Dive Brief:
- A targeted communication strategy can help a cash-strapped department be effective despite competing chatter.
- The first step is to define the message based on a concrete campus identity, with ley strategies from Jared Padgett, associate director of communications at Pepperdine University School of Law, including understanding the variation across different campus populations and speaking directly to them in ways that are unique to their interests.
- Messaging should be tailored based on the platform being used to communicate, and on social media, communications teams should craft relevant content rather than attention-getting posts that don’t build opportunities for meaningful dialogue.
Dive Insight:
All members of the campus community are connected via in-person and digital formats that make a communications strategy far more complicated than it was decades ago. In theory, this community is more accessible, but perhaps more importantly, they are arguably more distracted. Cutting through the white noise, then, is the job of communications professionals as much as crafting good messaging. Of course, both are key. Cutting through the chatter with poor messaging is worse than missing the target population. In the first case, people get turned away for good.