These days along with Facebook and YouTube, SnapChat is found in almost every other smartphone. For the past three years, the company has grown into a popular photo messaging app and caters demographics ranging from age 13 to 25 years old. Hence, it has become a marketing tool that can no longer be ignored by higher education.
Early adopters of this idea have seen nothing but success. Schools like University of Michigan, West Virginia University, University of Arizona and University of Nebraska-Lincoln consider this social platform as the fastest growing and most engaging social media network.
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There is a list of ways the universities are making the most use of this application. Have a look.
1. Communicating With Students
SnapChat comes with an outstanding chat feature which helps in instantly answering queries and giving friendly advice to current and incoming students. If you decide to implement SnapChat in your institution, make a ‘SnapChat Ambassador” who can respond to students’ snaps in real time.
2. Generate traffic on events
Undoubtedly, snaps are always better than writing a 100 word post to market an event. SnapChat provides you with an opportunity to take snaps of posters of upcoming events and add them in your story in order to inform and encourage others to attend.
3. Provide Exclusive Coverage of Campus Activities
In order to make an event successful, it’s important to create hype and excitement among the audience. So, you can give the students behind-the-scenes look at concerts and other exciting events which are to happen around the campus.
4. Have a Contest
SnapChat is a great way to crowd-source user generated content. Instead of pushing out content, you can always get content from around the campus. You can always encourage students to send in their selfies and have a selfie contest, then offer free prizes to the winners.
5. Inform students of their admittance
University of Eastern Kentucky has found SnapChat immensely successful in order to inform potential students about their acceptance in school. You can add newly admitted students on SnapChat and send a mascot with the caption stating “Congratulations, you have been accepted!” before they even get an email or letter of acceptance.
6. Showcase your students’ daily lives
This can be the best use of SnapChat. You can encourage students to share their inspirational stories with everyone around the campus on SnapChat. SnapChat is an outstanding platform for relationship building and it allows you to engage with students in a more fun and relaxed way.
The times are changing fast. Billboards and Television commercials are no longer the most effective way of communicating with the masses. The sooner you can ditch the past and jump on board the future train, the better your outreach will be.
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