Small community colleges benefit from shared access to vetted, researched articles.
With the rise in the economy, many community colleges are feeling the pinch as students who might once have enrolled in courses are returning to the workforce to take advantage of the burgeoning job market. For small community colleges, this can be a particularly challenging period, especially as many states have slashed budgets for community college funding with little sign of restoring it in the near future.
With reduced budgets, community colleges must look toward timely, cost-effective means of reaching their prospective students. And it is to help them achieve this goal that CareerFocus has created their content archive—a powerful resource that colleges can use to reach more students with crucial educational information. Here are the top four benefits small community colleges gain from accessing our content library.
1. Draw in more students through effective content marketing.
Content marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies available to educational institutions and other organizations. The principles are straightforward: prospective students need a lot of information about degree programs, cost of education, and student support in order to make a decision about their educational careers.
When students search for this information online, community colleges have an opportunity to use this point of contact to cultivate a relationship with them. As a trusted source of information on courses and career opportunities, students are more likely to enroll with that college. Meanwhile, colleges gain students with a better understanding of there employment prospects, and a more realistic idea of what it will take to finish their degree.
Of course, for this strategy to work, community colleges must first provide that information. That’s where the CareerFocus content library comes into play. Much of the information available on career opportunities is based on national employment data. We have compiled an archive of articles addressing these career concerns so that community colleges can share them as a resource without having to constantly reinvent the wheel. And when they do,
2. Relieve the time crunch in your marketing department.
For many small community colleges, the “marketing department” may consist of only one person. That lead marketer is already tasked with a wide range of duties, from maintaining the information on the community college website, to keeping brochures up to date, to organizing campus signage and managing press releases.
With so much on their plate, these marketing directors rarely have the time to sit down, research, write, and publish informative content about their career programs and the local job market. As much as they would like to spread the word, they’re limited by time constraints and the size of their team. Add in the busy seasons, and the increase pressure to meet deadlines, and most marketing directors have very little spare time to accomplish extra tasks.
As effective as content marketing is, writing and researching articles takes time. But, by accessing the content library, marketers can increase their output without adding an excessive time load. For overburdened marketing departments, this can revolutionize their capabilities. With a fully-loaded content marketing campaign at their fingertips, marketers can reach more students in less time, thus allowing them to devote more time to other priorities.
3. Make more of your marketing budget.
Small community colleges usually have to contend with limited budgets all round. When enrollment drops, the marketing budget is usually one of the first to feel the pinch. Unfortunately, this sets community colleges on a downward spiral. Without resources devoted to building enrollment in the coming year, budgets are likely to only grow tighter.
Our content library expands limited budgets in two ways. First, it helps your college achieve the widespread effects of a strategic content marketing strategy, but at a fraction of the cost. Because the articles in our catalog are available to community colleges nationwide, the burden of creating content from scratch is distributed across participating institutions.
4. Unify your message with other colleges to challenge public perception.
Finally, many prospective students carry a false impression of community colleges as second-best to four-year institutions. They hesitate to enroll, preferring to enter directly into the workforce rather than invest in a post-secondary education that doesn’t come from a more prestigious school.
These perceptions are unfortunate, especially as they undervalue the great benefits community colleges bring to their region. Without community colleges, many areas would lack training opportunities for nurses, electricians, mechanics, and other important trade professions. Furthermore, community colleges provide an affordable way for students to explore areas of interest before transferring to larger institutions. This opportunity has the potential to save some students thousands of dollars in student loan debt on their way toward achieving a bachelor’s degree.
As pernicious as these perceptions might be, however, community colleges face an uphill battle when they challenge them individually. On the other hand, by working together, large and small community colleges alike can present a cohesive story that challenges the negative light they’re often viewed in.
Shared content means shared resources.
The bottom line is that community colleges have a lot to gain by pooling resources. It is rare that two community colleges compete with each other for students, either because of geographic separation, a difference in course offerings, or through the sheer size of their local market.
Since they don’t compete, there’s no need to re-write an entire library of content articles from scratch—especially since all our articles can be fully customized to match local interests. Colleges can save their own resources while still presenting a researched, fully-polished, story that highlights the benefits of community college education while also providing students with the crucial job market information they’re looking for.
To learn more about how CareerFocus can help your community college grow, contact us today.