September 29, 2021

Put Student Stories at the Center of Your Recruitment Strategy

Years ago, when I was just starting my career in higher education marketing, I was preparing to lead a series of focus groups for a public college. The goal was simple: we would share some creative examples with high school students to understand what might resonate with them—and what wouldn’t.

As the date of the first focus group approached, the college’s staff and I evaluated the creative and made predictions about what would score highest with the students with whom we were to meet. I confidently selected a piece that had a clean, modern design, just the right amount of copy, and stellar photography. Also, because it featured a faculty member, I thought it would set the institution apart in terms of quality, personal attention, and career relevance.

Guess which piece finished dead last with the focus groups?

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April 11, 2020

Three Critical Higher Ed Data Points—And How They May Affect Your Institution

By David Goode and Anthony Juliano

One us is the parent of a high school student, and the other is a college-student parent and adjunct faculty member. As a result, we’re experiencing firsthand the impact of the coronavirus on students and their schools—and the need for adaptation. Suffice it to say, both of us have had to be a little more lenient about how late our kids sleep in and how “early” they go to bed, and we’ve had to be more active in helping them progress with their studies than we were before COVID-19 was in our vocabulary.

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December 4, 2019

Data As a Difference-Maker in Higher Education Marketing

It’s an understatement to say that these are challenging times for American higher education institutions. Overall, enrollment has declined for eight years running−and even darker days are coming. Recent graduates and major media outlets are questioning the value of a college degree. And, perhaps most alarming of all, institutions across the nation are closing their doors at an unprecedented rate.

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May 7, 2018

New studies reveal never-before-seen trends in social media

Research into changing trends in social media is nearly as old as social media itself. Two new studies, however, reveal never-before-seen shifts in user habits that hint at changing realities for social media marketers.

 

Last month saw the release of the 2018 Pew Research Center’s study of social media use, the latest in an annual series, and The Infinite Dial, a well-established study of consumer behavior in the digital space published each year by Edison Research and Triton Digital. Perhaps the most interesting finding was that collective use of three major platforms—Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter–is down overall among individuals age 12 and older–from 80 percent in 2017 to 77 percent today. The primary cause is a downturn in Facebook use. At a time when the platform is making headlines for all the wrong reasons, 62 percent of individuals 12 and older say they use Facebook, a drop of five percentage points from 2017. Among younger consumers, the news gets even worse for Facebook, with usage dropping 12 points, from 79 percent to 67 percent. While Facebook is still the only conventional social media platform to reach a majority of Americans 12 and older, it is showing signs of decreasing influence–likely resulting in part from declining trust in Facebook and other social media sites. According to the Pew Center, more than half (51%) of us do not trust social media companies when it comes to protecting our data.

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March 20, 2017

Assisting Indiana Tech with content marketing: what we’ve learned along the way

I recently wrote about the increasing importance of content marketing and the opportunities inherent in treating your brand as a media outlet unto itself. In this post, I’m sharing an example of how Asher has helped one of its clients—Indiana Tech—with content marketing. Here’s what we’ve been working on—and what we’ve learned along the way.

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