Campus News

Bethel teams up with alumni in part­ner­ship with J2 Mar­ket­ing

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As you may have no­ticed, there has been a for­eign, yet some­how very fa­mil­iar, pres­ence on Bethel’s cam­pus. J2 Mar­ket­ing has been work­ing with Bethel’s so­cial me­dia out­lets. The ma­jor­ity of the staff of J2 Mar­ket con­sists of Bethel stu­dents and alumni.

As Erin Kinzel, di­rec­tor of mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, puts it, “We were look­ing at [J2’s] ar­eas of ex­per­tise and ar­eas where we needed as­sis­tance and that area where we re­ally in­ter­sected was so­cial me­dia. Which can be very hard to hand off to an out­side com­pany be­cause it can eas­ily be han­dled poorly.”

“We are running the main social accounts for Bethel,” said Zac Nelson, J2 employee and 2017 Bethel graphic design alum. The main purpose for why J2 is taking the reins of the social media accounts is to focus on drawing more people into Bethel, as well as engage the students that are currently enrolled. “For marketing purposes, social media really lays the groundwork for getting students interested and comfortable in Bethel, who is Bethel, and what it’s like to be a student here,” said Kinzel. “So that when they get admissions material from us that they can reference what they’ve seen online.” “Bethel also contacts us for smaller things as well, like videos or anything small like that,” Nelson commented. J2 has been a helpful asset to Bethel in working on different projects or presentations. According to Nelson it has been running smoothly working with Bethel’s staff. Kinzel expressed high hopes for what J2 can bring to Bethel. “We hope that they will bring a new level of strategy for how we can be intentional on social media on reaching perspective students, and showing them all the great things that are happening here,” she said. When discussing J2’s goals for what to achieve, Nelson said, “It is enrollment, we were discovering the disconnect between that and social media. We want to be able to turn this into a tool to boost enrollment.” J2 hopes to work with tools and places that are relevant with high-schoolers, social media being one of those large areas. Through experimentation and statistics, they have found that the biggest response has come from Twitter, with Instagram and Snapchat being the next most popular, and Facebook coming in last. While Snapchat seems to be a strange platform to work with for business, J2 has been trying to figure it out and see how it benefits the school. “We want to make sure that all social media is friendly and fitting for past, present and future students,” Nelson said. Nelson said that having attended Bethel himself lends a passion and a closeness to the project. “Working for Bethel leaves a desire to go deeper, to really invest with what I’m doing,” Nelson commented. As J2 continues to evaluate and figure out the social media and other marketing aspects on Bethel’s campus, Bethel works to build a following and get the word out and, hopefully, boost enrollment. (Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash)