Your Guide to Maintaining Engagement During Summer Break
Summer break is a time of relaxation and rejuvenation for many college students, but it can present challenges for colleges and universities striving to maintain engagement during this downtime. With students scattered across the globe and many campus activities on hold, how can colleges keep their communities connected and involved? We'll explore how institutions can maintain engagement during summer break and keep their students connected, inspired, and informed.
Host Alumni Events and Feature their Success Stories
Summer break is an opportune time to highlight the achievements of alumni and showcase how their college education has shaped their professional journeys. Feature alumni success stories through interviews, profiles, or photo essays that highlight their career accomplishments, leadership roles, and contributions to their communities. Summer is also a great time to host alumni events, check how hosting alumni events is a strategic move that can positively impact your alumni community and your institution.
If you find a shortage of alumni updates during the summer season, encourage your community to share their own photos and stories. Establish a designated section on your website to facilitate the collection of class notes, wedding and birth announcements, and alumni news and celebrations. This curated content can serve as valuable material for your social media posts throughout the summer.
Welcome and Introduce New Faculty
If there are faculty changes for the upcoming school year, use the summer months to grab high-quality headshots of each staff member and plan to introduce them to incoming and current students. Share their photo with a Q&A article or interview to immerse them within your community. Check out why corporate photos are so crucial and how often you should update your headshots.
Promote Summer Programs and Events
While campus activities may be scaled back during summer break, your campus is probably still offering a variety of virtual programs, workshops, and events to keep students and the wider community engaged. This is a great opportunity to highlight any in person programs, especially those staffed by energetic undergrads. Use high-quality images to promote these offerings and create visually compelling advertisements, event posters, and social media posts.
Highlight Campus Updates
Even during summer break, the campus remains a central hub for the college community. Take advantage of this downtime to capture the beauty of the campus. Showcase stunning landscapes, architectural landmarks, and hidden gems that make the campus unique. These photos can be shared on social media, university websites, and in marketing materials to promote campus pride and enrollment. If there are any campus construction projects going on, make sure to take before and after photos to update your students and alumni on its progress.
Refresh Your Institution’s Website
Ideally, you've captured high-quality photographs of student activities and campus events over the past year. Use the summer months to refresh your website with these new images, enticing students to revisit your site and explore the latest updates. Fresh content, including new images, signals to search engines that your site is active and relevant, potentially boosting your rankings. Failing to update your images or website copy can result in search engines perceiving your site as less relevant. Without fresh, new content, your website may be deemed outdated, leading to a lower ranking by search engines. Consequently, your website may appear lower in search results compared to sites with regularly updated content.
Let us know how you plan to engage your enrolled students over the summer and stay tuned for our upcoming blog on how to avoid the ‘summer melt’ and reach your new and incoming students during the summer months.