Unit 4, Blog Entry 2: Secondary vs. Higher ed
I’ve been finding it very difficult to find lots of research material on my topic of marketing for educational institutions. I originally wanted to focus on secondary schools because that’s where I primarily focus my work and there’s just not a lot out there. I opened my research up to higher educational institutions and quite a bit more appeared (not a ton but more). I’ve found it interesting to see such a big shift in the two types of schools. The secondary schools primarily focus on marketing to the parents rather than the students and then the higher educational institutions focus on the students because it comes down to who is ultimately making the decision.
I wanted to find more on social media and current technological marketing. There’s a good amount out there on this but not a ton of reviewed articles. These tend to fall into blogs. I did find a report that talked about prospective college freshmen and how they saw social media and higher education as something that should not mix. I was shocked to find that many students like to see the photos and news stories but they don’t like the mix of their personal and professional relationships. They see their relationships with the schools as professional and social media as personal. How do we use social media yet balance this problem? Social media shows people things that they would have never seen yet these students aren’t seeing it as appropriate. How do we overcome that and find the right balance?