Strategic Plan Overview
  Educate Your Students
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  Measure Your Success   Branding  
If your institution only sends hometown news twice a year for dean's list and graduation to "tick-the-box" and keep parents happy, you're missing a critical opportunity to turn this tactical activity into a strategic marketing tool.

readMedia helps you elevate your hometown news process into a powerful media relations and social media strategy that can directly impact student engagement and success.

By constantly issuing stories about student achievements, you're not only recognizing them and keeping them engaged, but you're giving them the opportunity to push your message into their social networks (and get it in front of potential future students). When a student posts a story about their achievement to their Facebook wall, it's the online equivalent of them affixing a college window sticker to their car or walking around in a college sweatshirt. They're affiliating themselves with your brand in a positive way.

In addition to making sure stories about student success reach local newspapers and online media outlets (like Patch.com), we've also created a strong online presence for these stories at readabout.me. Every time you issue a hometowner, you're building the online reputation of your students. You're adding to their readabout.me profile by showing the breadth and depth of their activities and accomplishments at your institution. Because readabout.me is designed to rank well for a student's name, it should come back high in search results when employers Google job candidates (which 75% of them do).

This guide will help you make the most out of your readMedia subscription, showing you how our best clients use the tool to create a lot of frequent, powerful online engagement with students. Check out our advice and best practices and contact us any time to learn more.