I speak to alot of universities and one thing occurs to me often - they have it easy when it comes to content generation; there are masses of it frothing out every department – from new research, star academics and graduates, events, new courses etc. The most savvy have built up strong marketing teams who are able to wrestle this information from the traditionally closed departments and corral it into press releases and websites so that the content lives beyond the traditional outlets of the departmental notice board, newsletter or academic journal: this is good for business.
Business and academia can be strange bedfellows but there is not a university in the UK that does not know their survival depends on attracting not just the best students but also the most lucrative. This has opened up the market to international students like never before. People with the power to choose - who are often not tied to a location. These students are like customers – fickle. They need clear and genuine reasons to be attracted to an institution and this is where the marketing team play a key role in building up the picture of what it would ‘feel’ like to devote years of the student’s life.
The problem of course is that it is a buyer’s market and as universities compete ever more fiercely those who succeed will capture minds more effectively by generating authenticity – something beyond slogans and photos of happy students.
One key way to do this is for university marketing teams to step up their game and use the content at their fingertips in a more effective way. Blogging is nothing new but the mistake that is often made is to try to build a university blog and stop there. I advocate that a role needs to be created for blog heroes - someone in the university marketing team but more free to communicate at speed. Someone who embodies the brand of the institution and can take the content to existing bloggers – extending its reach by developing relationships with the most prolific bloggers in a range of areas and generating authenticity internationally.
I wager that precious few press releases are picked up, even from the most prestigious universities in the UK, so the effort vs. results equation shows it is worth considering.
Tags: authenticity, blog, strategy
