5 things you should be doing with your departments to improve content, relationships and recruitment
In my experience of working in higher education, communication between departments and central teams is always an issue. It’s certainly not the case for all institutions, and if your relationship with departments is fantastic, keep it up! You might start to think, “Oh but they aren’t speaking to me, they’re making it hard”. I’m going to break your bubble here and say it’s very, very rare to be fully one-sided. Are you really making an effort? Probably not.
This blog is mostly relevant to the relationships between ‘central/department marketing, communications, recruitment’ and the ‘Heads of’ departments. But the premise is sound for any relationship where you work together for a common cause which requires content.
Meet regularly with your key contact
One of the biggest complaints I heard was that central teams did things without the department knowing, and vice versa. It is absolutely vital that everyone knows what everyone is up to (obviously just the things related to your relationship, but if you want to update people on your cat… I’m sure that’s fine as well). If you have a working relationship with a department, you need to book regular meetings that have a specific purpose. Write up agendas beforehand, circulate and do the same for minutes. That way, everyone is in the loop and there will be no scary surprises.
Help to improve their digital presence
When it comes to content for universities, academics and their departments can be gold mines. Particularly for recruitment, Gen Z is looking more toward social media feeds and digital presence alongside the classic prospectus. Does the department have a digital presence? What do their social media feeds look like? Would it make you interested and excited to apply? Does it promote a sense of community?
It’s worthwhile looking at these aspects, not only for the department as a whole but also for individual academics. Academics can have amazing ideas, huge followings, and their presence on your feeds can be a great power to harness. And it’s important to remember, that just because you’re not interested in the subject, doesn’t mean other people aren’t!
Working together to streamline department webpages
It’s no surprise that here at Pickle Jar Communications, we LOVE a good ole content audit! It’s one of the fundamental building stones to having an efficient and useful website. On a universities website, there are typically thousands of pages, and a surprisingly large amount of that is content which is repeated or wrongly placed.
I highly recommend that you start a conversation between the department and your web/marketing/comms team (or hire an outside consultant) to discuss how useful your pages are. From prospective students, and current students to alumni… people will always be using your web pages. You need to ensure that the information you put out there is symbiotic between yourself and your departments. It needs to be efficient, functional and relevant.
Getting them involved in recruitment and conversion events
When I say get them involved, I mean REALLY get them involved. You need to have academics and support staff from departments at talks, on stands, hosting workshops, doing fun games, running a BBQ…. Anything that will give potential students an opportunity to find out more about their course and speak to staff.
I would also recommend running through their talks before the events - and don’t be scared to recommend changing slides or giving presentation notes.
Get to know their specialities
Academics, PhD researchers and other departmental staff will probably have their own specialities in particular subjects. This may be what they’re teaching, what their research is in, or an area of media commentary. And what this may also be is content. There’s an increasing trend that potential students are becoming more specific about what they want to study, and having the opportunity to experience a workshop or lecture focusing on an area they’re interested in can be a real bonus. People want to be impressed with expertise.. And this can be the deciding factor between their university choices.
It’s not just for recruitment, but having this content out there can be beneficial to current students and PhDs. Showing people the wealth of knowledge in your department can help inspire life choices, and develop communities.
Using these five practices will not only help with recruitment efforts and content creation but will improve your working relationships with departments. If you’re looking for someone to help with content audits, streamlining websites, improving digital presences or creating content strategies, get in touch with us at hello@picklejarcommunications.com
