No brand is exempt from making content marketing a top priority these days, and for colleges, interactive digital content marketing is particularly essential, considering their audience is comprised of an extremely internet-savvy demographic.
Teens, in particular, make up a large portion of college audiences, prompted by educational experts to start to preparing for college as early as possible and, not surprisingly, the method they engage with schools is via the Internet. In fact, a recent report states that approximately 77% of students say they’ve used social media in their college search.
Content marketing with video, apps, blogs and myriad social tools and platforms is perfect to narrate any school’s story—allowing it to paint a perfect picture for a perspective student to consider.
There are, however, a few schools that rise to the top for their innovation and creativity. Let’s face it, the teen audience is a tough one, and in order to appeal to them effectively, the content and media posts must be engaging! So who gets the gold stars for rocking their content marketing? These four schools go to the head of the class:
Yale University takes top honors amongst this group of four contenders—with an impressive array of content robust in scope and innovation. One of the main highlights of all their content is their virtual tour feature, which allows you to “visit” practically the whole campus—offering perspective students a 360-degree view of each locale. Also, Yale’s Facebook page features this tour, along with their YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and up-coming event content on their page.
UCLA’s puts its content marketing endeavors front and center. Immediately upon going to their pleasantly designed, student-friendly website, content such as news and events articles take center-stage. The impressive amount of newsworthy, current content makes UCLA interesting and compelling enough, not just for perspective students, but to anyone interested in well-written, fascinating articles on a panoply of topics to bookmark for future reference.
Stanford has a number of different blogs, but it gets kudos for The Unofficial Stanford Blog, produced by a group of students, faculty, and staff dedicated to innovation in online content and distribution. Their unique viewpoint speaks volumes and adds to the rich mix of content the school aims to market. Stanford also rocks their Instagram account—with over 40,000 followers, they are one of the most influential colleges on Instagram. Their account features student life, events and campus shots.
John Hopkins website, Hopkins Interactive, is a guide to the school through the eyes of current students. This highly engaging site is a treasure trove of engaging content, including videos, interactive magazines, social, blogs and forums.
Hopkins obviously did their homework to know the tastes of their socially savvy teen audience as evidenced by its liberal use of buttons for all the top social platforms—predominately placed on the page, not just once, but twice—along with a Twitter and Instagram feed.
Hopkins Insider’s Guide—is formatted as a virtual magazine. Quite unique and appealing, it is created and designed by current students for future students featuring an inside perspective of the school. This comprehensive e-magazine is retooled each spring with a brand new perspective for next year’s group of admitted students.
These schools demonstrate that rich content and stories, told from a diversity of viewpoints, combined with sharing via multiple social media channels is a winning combination. The lesson to take away is that it is simply not enough to have great content and compelling stories, rocking the content marketing landscape means knowing exactly where and how your audience consumes the media content you want to share.
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