As more and more admission offices embrace social media, travel season is a great time to create fun, engaging content from the perspective of the real people behind the process. Let’s be honest — most counselors are snapping photos, collecting cool stories, visiting interesting places, and sharing on their own social networks while they travel. Taking one more photo that includes the university/college brand, or sharing some of your photos with the social media manager is a simple step to provide fun and interesting content to your office’s social media accounts.
Even if the logo/brand isn’t represented in the photo, showing highlights from the places traveled can help showcase that counselors recruit far and wide to share the story of the university (and thus students come from far and wide)!
You can also showcase some of the high schools you are visiting in your posts. You may have a few minutes before your visit starts or on your way out of the school, stop by the school’s sign and snap a photo. Or if you see something in the school that is unique/interesting, snap a quick photo.
If you are the one posting for the office, make sure to tag the high school’s Twitter/Instagram/Facebook username in the post too, if they have accounts. Many schools will then retweet or share your photo to their followers too, increasing your reach.
Although photos of a college fair table setup can get old quickly, they are a nice visual for some of the larger fairs to help students know what to look for in finding your table. You can also spice up your photo a bit by using Layout or Picstitch (both available in the Apple or Google Play app store for free) to make a quick collage with another photo of the city/town you’re visiting. Below, a skyline photo of Minneapolis is used with the UNH table setup at the NACAC college fair.
There are always a lot of questions about taking photos of students, but if you have a good rapport with students at your table and you ask their permission to share a photo, 97% of the time the students will say yes and they love to see themselves featured in your post.
These are just a few ideas, but I encourage you to be creative in your own travel and social sharing! If you are managing the account for your office, try to vary your posts from all the counselors and travel territories, as it’s important to show a variety of local and distant travel. You can set up a shared resource (we use Box or Dropbox at UNH) for counselors to drop their photos in for sharing, or they can email/text the social manager with a short description of the photo and location to be posted.
“Why do any of this?” you or skeptical members of your team might ask. In my opinion, this is a very simple and easy step to help the admission office show a bit of personality through social media. An admission office can connect with students, schools, and counselors on a different level and thus build community and stronger relationships with these stakeholders. Sharing can also be a fun way for counselors to stay in touch with each other during the travel season, share their travels and stories with the community, and bring awareness to the hard work it takes to recruit and enroll a class.
To all the admission professionals beginning the travel season: stay safe, have fun, and good luck! May your college fairs and high school visits be well attended, your rental cars comfortable, flights on time, and your connections with future students deep and meaningful!
Tyler Wentworth 