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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)
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