December 17, 2008
We started a University of South Australia YouTube channel in May of this year. Since then 105 videos have been uploaded. Most of the videos are student testimonial type ones.
There are also some others like ‘Tomorrow’ which has been the most popular.
We also add many of these videos to our corporate website but YouTube provides another channel for marketing UniSA to people who might not otherwise visit our website.
View our other videos on YouTube.
December 10, 2008
A blog is a website that is updated quite freqently and its content is written chronologically, usually with the latest information towards the top. As a blog is a standalone entity it should include information that lets you know what it’s about and who it’s written by. All too often this information is missing and without some back story it can drive people away because there’s no apparent authority behind it.
The About page
The one thing that I think should be included on all blogs is an About page. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount of text, just something that says what your blog is about.
As blogs are usually a lot more personal than a corporate website (even if they are corporate blogs) it is appropriate to include information about the author/s behind the writing of the blog.
Questions a reader might ask are:
Contact page
I think it’s courteous to have a facility on your blog so people can easily contact you. Perhaps your readers want to contact you away from the public face of each post’s comments. I know I’ve tried to contact people to let them know of a broken link, for instance, and if I can’t find the contact information I just don’t bother.
This is easy to do in Wordpress as a page. There’s even a form built in that you can use. See our Contact page. If you don’t have this option, your email information will suffice.
Corporate information
If you are writing a blog as part of your organisation’s business then some sort of corporate branding is probably needed. UniSA has a Branding and styleguide which has all the information and resources needed for UniSA branding.
It’s also pertinent to let your readers know that you are writing as a staff member, in my case a staff member of UniSA and we have that covered here, both in the blog title and in the About page.
Subscription service
The beauty of blogging software is that it has subscription services (RSS feeds) built in. Hopefully people want to subscribe to your blog so they’re notified of any updates and you should make it easy to do so. This Wordpress blog has this covered in two ways. One – is an email subscription service and the other is subscribing via RSS.
Email subscriptions will allow readers who’ve never heard of a RSS reader to be easily notified of any new posts available on your blog.
The above are the main components of a blog, but of course the content is what will keep people coming back.
December 3, 2008
December 2, 2008
SNS (Social Networking Sties) in general, not just Facebook, have changed the way our market/ audiences communicate with each other. They can spread the word about positive and negative experiences, issues thoughts and beliefs in a matter of seconds and because the audiences can tune into what they want to hear the impact of the message is increased.
Our prospective students, for example, those leaving school, are the most informed generation due to their exposure and access to the internet, which one would expect to see continue and increase with every generation. The ability to make decisions based on information generated from the trial of products and services by others has changed the landscape and rules by which we market. The impact of our markets having access to this information increases the value, focus and importance of generating positive experiences and being strategic enough to leverage off them.
Positive experiences…I am not talking about fabricated student testimonials and bought Istock images, but organic, natural, real, images, comments and videos of your students and your campuses, the things that prospective students engage with and share with others. I agree that direct marketing through SNS would be seen as invasive but the great thing about SNS is that you can be direct with our being direct; the SNS does it for you. Those that do it wrong are seen as invasive because they don’t know how and don’t understand how SNS work.
Facebook provides users (our prospective students) with the opportunity to select information they want to receive or indicate that they have interest in. For example a person can become a “fan of, friend of or even part of a group” lets call it University X. This gives X the opportunity to communicate with them about X just by posting information on the core site which in turn notifies the person that X has posted something. This therefore creates a direct but indirect communication channel between X and audience but does so by through removing the marketer from the process. This communication process is different from sending a person an email and ringing them, they wanted to receive this information and therefore listen and react in a positive nature.
For SNS to actually function it needs a revenue model, most sites, Facebook included use onsite advertising to generate funds to keep the site alive. Facebook gives marketers the opportunity to advertise to selected audiences based on their profile information of which includes level of education and age. Marketers can choose from advertising to generate traffic to their external website or alternatively generate traffic to their Fan Page on the site, an activity currently being used by a number of Australian universities.
Based on just these points, I would disagree that SNS are not a primary or effective tool for marketing or communicating to prospective students, I would say it is the opposite, especially for international students. The key to success is to be creative, strategic and truthful, you can’t just canvas like other media and if you do then it results in negative experiences. I know that if I were coming from the other side of the world to study in a foreign country, I would want to hear what others thought and what experiences they had and not just take the words in a glossy book as the truth.
SNS by all means are not the sole answer to increasing student numbers, they are as any marketer would know part of a marketing mix and should be used in conjunction with other activities. SNS should be utilised as a tool for online linkage and engagement. Why not let the market speak, listen you never know, you may learn something that might just change the way you market your university.
