An Official College Blog As a Marketing Tool

Maintaining an official college blog for enrollment marketing may be a powerful tool for community colleges to drive new students in their direction. It provides an opportunity for any college, whether a virtual college offering distance education degrees or a community college, to reach out not only to present students, but potential new students as a powerful form of outreach. If it is done right, that is.

Enrollment marketing through a college blog provides the department an opportunity to go into some depth and detail about the value, vision, and character of the college itself. Unlike thirty-second commercials or slick catalogs, a blog should speak both to present students, as well as potential new students, and as such, provide a valuable resource while developing a positive brand. Maintaining a blog provides the opportunity not only to keep present students excited about the various opportunities available academically, on campus, through financial aid, or as part of student life; it can also be a powerful tool for promotion, public relations, and enrollment marketing.

Through the personal content of both a regularly updated college blog, as well as microblogging via Twitter or Facebook status updates, visitors to your college website are more likely to identify with the college brand; and the more they become familiar with what the institution represents, the more likely they are to enroll. Of course, a blog should provide plenty of opportunities for visitors to link to a form in order to request further information or even to use an online enrollment application.

Using media other than writing is also useful in a college blog for enrollment marketing purposes. Photographs of the campus, student and faculty; video about the college (linking video to a YouTube account to post on your blog could be a highly effective enrollment marketing tool); podcasts featuring updates or interviews with faculty, staff, and students; polls and surveys; as well as quality links to other college resources are ways any college can make its online presence more effective for recruiting new students.

A blog that merely links to other blogs is insufficient, as is a blog that merely features guest writers. Purely formal blogs packed with abstract and dry content are not as attractive as are more informal but informative college blogs. Your blog should also not go for days without being updated. Regular, hopefully daily updates are required. The college blog should be colorful, professional, but also familiar, unpretentious, concise, and relevant. If it embodies these factors, it may be used as a powerful way to build brand, keep students informed, and boost enrollment marketing by recruiting new students, as well.