The world of education is highly competitive, and students have many choices when deciding on a course or certification. To compete for attention in a digital world, educators must ensure their content is relevant, engaging, and informative.
Digital technologies have made it easy to connect and inform, but the flip side is it can be hard to be heard through the noise with so much content being produced hourly. With search engines becoming the dominant method for finding an educator’s website, having relevant and unique content is key to driving organic traffic.
To attract and engage students, universities, colleges, and training providers need to be where they are – online. This article explores how educators can use various types of content to recruit students.
Blogs
Blogs are an excellent way to drive engagement with a specific target audience through compelling and searchable online content, so much so that 38% of marketers rate them as the most important form of content for their business.
While it’s possible to create blogs in-house by content or marketing professionals, you can also optimize your content and reach by tapping into influencers that will resonate with your audience. In addition, integrating user-generated content into a blog will help provide key insights into the experiences of current students – a priceless asset, especially when you consider that 92% of today’s young consumers trust their peers far more than a traditional online advert.
For example, Colorado State University uses its ValuEd blog to explore topics of interest to continuing education students. As a group of prospective students that may feel underserved in college recruitment, they’re an audience with many questions and concerns about the process of getting a college education later in life.
By covering topics including “Why Waiting to Go to College May Be The Best Choice You Ever Made” and “Should I Pursue a More Practical Degree?”, the college goes straight to the heart of issues faced by that audience to engage, educate, inspire and open up a valuable line of communication, something that has proved a big success for the institution.
Social media
32% of teenagers consider Instagram the most important social network; 81% of millennials check Twitter at least once daily, and 22% of the world’s population uses Facebook. There’s a lot of scope in social media.
Social media channels provide universities, colleges, and training providers with new and unique ways of engaging with potential students. Not only does it offer students a real glimpse at what life is like at an institution, but it can encourage conversations and high levels of engagement by using channels to provide quick responses to questions or concerns. Moreover, social media encourages prospective students to connect with other students and gain insights into their interests and needs.
The University of Texas uses the power of hashtags to drive engagement and build brand awareness among the student population. Rather than using a handful of aimless hashtags to plug every post, the university is very strategic, allocating hashtags to particular events, achievements, and occasions.
For example, it uses #HookEm to congratulate its Speech Team on winning a national competition and #WhatStartsHere to showcase the accomplishments of its students and faculty to an active social community. So far, the University of Texas has 677,946 followers on its Facebook page – and counting.
With 68% of emails opened on a mobile device and over half viewed on a smartphone, it’s an effective way to engage with prospects. Emails can also be personalized in the subject line and body of the email, which is more likely to prompt the recipient to open and click through to content that resonates.
However, the effectiveness of an email campaign is directly proportional to the quality of the content it provides. To resonate with your audience, your content needs to speak directly to personas, providing solutions to issues while addressing pain points. Content to promote in emails includes:
Blogs related to the subject matter of the program and the goals of the academic milestone to which they are connected
Tips and Tricks resources that cover topics like preparing for a college interview and what to expect from college life
Testimonials from alumni packaged on how a particular course helped them in their life after college
Help Guides or eBooks that cover topics like how to find a job after graduation and ideal roles that a course trains them for
Visuals and reviews of key events, both academic and social to offer a taste of life at your institution
Video
By 2019 global internet traffic from videos will make up 80% of all internet traffic. The popularity and accessibility of video have made this medium an integral part of any content strategy. Such is its impact that four times as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than read about it.
As part of a recruitment strategy, video can also be useful in promoting the ethos of an educational institution, as the University of Phoenix has proven with its powerful animation. Created to promote their technology programs, the animation highlights the story of Rosie, who lost her job due to automation and turned to study to become an active part of the digital age. A month after launch, the video had received over 6.7 million views on YouTube.
Video can also be incredibly potent when telling a student’s story. Georgetown University created Georgetown Stories with the tagline ‘Fresh stories from the freshest students’ to showcase the lives of 13 undergraduates throughout the academic year using the power of video. Covering events, classes, parties, and friendships, the videos give a genuine glimpse into what it’s like for a real student at Georgetown.