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How to Use CareerFocus in Your Community College Rebrand

Refreshing your college image is an effective way to grow enrollment.

Community colleges around the country are searching for new ways to reach out to prospective students and increase enrollment. One challenge these community colleges face is the general perception in their communities that they are a fallback option rather than a valuable first choice. Because of this, many people who have never visited a community college hold in their minds an incorrect mental picture. They think about old buildings with dated equipment, not as beautiful and welcoming learning spaces.

A college rebrand is one way to change community perceptions about your institution. And as you conduct your campaign, CareerFocus is one of the best tools you could have to show off your facilities, staff, and campus. Here are our top ways to use CareerFocus to further your community college rebrand.

1. Use CareerFocus magazine to grow familiarity with your new brand standards.

A new rebrand can rejuvenate your image, but it can also be confusing to your customers (who are, in this case, the people in your community who are familiar with your school). People become used to brands, and over time, they become familiar. Strong brand recognition is often a good thing, especially if the associations with that brand are good. But it can also cause your college to fade out of the public consciousness, as more and more people take your college and its services for granted.

New brands attract attention by virtue of being new, but they do so by trading in some of the brand recognition your college has worked so long to achieve. Because of this, it’s important to introduce your community to the new brand so that they can create new associations for it.

The CareerFocus magazine is one of the best means of distributing this message, especially if your audience is already familiar with the magazine. When the new issue arrives in the mail, your new logo and brand standards can be boldly displayed on the front cover.

You could even run a feature piece from your marketing or graphic design team discussing the rebranding process. If you have a marketing or graphic design program at your school, this could tie in with a segment promoting that program.

2. Showcase your campus and facilities on your front cover.

It’s unlikely that your rebrand also involves updated facilities or new landscaping work, but should show them off as if they had. After all, part of the reason you want to rebrand is to change public perception about your college. If that perception has been formed by assumptions about your grounds or classrooms, some key photography can help change their minds.

This can be especially true of specialty equipment you may have in your labs or workshops. Many community colleges have used federal grants over the years to invest in state-of-the-art lab and shop equipment. However, this may not be well-known outside of the department itself.

By sharing images of your labs and classrooms, you give prospective students a way of imagining themselves in those environments. This can be incredibly appealing for students who are hesitant or anxious about the first day of class. And for the rest of the public, it’s an important reminder of the high-quality education community colleges offer.

3. Share images and feature pieces using digital marketing tools.

Just as the CareerFocus magazine is a great feature piece for introducing your new brand to the community, digital campaigns can help promote the spread of your new brand to a wider audience. However, the life cycle for social media posts is typically much shorter than for a print piece—often times a matter of hours as new content flows down a user’s newsfeed.

Because of this, any official announcements you may want to consider reiterating your new brand announcement by making several posts and publishing them at different times of the day throughout the week.

The real value of social media, however, lies in your ability to reinforce your brand through easy-to-share content. And that content can reinforce your brand, even if it’s not specifically about your brand.

By using the CareerFocus Content Library to craft a series of social media posts highlighting the value of your programs, you can spread awareness of your rebrand through your digital content.

Your community college rebrand is just the beginning.

A rebrand doesn’t end with the reveal of the new college logo. Instead, it’s a statement about how the college will be moving forward in all its communications. If you refresh your logo and your brand colors but don’t do anything to promote your programs or your institution, then the rebrand only goes skin deep.

CareerFocus’s Content Library and CampaignBuilder allow you to fully enact your community college rebrand. By using your rebrand as a way to change the manner in which you interact with your community, you can shift public perception of your institution for the long term. In the process, you showcase your facilities and draw attention to the immense value your community college has to offer.

If you would like to learn more about how CareerFocus can help your community college rebrand through a strategic multi-channel content marketing campaign, contact us today. We will be happy to schedule a demo to walk you through our services.