Columbia Admissions:
Converting Admits into Commits
as a member of Columbia's social media team, I developed content strategy and social copy targeted at applicants during the crucial three-month decision period between applying and committing.
How do we stand out?
It's Dec 2018. The last applications have been received. High schoolers are finally taking a break. But our job was just beginning.
Challenge
Columbia wants to attract hyper-competitive students, but our social media struggle to differentiate against more established accounts of other prestigious colleges.
Insight
More than stats or prestige, students are choosing based on imagination and connection — what they imagine their life will be like, and how they feel about each college.
Execution
Leveraging Instagram as a medium immersed in the daily life of users, we developed experience-focused content aimed at enriching students’ imagination about Columbia: “Our feed is what your feed will look like.”
The Existing Strategy:
#OnlyHere
Emphasizing the intersection our key value propositions:
Core Curriculum, New York City, and Global Reach.
An Identity, A Life
Columbia's Core Curriculum, a set of liberal arts courses with a 150-year history, provides not just an intellectual foundation, but a framework for a meaningful life.
The Place Where It Happens
Our New York is a neighborhood, a classroom, a community, a testing ground, a cultural wonderland, a source of inspiration, a home, a friend, an indispensable resource.
The Problem
1)
These value props are already communicated through other marketing materials.
Instagram isn't offering anything new.
2)
Among elite colleges, hard stats alone are not enough to stand out.
It's not about giving information. It's about building connection.
So, we asked ourselves: Why do students follow our Instagram?
OUR INSIGHT
Instagram is about possibilities. It's about catching a glimpse of another life.
Embrace Medium Specificity:
REAL LIFE, REAL TIME
Students follow our Instagram because they want to know what it's like here.
When they follow us, they weave us into their day-to-day experience. Everything we post is combined with their life at the moment of viewing. Everything is a moment of imagination, reflection, judgement, resonance.
Why not help them imagine? Why not use Instagram's special property as unfolding in real-time, ambiguous between media and reality, to make Columbia not just salient, but felt?
We set out to use Instagram to immerse students in the Columbia experience. Make it feel as if they were already here. Help them visualize what those four months could be like.
"Our feed is what your feed would look like."
Make the Core Curriculum experienced.
Rather than talk about our classes, we showed them its contents. Let them grapple with its arguments, its questions.
#CitySaturday
your weekend here
On the weekends, we featured getaways that not only showcased the vibrance of New York City, but also demonstrated the special access offered by Columbia.
Connection = Sensory + Emotional
Not just academic or professional experiences. Emotional experiences,
Pride. Delight. Belonging. Identity.
We wanted to help students not just imagine the things they get to do, but the emotions they will cherish.
// CHALLENGES
COMPLICATIONS
We were using Instagram to paint a picture of the Columbia experience that was unfolding in real-time, that was becoming richer every day. But we were running out of ideas.
Between our four team members — the Director of Marketing, the Senior Admissions Officer, fellow student intern Kat (who managed Insta Stories), and I (the feed) — we knew only so many happenings. We were quickly exhausting experiences to share.
A New Approach
COLLABORATION
How do you paint a complete picture of Columbia? By inviting its every member to paint it together.
To confront our resource constraints, we decided to open our platform to artists, creators, and social media teams across the university. After all, the most incredible part of this university is its people.
Why not have admitted students experience the people?
Photographer Michael Edmonson explores affection
on campus for Valentine's Day.
Photographer Maryam Hassan portraits student
athletes for the Super Bowl.
Photographer Elisabeth McLaughlin explores how
"something as simple as light" brings her closer to Columbia
and New York City.
Micro-Communities.
posts co-created with student organizations to help admits find where they belong.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Spring Break Takeover Campaign
Our original insight and our new relationships came together during Spring Break, we invited 5 student groups across 4 continents to chronicle their Columbia Spring Break experience as it happened.
Crossing time zones and overcoming limited internet access, collaborating groups documented their trips, sent us content for approval, implemented feedback, then posted — all within 24 hours of each "event".
These posts exemplified the integration of our insight and our collaborative relationships. They showcased a Columbia Spring Break the same time our target admits were on theirs. They appeared between the vacation posts of our targets' friends. They are seen as targets underwent their own breaks — seen with envy, inspiration, identification, imagination.
Using the medium specificity of Instagram to help students imagine their life here, so that when it comes time to choose, we stand out like no other.
Points for Future Improvement
1)
Engagement: How can we tailor our posts to encourage commenting and sharing? How can we improve our visibility in the Instagram algorithm?
2)
Responsibility: In light of mental health concerns across elite colleges, in what ways are admissions communications influencing the experiences of students when they get on campus? How do we balance the showcasing of Columbia's best parts, while setting realistic and healthy expectations?