Short of bringing students to your campus, video content is the best way to give prospective students a dynamic and rich impression of your institution. It allows viewers to access information about your school through visual, audio, and text mediums. Video content can be made easily available to anyone, regardless of their distance from your institution. If artfully crafted, this content is a way to showcase your institution's unique programs, amenities, traditions, and campus life. In this way, prospective students can get an authentic insight into the student experience at your institution. Importantly, video is a critical way to bolster your institution's diversity recruiting strategies for students.
When students see current students with whom they identify, they can picture themselves at home on your campus. Video content is a particularly compelling way to appeal to students from a variety of backgrounds and demographics who might not otherwise be compelled to research your institution. Take a look at the tools StudentBridge has developed to leverage video content to increase student diversity on campus.
Great videos are drivers of conversions. Artfully crafted, targeted videos often convince prospective students to apply and admitted students to enroll. In the marketing world, it's common knowledge that video content is a highly effective tool. It is a similarly effective tool in the college and university recruitment context. StudentBridge can assist your institution in understanding how video content can not only increase general interest in your institution but also increase student diversity on your campus. And we can produce content that converts prospective students across a diverse range of demographics into members of your campus community. Let us prove to you that video content is one of your institution's most effective recruitment tools.
1. Create Videos that Give Students What They Want
Prospective students are curious about the experience that may be awaiting them at your institution. While the amount of information your institution could share with students is endless, prospective students tend to actively seek a fairly narrow and specific set of facts, mostly centered around life on campus. They know exactly what they're looking for, and what questions they need answered to apply. When students engage with content about schools they're considering, most search for the same information. See our Top 5 Most-Watched Campus Videos to gain insight into the video content that prospective students are looking for. The topics most often searched include:
- Residence life
- Student day-in-the-life
- Dining halls
- School traditions
- Intramural activities and clubs
StudentBridge knows what students are looking for, and we have experience creating content on these topics that creates conversions. Offering detailed information on these topics is also a diversity recruiting strategy for students – if a prospective student from an underrepresented group looks for and finds these topics, and is compelled by what they see, they're more likely to apply. Video content produced with an awareness of a diverse audience can serve to increase student diversity on your campus.
2. Use Current Students to Feature Student Diversity
Your current students are highly effective ambassadors for your school, its programs, and its culture, so showcase them! Feature current students who accurately represent the student diversity of your campus, and prospective students will be inspired to learn more. Day-in-the-life videos take the top spot for social media content. Therefore prospective students may see videos about your institution on their social media feeds without necessarily seeking them out. As a result, you have an opportunity to inspire curiosity about your campus via prospective students' existing social networks. In this way, they get information about your school from trusted sources–many of whom may share their background. When they see current students who look like them, and with whom they identify, they are more likely to pursue further information about your institution.
3. Keep it Short
While there is no shortage of information that your institution seeks to transmit to prospective students, you will maximize your appeal by keeping your videos short. Prospective students' internet use is characterized by jumping around from site to app to site. 80% of prospective students won't watch a video longer than three minutes. So your institution is more likely to reach more students by creating short videos that emphasize just one or a few points about your school. Several short, highly focused videos will create more conversions than a single long one. StudentBridge can assist you in creating precisely this kind of highly effective, focused video content.
4. Update Your Content
Video content allows your institution to highlight a variety of aspects of school life over time. If your content is updated, prospective students gain more than a cursory understanding of what life is like on your campus. Prospective students are constantly searching for information about colleges and universities: in the past week, 46% of prospective students have watched a video from a school they are interested in. In addition, prospective students return to an institution's websites and social media feeds over and over again, seeking current content. When prospective students are constantly interacting with your content in this way, you have an opportunity to provide a wide range of information, so long as your content is updated often. This can be a vital piece of your diversity recruiting strategies for students, too. If, when they return to your curated content, prospective students see a variety of identities represented, they may be persuaded that there is a place for them at your institution.
5. Stand Out
Video content makes online ads more engaging and effective. Online ads for colleges and universities are everywhere. For this reason, it's common for these ads to blend into the background during prospective students' online engagement. During the college search process, three-quarters of students remember seeing online ads, but only 56% of these students report clicking on an ad to learn more. Almost half of these students reported that seeing an ad had no impact on their impression of the institution. Video content can disrupt this dynamic. When prospective students see, hear, and read about students who are thriving at your institution, it makes an impression. As a result, prospective students seek out further and more detailed information. StudentBridge can assist you in creating video content that will make your online ads stand out from the rest and inspire prospective students to discover details about your school that convince them to apply.
To learn more about video content that is sure to convert prospective students into future members of your diverse school community, connect with StudentBridge today.
