How to use this dynamic new marketing tool, which disrupts traditional marketing and lets colleges and universities attract students, parents—and applicants—reach their enrollment goals.

Inbound marketing is a technique tailored to the needs of contemporary consumers.

Most of us stream TV shows and movies, use DVR to speed through advertisements, block pop-up ads, ignore sidebars, avoid advertisement links, and drop direct mail in the recycling bin. Clearly, it’s time for a change.

The situation is no different when it comes to student recruitment. Anyone with a junior or senior has experienced the deluge of unsolicited college marketing materials filling the mailbox—and the recycling bin.

Unsolicited mailings are an example of traditional marketing—or what savvy marketers are now calling outbound marketing. Outbound marketing pushes content out: it cold-calls, buys email lists and ad space, and, in today’s crowded media landscape, often has to shout (or pray!) to be heard.

Traditional marketing and its shortcomings

When’s the last time you opened your mailbox -- whether physical or electronic -- and looked carefully through all the random offers and ads that have come your way?

I’d be willing to bet that it’s been a while.

Ads for a free estimate for a bathroom remodel? Not especially relevant if I happen to be a renter.

College recruitment materials addressed to my fourth grader? A waste of marketing dollars -- we’re just not there yet!

At this point, you are probably feeling pretty confident about how to use various social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in your inbound marketing efforts.

What about Snapchat?

According to a 2013 article from the Wall Street Journal, only 29% of all students are traditional students, i.e. they are attending a four-year university full time right after high school and are living on campus. So, we can only assume as tuitions have continued to rise that percentage may be even lower today. Many colleges are finding that having more non-traditional students is helping them battle rising enrollment fees. And in the years to come, catering to these students will likely be the difference between staying open and shutting your doors.

So, how do you reach the new majority of college students? Are there different tactics you need to use to be most effective in boosting adult student enrollment?

Do you ever feel like you are doing everything right in your inbound marketing campaign but you’re just not seeing the results you’d expected?

Your higher education institution is hip to the content marketing game. You know how to build a winning website and blog and how to capture attention via social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. You may have a million unique visitors a month, but definitely not a million prospective applicants a month.

Fall is a magical time on a college campus. Students are excited to be back and eager to start a new school year, and students and faculty alike have a fresh slate. As the heat of summer weather gives way to crisp fall temperatures, there is just a fresh sense of renewal in the air.

And with all new beginnings, fall is also a great time to take a look at your current marketing strategy, to make sure you are staying relevant. The world of inbound marketing is constantly evolving so you need to be constantly accessing and analyzing your plans just to stay current with your competitors.

Welcome back to our 2017 Social Media Blog Essentials. If you’ve been reading along with us, you’ve gained insight and knowledge into how to best use the most popular social media sites to increase engagement, build your brand and sell your products and services.

Today we turn our focus to Pinterest, an online bulletin board where people can search and discover new ideas and “pin” them to their boards to look at later. And here’s a fun fact—according to SocialMediaToday, Pinterest users spend 100% more money than average internet users.

Interested yet?

At this point in the game, we all know about search engine optimization (SEO). But you may to may not know about social media optimization (SMO). As we have moved from the world-wide-web to the Internet to the internet, the amount of websites is so prolific that search engine results are just not as reliable as they used to be. Many companies are now moving towards optimizing their social media sites because many consumers find it easier to find reliable search results on Facebook, Snap Chat, Pinterest or Twitter vs. a search engine.

SMO particularly lends itself to the world of higher education, where many prospective students prefer to learn about colleges in first-hand accounts rather than from traditional advertisements.

There is an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. And in today’s world of nonstop photos and content being delivered every second, it rings even more true. While many social media networks these days deliver visual content and videos, Instagram cuts through the clutter and focuses solely on high quality pictures and videos.

There is some method to the madness. Our brains love images. SearchEngineJournal reports 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and those visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text.