, there are over 300 active networks today which share a common goal – to create an image which they will use to present to public via social networking sites.

The usage of social media on the worldwide level is as follows: Facebook is the first with over 1, 870 million active users, with 18% market share, 7% more than its rival, WhatsApp – owned by the same owner as Facebook; followed by: Facebook Messenger, QQ, WeChat, QZone, Instagram, Tumbir, Twitter, etc. (Global Social media research summary 2017) .

Since the target population of institutions of higher education is the same population which comprises the majority of Facebook users – the youth, it is clear that this media is largely used in marketing tools of institutions of higher education. Furthermore, if we take into consideration the fact that 55% of users of solely Facebook use it on daily basis, it is clear that this is the most efficient tool for marketing messages to reach the audience (PC Chip, 2017). The influence of Facebook, which has almost two million users worldwide, according to Figure 1, is quite high.

Figure 1

The influence of social media on society

Social media are becoming more and more important every year. The number of active users is growing rapidly and it is estimated that the current number of 2 million users in Croatia will increase in the next few years. From 2,06 million in 2018, 2,1 million in 2019 to 2,18 million in 2022 (Statista Report, 2017) .

Currently, Facebook is the largest social network in Croatia. It is used not only by individuals, but also more and more by organisations in order to communicate their messages. Since it is the social media most widely used, we are going to analyse the number of Facebook users in Croatia. The total number of active Facebook users in Croatia is approximately 1,900,000 users; 900, 000 female, 930,000 male. Considering age, most active users in Croatia (58%) are in the age range of 13 and 34 years old. Most of them are teenagers and students (30%), while the lowest number is shown in population over 55 (8%). The distribution is as follows:

A successful appearance on Facebook has to be well coordinated in advance by strategic plan and its goal has to be creating ‘good atmosphere’ that will spread among users. However, it is important to understand that the content is the key to success. It has to be informative and interesting for the user. If the content is well organized, it expects a reaction from the user which is the biggest advantage of social media – two-way communication. It is essential to follow the results of the posts and campaigns on Facebook, as well as the target group of users in order to adjust future communication.

Besides Facebook as the leading social network, we can identify other social media used in Croatia (Manjgura.hr,2011) , presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Usage of social media in Croatia

A lot of authors has written about the frequency of use of social media in everyday communication between institutions of higher education and potential students as means of creating PR or as a communication tool for students or all participants in such institutions. With the new generation, Web sites become more crucial in order to meet and convince prospective students, who grew up with the Internet (Bozyigit, Akkan, 2014) . One of the Croatian authors is Perišić and associates (2012) who conducted a research on the Polytechnic in Šibenik in order to examine how active students are on social media and whether they find it important as a source of information. It is interesting that, according to this research, 47,8% of students under 24 years of age stated that institutions of higher education should have their own profiles on social media whereas 35,9% of students over 24 share the same attitude.

Hasan Khana’s (2013) research in New Zeland, where he analysed 134 institutions of higher education, showed that institutions of higher education do not give much importance to social media for marketing purposes even though such communication is considered necessary. The reason why social media are not perceived as important is that they are considered unreliable and without clear communicational strategy.

According to Roblyer and associates (2010) social media are communication technologies widely spread among students with the potential to become a powerful resource for students to support their educational institutions. Sometimes institutions of higher education are the ones who fail to meet the needs of modern society, whether it is because of the lack of will or because of uneducated staff in terms of new technologies. Furthermore, the authors indicate that the researches carried out in 2007 by National Centre for Education Statistics showed that teachers were the biggest obstacle in implementing new technologies. Despite that fact, the information used in this research about the usage of social media in online communication of institutions of higher education, is gained from teachers because they are considered as an important part of education as well as the link between institutions and students.

Mazer, Murphy and Simonds (2007) emphasize positive effects of using Facebook in communication of institutions of higher education because all followers, teachers or students, feel like a part of a community and thus become closer. They also point out that if teachers use social media, students perceive that as a positive intention to create link with students.

When observing general usage of e-marketing in everyday communication of institutions of higher education, Bozyigit and Erdem (2014) point out in their research conducted in Turkey that the main tool of social media is its web page. Even though they see room for improvement of web pages of analysed institutions of higher education, they state that 96,7% are connected to social media they actively use. Generally, it can be concluded that the awareness of the institutions about the importance of using social media in marketing communication is increasing. The only question is which social media are used in which locations, i.e. countries. Researches that answer these questions give clear guidelines for marketing practitioners when creating marketing mix of an institution of higher education. The research conducted in Indonesia shows how important Facebook and other social media are in marketing communication. A total of 329 respondents from 2 colleges in Riau had given feedback. The findings show that most of the students had a Facebook account before entering the college (95.14%), spent less than 1 hour per day using it (45.59%) and were logged onto the Facebook several times per day. Furthermore, Facebook provides positive benefits in educational environment, particularly simplifying information sharing as well as file sharing within the group (Erlin and sur, 2015) .

4. 1 The instrument studied and procedures

This research used an online survey as an instrument. The link was shared via teachers’ emails throughout Croatia which were available on web pages of institutions of higher education. It was conducted anonymously by an online questionnaire in November 2015, among 104 people. Methods used are correlation analysis, Chi-squared test. SPSS for Windows 22 was used to process and analyse the data. The aim of this research was divided in two separate parts:

Different social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Google +, Instagram and Pinterest ) offered in this online survey are based on practical experience authors Penović i sur (2014) collected in the book called ”Conquer the Internet or the Internet Will Conquer You” (”Pobijedite internet ili će internet pobijediti vas”) which takes into consideration certain social media as being the most common in Croatian social media market. A scale of possible answers was used concentrating on social media possibly being used by institutions in marketing communication. Thus, the research is based on practical manual and authors’ own perspective on the most often used social media in Croatia. Methodology used in empirical part of this paper can be divided into phases: collecting basic data via survey (questionnaire), collecting additional data online and processing data via different methods: different statistical methods and methods of presenting data via tables and charts (by using Microsoft Excel and SPSS Statistics Software). As Tang (2012) points out, private institutions of higher education are evolving quicker than public ones in every field and thus force public institutions to be more competitive. Also, Bozyigit i Erdem (2014) say that authors (Fuller 1986; Johnes and Taylor 1990 in Wilkinson and Yussof, 2005) in previous researches concluded that it appeared that public universities had better classroom and library facilities, whereas private colleges had superior laboratory and computing facilities. So, it can be concluded that by investing in computing facilities, private institutions also invest in e-communication and e-marketing tools. Therefore, the question is whether private institutions of higher education develop quicker when it comes to using social media in everyday marketing communication.

On account of theoretical part of this paper and the question raised by Tang (Tang, 2012), the hypothesis is:

H1: Private institutions of higher education use social media in marketing communication more intensively than public institutions of higher education.

A questionnaire was sent to teachers working in private and public institutions of higher education all over Croatia. If their addresses were published online, the questionnaire was sent directly and if not, it was sent to institution’s email with a kind request to forward the questionnaire to teachers. 104 replies were received in one week time. Most of the answers were collected in the first two days but the analysis of the results was done seven days later because replies had been arriving at a slower pace throughout these seven days. The questionnaire was sent to all institutions of higher education which had study programmes with content linked to economy, private and public alike. Out of 104 respondents, 82 filled in the questionnaire completely whereas 22 of them answered the questions partially.

5. 1 Results

Teachers were offered a few options of social media – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest – and were asked about how much their institutions used it, if they used it at all. The overall answers are shown in Figure 3. As expected, teachers perceive Facebook as the most widely used, which is then followed by LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Google + and Instragram. Tumbir and Pinterest are considered not used at all.

Figure 3

The sum of teachers’ answers about the usage of social media at their private and public institutions of higher education

Many researches have shown that the majority of users of social media are students or those who are going to become students. Consequently, social media are crucial tool of marketing communication for educational institutions. In their research, the authors Erlina, Fitria and Susandria (2015) mentioned as much as 95,14% Facebook users who already had profiles when applying for university. 45,59% of them log in their profile a few times a day. Many authors wrote about the importance of social media in everyday life as well as in students’ lives. Roblyer and assoc. (2010) are one of those and they warned against institutions of higher education and their teachers who do not follow trends concerning social media even though the number of students using social media is growing rapidly. Some teachers do have their social media profiles, like Facebook, but they only use it for private purposes. However, possibilities are endless; from attracting new students to strenghtening links with head institutions, spreading information, etc. Thus, it is extremely important that teachers, who often represent their institution, accept the challenge and start being active on social media. In this article, authors have analysed the importance of social media in general and in the context of institutions of higher education. The authors have presented an overall usage of certain social media on global and local scale in Croatia. They have also analysed different ways of using social media as a communication tool in institutions of higher education. Furthermore, the research results have shown how much teachers are informed about social media usage in their institution – private or public. Finally, the difference between private and public institutions of higher education in terms of using social media have been analysed. Based on the results presented in Table 2, it is clear that the order of usage of social media in Croatia, regardless of the sector, cannot be applied to the higher education system. Also, it can be concluded that, by refering to teachers’ answers, private institutions of higher education generally use social media more often and they use each social media more often than the public ones.

However, Chi-squared test in this research has shown that there is no significant difference in the usage of the most popular social media like Facebook and Instagram whereas there is a difference in the usage of other social media. Even though private institutions of higher education push public ones to be better and thus together they make headway (Bozyigit i Erdem, 2014) , still private institutions of higher education in this research show faster growth and quicker implementation of changes (Tang, 2012) . Therefore, H1 hypothesis is confirmed. This research can help implement specific marketing communication of institutions of higher education. It is clear that the biggest number of users in Croatia use Facebook so it is logical to invest primarily in this social media. Secondly, Youtube should be regarded as the next step followed by Instagram and others. Even though this research has its limitations like the range of respondents being only teachers and not all participants of higher education, it still gives us indications for further practical implementation. The limitation can also lie in the fact that teachers do not have the real image of what is being done in their institution. In that case it is important to work more actively on internal marketing and communication within the institution. It is quite clear that there is a significant room for improvement of online marketing communication and that the level of usage of social media in Croatia can give us guidelines on which social media to use more often than others.