New Age Marketing

April 17, 2013

The Fast Track to Success

Mike Dominguez
Sonoma State University
Intramural/Sport Club/Marketing/ Kids Camp Coordinator

Paper is dying. Smartphones are more popular than your favorite television show. If you’re not reaching your audience through at least 5 different media sites, you’re not reaching them! Social Media is the most heavily talked about subject in the world, with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube being the most often used resource by professionals and students. If you attended this year’s NIRSA National Marketing Institute, you would have learned more than one human brain can handle. Here is some information you can utilize for your students and customers.

Keynote presenter Luke Wyckoff of Social Media Energy spoke about keeping things in groups of 3. The human brain remembers information more clearly when things are grouped in threes. Date, Time, and Location is a good group to keep together. This can be used for flyers, posters, and your website. How well you know your clients is the key to where they get their information, who they share their information with, and how likely they are to return to your program. How well do you know your clients? Are your students finding your website or Facebook page?
Using key word optimization can let you know how popular or unpopular your site is when people search for you. You can search “Google key word optimization” to find out if people are finding you! Long term planning is very difficult to achieve in an ever-changing marketing economy. When sites come and go it’s hard to keep up with the “newest, hottest, sexiest, funniest” sites. To find out the newest sites, Google search “Most popular Social Network Sites” – or ask a young person.

Here are some of the newest sites that are on the rise: Google +, Pinterest, Linked In, 4-Square, and Instragram are all sites you should know about. Within each of these programs are hundreds of ways to include important information to your students and clients. But you can’t just post information about yourself. 80% of information posted should contain information about others. Only 20% of information should be about you. Getting people interested in your site and wanting them to come back for more is the goal. Having a mix of photo contests, Top 10’s, hash tagging similar items, and sign ups all have to be done strategically to keep your audience informed and not overloaded.

NIRSA has just started to get on the bandwagon on Facebook and Twitter. When setting up your accounts, here are a few things to keep in mind.

•  Know your audience and know your staffing model
• Understand what you can and can’t get accomplished
• Don’t post more than 3-4 times a day
• Use original content, stay away from re-posting content
• You need to be ACTIVE!!!

Technology is ever changing and you need to be as well. You need to continue to find out the latest technologies and how to market your products where your clients are. In future articles we will break down some of the major sites to help you achieve your marketing goals.