Student Organizations Continue Facing Engagement Issues, Here’s What You Can Do!
With online universities, the college experience is lacking the most critical piece: socialization. This has been the reality for months now and may continue to be the case in the foreseeable future. Student organizations, in particular, do not hold the same impact as they would in-person.
Among the issues student organizations currently face, maintaining proper engagement remains paramount.
Nowadays, if you are a current student leader at a university club, it’s easy to believe your options are limited. However, many student organizations across the country have been implementing both traditional and current procedures to raise their club’s engagement levels — and I’m here to share them with you!
1. Making Your Club Events Exciting
To start off, club events need to be exciting and worth checking out.
During a time where many students are craving social interaction, platforms like Zoom and Glimpse have stepped up to the plate.
Glimpse is a 1-on-1, round-robin video chat service. Glimpse is the perfect place for running fun, online events like virtual rush and online speed dating.
Catalyst, a pre-professional club at Duke University, has been utilizing Glimpse for months now. Their response has been nothing but positive. According to their Social Chair, Adam Yee, Catalyst experienced greater levels of engagement when utilizing Glimpse-hosted events.
Meanwhile, the student organization: Princeton’s Women In Computer Science(PWiCS) has been able to positively engage with many freshmen thanks in part to Glimpse. In fact, one of their events was able to net “86 meaningful matches.”
Other fun event ideas include game nights. Gaming is an excellent outlet for individuals to build community and make new friends. Some games worth centering your event around include: Scribble.io, Among Us, Codenames, and Geoguessr.
2. Going All-Out with Social Media
You can think of the most exciting event in the world, but it won’t mean anything if the word never gets out. That’s why having a strong social media presence is super important.
The more clicks, likes, and follows you get, the more likely it is to increase your levels of engagement. Given today’s landscape, it’s even more important to promote virtual events and club opportunities through social media.
When promoting virtual events, you should be utilizing free social media management tools. These services will save you time and provide valuable analytics for your social media posts in order to help you grow.
For example, Facebook Creator Studio makes it easy for you to time your Facebook and Instagram posts while services like TweetDeck allow you to schedule posts for Twitter.
For these promotional posts, it’s also important to make sure your content stands out. Canva fits that need perfectly.
Canva is a free design platform. This website offers hundreds of free templates, illustrations, and fonts for you to create your own designs for making.
Additionally, be sure to keep thinking outside the box. Some clubs have utilized forums like Reddit to expand their outreach. Others have even used TikTok to engage with audiences and found great success.
In the end, these social media practices will pay off significantly in the long run.
3. Building An Email List
What is an email list?
An email list is a list of email addresses you can send information and updates. With an email list, you can easily conduct email marketing campaigns.
If your club does not already implement email marketing, you should consider doing so!
Email marketing is a great method to send out promotions for club events, spotlight club members, advertise club merchandise, or just a great way to show attendees your appreciation.
If your club already takes attendance forms, you can aggregate and compile email addresses through platforms like MailChimp or HubSpot.
These services provide the ability to automate and send out bulk emails, and they also provide custom email templates too.
By following these steps, not only will your student organization be better situated for an online environment, but it will be able to garner higher levels of engagement overall!
