Content is king

This week I've had the opportunity to attend the Postgraduate Marketing Forum in Manchester. It was my first time attending one of these forums and, as I've heard lots of good things about them, I was very excited. The theme of the day was content and tracking - as even the name caused debate I knew that I was in for an interesting day!

Content comes in all shapes and sizes, to your traditional printed collateral to a social media post - content can be anything that we produce. But what about things that we're not responsible for - a tweet or blog post by someone outside of the university? Well, it's still about us, it could affect the decision of a potential student - and therefore it still counts as content - just content that's a little bit harder to control!

One of the guest speakers was from a copy writing agency and he presented us with this picture, a scene from the movie The Incredibles. He suggested that many universities often describe their facilities and their key features in the same way, raising the issue that if everyone is saying the same thing in the same way, is anyone really standing out?

It's an interesting challenge that the higher education sector is faced with - students tend to want to know about the same things: location, facilities, accommodation, teaching, research, careers etc. - so it's understandable that universities are talking about similar things. And it's not just as easy as just finding something that's different - it has to fit the context - it has to be right for that particular situation, for that particular audience. 

It was an interesting concept, one of many throughout the day, and I've certainly come away with many thoughts and ideas to explore.