Put yourself in the shoes of a new student on their first day of college. Everything is so new, and they feel a sense that they could achieve something great. They decide to open their laptop and investigate student organizations. After a quick Google search, they open a link to a leadership organization, as the page loads, their excitement dwindles. They are greeted by a disorganized and broken website, breaking their drive to get involved on their new campus as well.
Would you want that website to have been yours? If not, you are in the perfect place to make sure your student organization has the best Digital Marketing possible. Whether your student org is focused on academics, social, or sports, proper digital marketing can help lead it to success. The blog below is split into two sections, search and social media, and will cover topics about:
- Search:
- Website SEO
- Connect2 Websites
- Social Media:
What is and Why Digital Marketing?
According to Forbes’ article “What is Digital Marketing”, digital marketing is any marketing activity that takes place on digital avenues, including social media, websites, search engines, email, and text messaging. Digital Marketing is the new (well not so new anymore) frontier in the marketing world, making it important for any organization to capitalize on. This is especially apparent for organizations with a young audience, because people aged 16-24 spend over 7 hours a day online according to Statista. Considering this tends to be the target age range for many student organizations, it’s extremely important to get marketing materials online where your audience resides.
Marketing with Search
This first section will cover digital marketing that relates to search. Google Ads’ article on SEO summarizes what SEO is well, with SEO being ways to optimize a website to have it rank higher when users search. Below, SEO will be explored in how they could benefit your student organization.
SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is a great way to get eyes on your organization. A main website can be a hub for many of your organizations activities from keeping alumni engaged to making a good impression with your school, but it needs to be visible when searched for and SEO is the way to make that happen. When looking into ways to increase your SEO, many ideas may get thrown at you, but the most important thing to do first is have a website! Many schools and even the headquarters of student organizations will offer website builders that can be used to build your website for free!
Once a website is built true SEO can take place. This can be a very complicated battle to perfect, but considering this is for student organizations and not hyper competitive corporations, some simple best practices can be taken to make sure you are in a good place, according to Ahrefs’ blog, some of the best (and simple) ways to improve SEO are below:
- Add title tags to each page
- Use interesting and eye-catching titles.
- Make sure they relate to the content.
- Make sure they include a keyword.
- A keyword is something a user may search for
- Think of what people may be searching for if they are trying to reach your website.
- Update Website Content
- Try and add or edit content often.
- Can add pictures or parent/alumni newsletters.
- Makes easy and relevant content that is already completed.
- Include a FAQ section
- Will answer questions visitors have including:
- How much are dues?
- What is your GPA requirement?
- Who can join?
- What does a member do?
- Includes tons of searched keywords.
- Will answer questions visitors have including:
Building a site in Connect2
Connect2 is a resource all students have access to here at Whitewater. One of its main features is pages for student orgs which the leaders (officers on Connect2) of those orgs have full control over. This page has tons of different tools for student organizations, one of those being a website builder. Below, I will explain how to get started on building your website for free with Connect2.
When logged in as an officer to your student orgs connect page, there should be a dashboard tab with tons of tiles to choose from, here you will find the option to build a website for your organization. Click on the tile that says “website” to begin.
After selecting the website tile you will be brought to a page with a few different options, below I will break them down with some explanation for each.
- Create Page
- Create new pages on your website separate from your homepage. These pages can be used for anything, such as your own blog.
- Create Menu
- Create a menu which contains links to multiple pages on your website. For example, you could create a recruitment menu which links to pages on why you would join, FAQ’s, and information forms.
- Website settings
- Change the logo of your site, change the text that appears in the search bar, and publishing your website.
- Website Pages
- A list of all the pages on your website with options to edit, hide, publish, and move them.
Connect2 will automatically have a preset website created for you with quite a few different parts done from what is on your page. It will have a homepage which displays your group name, contact information, members, and your leadership team. Once editing, there are dozens of different options to truly make your site your own. It can be really easy with built in templates (widgets) that contain a variety of options from contact forms, events, pictures, and many other options.
Using Connect2 to build a website for your organization in combination with the SEO practices discussed above can give your student organization the leg up it needs in its digital marketing. It can create a visible and powerful hub for your members, families, and potential recruits to use and explore to know what your organization is all about.
Social Media Marketing
This section will go over some of the benefits and best practices on how to promote a school organization on social media. There are many potential options for student organizations to use, but the best two to start with are most likely Instagram and Facebook. Read below how to make your Digital Marketing presence on these platforms.
When trying to build a digital marketing presence on social media, Instagram will likely be your best friend. According to Yor Madiro, 85% of college students use Instagram, making it the perfect platform to reach your intended audience. There are many features that Instagram offers that can help your organization get eyes on anything. Instagram offers a plethora of features such as a business account, boosting posts, followers, messaging, reels and stories.
- Business Account
- Add a profile category
- Have a tag in your bio that helps Instagram show your account to the right users.
- View post insights
- See likes, shares, and who is seeing your post to help with future targeting.
- Boost posts
- Having a business account allows you to boost your posts or reels.
- Add a profile category
- Boosted posts
- Pay to advertise a post or reel.
- Can set budgets to help keep down costs.
- Choose targeting features.
- Age
- Aim for people who share the age bracket of your school.
- Location
- Be specific, target just your campus or a small surrounding area.
- Interests
- Use things your members are already interested in to find similar people.
- Age
- Pay to advertise a post or reel.
- Followers and users
- Follow other organizations to stay informed about what events they may have coming up.
- Have members follow your account to stay informed on your organization.
- Messaging
- Message potential members.
- Utilize incoming student pages to find leads.
- Message current members with updates.
- Message potential members.
- Posts, Reels, and Stories
- Create flyers for your events.
- Allows for free posting with better outreach than physical flyers.
- Stay up to date with current trends.
- Check out trends on reels that can help grow your following by participating in them.
- Show off aspects of your organization to the public.
- Show off outstanding members to create rewards.
- Explain unknown aspects such as dues or expectations.
- Create flyers for your events.
When using all of the above features, Instagram can be an excellent hub for your organization’s digital marketing efforts. Instagram has many tools to use to market to students for recruitment, events, and keeping them updated on what is going on within your student organization. Along with Instagram, many other social media platforms offer similar marketing features to be taken advantage of, read below to learn more about one that can target audiences further than students.
Facebook is another crucial platform for student organizations to use. According to Hannah Macready on Hootsuite, Facebook is popular with an older demographic and 25-44 year olds are the biggest users of messenger. This makes Facebook an excellent platform for reaching out to older users, which can be very useful for marketing to alumni, the community, parents, and school leaders. Below, some of Facebook’s features will be explored in how they can be used to market your organization to these groups.
- Group Page
- A group page can be created for your organization that allows members to post in and interact with each other on.
- Let’s the community see contributions of members.
- Allows alumni to stay invested in what may be going on with certain people.
- Allows parents to follow their student’s career in the organization.
- Allowing outside posts can create a space for any of the groups to quickly post questions and have them answered.
- A group page can be created for your organization that allows members to post in and interact with each other on.
- Messenger
- Messenger is a marketing tool because it creates an ability to instantly outreach to anyone on Facebook.
- Message community leaders talking about upcoming events such as community service.
- Message school employees with questions or concerns.
- Allows parents to message your organization with questions or concerns.
- Can create group alumni messages to help arrange events and keep them in contact.
- Messenger is a marketing tool because it creates an ability to instantly outreach to anyone on Facebook.
Along with these features, Facebook also includes many of Instagram’s features such as an account page, posts, stories, and reels that can be used in a similar manner except for an older demographic. All of these digital marketing features put together can be a powerful tool for your student organization to have strong marketing towards any group outside of students.
Using both Facebook and Instagram for your student orgs future marketing efforts can be powerful to target a wide range of people. They both offer easy and engaging ways for your club or organization to boost future recruiting, event attendance, and engagement with members and the community.
In conclusion, your student organization should be taking advantage of digital marketing to push efforts in recruitment, event attendance, alumni engagement, member engagement, and community outreach. You can use SEO to help boost your website and get more clicks on it than ever before as well as creating a lasting impression on users that view it. Social media is also a powerful marketing tool allowing you to message potential recruits, market your events, and create an online community for your organization.
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