Houston Community College
Houston Community College is an open-admission, public institution of higher education serving Houston, Missouri City, Greater Katy, and Stafford in Texas
The challenge
Houston Community College needed to improve both the quantity and quality of their social media engagements. They suffered from the commonly held stigma of community colleges being lower quality than the university path. More importantly, it’s audience was prone to being distrustful and unresponsive to the HCC brand.
THE REMEDY
I drew from my personal experiences as an HCC alumna, addressing HCC’s biggest issue with a single phrase: Start Here, Go Anywhere. I positioned HCC as the ideal launchpad for success, urging students to be proud of themselves for choosing such a high-quality, economical start to their dream jobs. This phrase would ultimately become the campaign title and branded hashtag.
Original graphics and relatable stock photos of college students served as the imagery for this campaign. I collaborated closely with a designer on each graphic to ensure quality.
My team and I released promoted content twice a week on Facebook and Twitter with messaging geared to highlight the grit that binds each HCC student to their community.
One of our most successful posts was one where we asked alumni to chip in with transfer advice for current students. We were able to strike common ground with every single student by addressing transfer anxiety with real-time advice from real life people.
THE RESULTS
- 5.2 million engagements
- 9.9% follower growth across all of HCC’s social platforms
- 61.5% increase in engaged users
- 200% increase in Twitter engagements