 "Photo: Graphic illustration by Sam Goodwin")
The University of West Florida is using Twitter and other social media to recruit new students as part of its Spring Recruitment Campaign.
The campaign uses a variety of communications that lead to a Web site.
“As part of that Web site, we have developed a component that ties into Twitter,” Jaimie Woodard, assistant director of communications and web services, said in a telephone interview.
This year, UWF wants students and alumni to be a part of the campaign.
“We wanted to try to get our own students to comment on why they chose UWF,” Woodard said. “We thought by allowing their voices to be heard as part of the Spring Recruitment Campaign, it would help inspire other students to look at UWF and consider it as one of their choices for a college.”
Twitter is not the only means of communication UWF is using to recruit new students.
“The University currently has a presence on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Flickr” Woodard said. “Our Facebook page currently has a fan count of 4,216 for the overall UWF Facebook presence.
“As part of this ad campaign, you will see a TV ad that has been posted to Youtube that relates to the campaign. We have recently created videos for each of our academic majors.”
The Spring Recruitment Campaign began on Feb. 8, and it runs through April 30.
“Since the beginning of the campaign, we have had 20 tweets,” Woodard said. “As the campaign goes on, we will definitely see that number increase.”
The University wants the Twitter postings to be an invitation to potential students to come to UWF and see it for themselves.
“You can never replace that personal touch that the students get when they come to campus and are actually speaking with a student or faculty member,” Woodard said. “The technology aspect has really helped us to raise awareness among our prospective audiences of students. Technology has enabled us to get our name out there to people who may not have even known we existed, or had very little knowledge of UWF to begin with.”
The campaign is not limited to the Pensacola area.
“The specific advertising we are doing -- the billboards, television ad placement, print ads and some search engines, are targeted towards the Central Florida and Northwest Florida regions,” Woodard said.
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