University Marketing: Involving Students in the Experience

Every spring, colleges go out and recruit seniors from around the country, hoping to gain as many new students as possible. And although the free t-shirts and fun colors of all the handouts can be fun, the marketing techniques used by colleges all across America are some of the best. If not, we wouldn’t be paying thousands of dollars every year for an education some countries get for free. In this post, I will be looking at the online and social media presence of two schools in particular and compare and contrast how they stack up and how they get their students involved.

New York University was founded in 1831 and has been expanding ever since. The school not only has a wide variety of schools and programs, but has expanded globally to offer several abroad programs and offer schools in several other countries.

The school not only tries to make the students feel involved on campus but also works to make them involved in the community. Right from the start, you can see the minimalist feel their homepage has with their classic purple and white colors and easy to find tabs. As you click through the tabs, each page gets more and more informative and complex, which makes it easy to find the information you’re looking for and not get caught up in things you aren’t wishing to see. Although each page is a little wordy, the tabs at the top and links throughout the page are all uniform, making everything easy to see and keeping the page form looking cluttered and distracting. 

The school has also figured out a way to keep their students involved through social media. They currently have three Instagram pages, one just for the incoming students which is titled NYU welcome week. The page offers pictures and videos of students as they get to campus and partake in orientation activities, proving that the school knows how to have fun while still taking care of their students.

Their performing arts center also has its own page catering to the campus and the community showing practices and announcing events. This helps the campus stay connected to the community while also boosting viewers of the school online.

Lastly, their regular Instagram page has photos from different places around the city, and campus, showing off the best sides of New York while still keeping the page personal and fun for the students. From their accounts 29.5k followers, it is clear to see that NYU knows how to effectively use their social media to reach students and community.

Meanwhile on the other side of the social media universe, NYU uses twitter to directly communicate with their students, providing fun articles and tidbits about what’s happening around the university. This keeps students engaged and gives them an easy and quick way to find out what’s happening around their school without having to dig through a bunch of information that they feel is irrelevant to them. 

They even have various pages for some of their schools, including their Tisch School of the Arts which is one of their most popular schools being in New York at the center of art and media. Their Facebook page follows suit, keeping consistency and repetition between their Twitter page while adding in some lengthier articles for students who want to dive further into a topic.

Another unique use of social media that NYU has made helpful is their use of apps. The school has several apps offering information about everything from general campus information, to upcoming events, and even a bus schedule and tracker to the campus, proving that the university is willing to go above and beyond for their students and keep them connected at all times. Through their various uses of social media, they are able to easily connect with their students and receive feedback about how to improve not only their online presence, but also receive comments and suggestions about things going on around campus, all in real time.

On the other end of the spectrum is Southern Adventist University, a.k.a. the place I currently call home. Southern prides itself on quality academics while still providing a Christian environment where students can come and learn from and with people who believe the same things they do. This is clearly shown on the school’s homepage, featuring pictures of students connecting with each other as well as tabs to get to all of the important information. 

The school uses their green colors scheme throughout the pages as well as implementing certain aspects of the campus around the page. Although their main pages are fairly easy to find, it can be difficult to navigate the site when looking for specific information, depending on how obscure it is. Their student access pages are useful when trying to find out what homework needs done or what’s up on the calendar for the week, however, when trying to navigate in a hurry, the page can be a little cluttered and take a while to load.

Southern has also proven its love of Instagram over the years and currently has several different pages for the school as well as things such as activities, student missions, and the SAU accent which is our campus newspaper. The pages usually have a theme and feature a lot of shots form our campus as well as of various events and activities around campus.

Although the Instagram use for Southern is effective in the sense of promoting the school, it does have the tendency to feel impersonal on occasion. Even some of the other pages forget to include candid shots of students and focus a little too much on promoting the actual campus instead of the experience of being on campus, which at the end of the day is the most important thing. The amount of followers is significantly fewer, even taking into account the difference in size of NYU and SAU.

The Facebook page has more viewers but is also more informative than the Instagram accounts are which might be some of the reason the students check the page more often. The Facebook page also allows for more communications between the school and the students, and SAU offers various pages for groups and departments around campus, allowing the students to give feedback quickly and easily in real time, something that in a fast paced college environment is always a positive.

The twitter page is one of the most informative places to find news about campus and it shows through the amount of followers as compared to the Instagram page. The page also offers advice and tells students when events are happening as well as providing encouraging bible verses every now and then just to keep spirits lifted. 

The Accent also uses their page effectively as well, providing a non-print version of snippets of news happening around campus or around the community.

Although both schools use their social media effectively, I can say from experience that sometimes SAU could step up their presence online. By de-cluttering their website a little and better including their students in some of their social media sites, they could not only get more feedback from students but also reach students who sometimes feel like just a number around campus. Through various things such as student bloggers and a students of southern campaign, the school is still striving to make the students feel included and welcome. That said, maybe employing a page for the freshman or a suggestion page for students, the school might be able to get more feedback and better improve their marketing efforts.

The school also offers an app for students, however it is mostly used for school purposes to check classes or the cafeteria menu. It also has a problem with usability on occasion which can frustrate students who are just trying to find a simple piece of information on the go.

Overall both schools have done well, but I am curious to see how SAU continues to grow its online presence and reach students both current and future.