Chansone Durden, TG Account Executive Team Manager
It’s true
generally, and it may be particularly true for anyone working with college
students: your website is one of the most important communication tools you
have. There is information your students need to know, and the website is a
great way for them to get that information. Whether that information is about a
scholarship application deadline, a new work-study opportunity, or the need to
schedule exit counseling, they need it, you’ve got it, and you want to make it
available to them. The website is a great way to make that happen . . . if they’re going to the website on a
regular basis.
Beyond crucial
elements like good design, clear, descriptive, concise page and document
descriptions, and plenty of internal links to make your site easy to navigate,
how can you keep visitors coming back? Here are some steps you can take to
boost traffic to your site, so that your students will get the most benefit
from your digital efforts.
Keep it fresh
Job one in the
quest to boost Web traffic is to make sure that your content is worth your
visitors’ time. That means accuracy, of course, as well as easy-to-navigate
design and reader-friendly text. But even assuming you’re doing a beautiful job
on all those things, people won’t keep coming back if the content is always the
same. You need to keep it fresh with new content added regularly.
This doesn’t
have to mean that you make Herculean efforts in writing or design. Regularly
posted blog content will do nicely. This blog content could consist of easily generated
lists (maybe “Five FAFSA Facts”), local reflections on national news stories
(“The National Unemployment Rate vs. the Local Unemployment Rate”), or other
regular features like a calendar update, or an education-related quote of the
week.
The regular
addition of fresh content — including very simple things like links to
audience-relevant news stories — drives traffic. Bob Ugiansky, webmaster of
TG’s student-facing site Adventures In
Education (www.AIE.org), says that these kinds
of features are part of why his site saw a 35% increase in page views from 2011
to 2012!
Blow your own horn
Sending an email
newsletter or a tweet, posting a Facebook status update, or sending a press
release to local media outlets (including and especially your university’s
newspaper) are all ways you can get the word out about important Web content.
Not only will it drive traffic to the site in this instance, it will remind
people of the site in a more general way, and help build the habit of going
there.
Jack
Leblond, TG’s Director of Internet Strategy and Operations, states: “These
aren’t different channels so much as they are spokes on the same wheel. It’s to
your benefit to have all these things working together for you. ”
Jason Falls,
CEO of Social Media Explorer, makes a similar point: “We’ve got to stop looking
at social media in a silo. Leverage your other communications channels to drive
your customers to more deep connection points.”
Synergize
Doing
occasional interviews with students, professors, or university staff about a
range of topics will create opportunities to benefit from promotional efforts
others carry out on your behalf. These members of your campus community can then
help promote that content (and, by extension, your website). They can do this
on their own social media channels as well as directly to their classes,
student organizations, and colleagues. What kind of content could this approach
generate? Ask yourself, could an economics professor talk about how interest
rates work on student loans? Could you get a psychology professor to talk about
how to develop good personal finance habits? Could students who have studied
abroad compare and contrast how higher education is financed in the U.S. and in
the countries where they studied? Yes, yes, and yes. There are people on your
campus with interesting perspectives and expertise. Much of what they have to
say can be shaped to relate to financial aid. This is a way to generate traffic
and interest, and remind people that your website is available as an
informative resource.
Get people engaged
When people
come to your site, they don’t want to be completely passive; they want
something to do. Opportunities for visitors to actively engage might include polls,
surveys, or contests (try a gift certificate for the best clean limerick about
scholarship applications). One of the best things about that kind of content is
that it drives traffic twice: when you first post the item, and then again when
results are announced (“There once was a student from Dallas . . .”).
Another
example of content that gets people actively engaged is a resource center. A
group of easy-to-download documents on an important subject is a huge
convenience for people who need to know about that topic. Jeff Foster, owner of
social media marketing and website design firm WebBizIdeas, includes resource
centers in his list of “types of content that Google loves.” In a recent article
on Ragan.com, Foster says that resource centers are a very popular feature and
that “more people link to them, share them, and spend time on them.” He adds
that it’s important to continually update!
There are
multiple ways to do it, but the common thread is engagement. Give your visitors
a way to interact with content, and they’re more likely to be back.
Conclusion
You’re a
knowledgeable professional with access to information that your students would
do well to absorb. From financial literacy workshops to the earnings prospects
for particular majors to a hard look at debt-to-income ratios, your students
will benefit from being regular visitors to your website. Using these practices
can boost traffic, get the word out, and help students reach better outcomes.
Chansone Durden is an account
executive team manager with TG serving schools in SASFAA. You can reach
Chansone at (800) 252-9743, ext. 6710, or by email at chansone.durden@tgslc.org. Additional information about TG can be
found online at www.TG.org.
