Social Listicles

How do you tell a new student all the things they're going to want to know about college, but keep it entertaining? Buzzfeed-style articles. We dove into the how-to, the where-to-go and the what-you-need-to-know topics that zip through a student's mind in the time between now and college.

Goal of Project

We wanted to ease students' minds about the big topics and the small worries. We wanted to make sure everyone had the same information. We didn't want to send any more emails. So we developed initial 13 listicles on the admitted students website. These are also meant to be a living resource that we keep adding to and tweaking as we get new ideas or feedback from students.

Implementation of Strategy

We needed to discuss health and safety, navigating campus and where exactly to find the perfect nap spot. Each "listicle" provides the reader with short but clear descriptions, broken up by well-chosen gifs to illustrate the point. The listicles were set free one at a time as bumpers to admitted student emails as well as through our Admitted Students Facebook page. Not all listicles are in the same format. Some use the gif/description format but others use still photos of campus for illustration and a couple are interactive maps. In addition to the emails and Facebook, they're also linked in the admitted student planner. They were a big part of the admitted student webpage rebuild.

Results of Strategy

We've seen overall increased engagement in the admitted section of our website where these live. Users have spent 35 percent more time on the page over the previous year and heat maps show users clicking on more content. The listicle series has received 10,182 page views overall from external traffic (from launch until June 12, 2020), with the "Love Moscow" page receiving 2,807 page views from external traffic alone.

Bringing It Together

By using the same technique as a favorite media outlet, we made mundane topics a little more interesting. Putting those topics on our webpage made it more useful to students (and their parents).