Do you have a new course you would like to advertise? Want to get more enrollment for an established class? It is up to you to design and develop a marketing approach for your courses.  The following steps may be helpful for designing your materials and getting the word out to prospective students. 

1. Determine your audience

Make a list of ideas for what types of learners would be most likely to sign up for your course. For example, a course on digital design, the potential students might be: non-traditional adults wanting new job skills, art students wanting to learn digital design, students looking to pursue a degree in design, gamers wanting to up their Photoshop skills, etc. List everyone you can think of. 

Make a list of any listservs, colleagues or social media sites that you already know of that would be a good fit for advertising your course. Also consider what departments might be related that may have student clubs. You can start by looking at the list of active student organizations at UAF.

2. Define your social media keywords

Make a list of all the keywords and short phrases that your audience groups might use to describe the idea of your course. Staying with our example from Step 1, digital design, some keywords might be: Photoshop, digital design, digital art, layout, raster, vector, photo manipulation, back to school, night class, online class, etc. 

Make a list of other keywords that might be relevant to any location you want to target. For example: UAF, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska, Alaska. These keywords will be what you use to search on social media for the groups and hashtags that would be relevant to your marketing. 

3. Find your social media channels, groups & hashtags

Make a list of the hashtags and groups that you find are relevant to your course topic. 

• Go to Facebook and use your keywords to search for groups that you can join and post to. 
• Go to Twitter and use your keywords to search for hashtags. Search for hashtags by putting a ‘#’ in front of your keyword. If it is a keyword phrase, combine the words so there are no spaces. 
• Go to Instagram and try your keywords similarly to Twitter, as hashtags with a ‘#’ in front of them. 

Also, consider including the following hashtags in your list for appropriate UAF groups: #nanooknation #uafairbanks #uafecampus (for online courses) #uafsummer. 

Look for hashtags that might correspond with departments #filmuaf or #uaflibrary, for example.  

4. Make fliers 

Each location you intend to post in — paper flier, Facebook post, Twitter post, Instagram post, email — requires a different size of image or format. So, ideally you will need to create several versions of your course flier for each social media location. 

Required Messaging

Remember, the University requires specific legal E/O statements and the official UAF logo to be included on any flier (more information here): 

E/O Statement – All UAF marketing material must include this statement: 

UAF is an AA/EO employer and educational institution and prohibits illegal discrimination against any individual: www.alaska.edu/nondiscrimination/.

UAF Logo – Download UAF logos here

Templates

Get started with the following templates. 

• UAF letter size and social media size templates – Find these in the UA template gallery in Google Docs. (must be logged in with UA account, scroll down to “Brochures & Newsletters”)
• UAF letter sized flier templates (Microsoft Word) – Download UAF letter sized flier templates here. 
• Social media templates – Canva.com is a free design creation site where you can quickly create fliers of all sizes for your course. Remember to add the UAF logo and E/O statement!
• If you need more help, you can schedule a consultation with an CTL instructional designer.

5. Post your fliers on social media

UAF CTL

For online courses, you can send your social media fliers to UAF CTL (Alexis Carstens, aabergey@alaska.edu). Please include the course description if it is not included. It will be posted on the CTL social media channels. Please remember to include the UAF logo and E/O statement in your flier. 

Facebook

Post on Facebook. Remember to be mindful of each group’s guidelines and rules before you post. Include your image and a brief announcement like ‘Want to take a fun class this spring? Check this out!’ or something similar.

General UAF-related Facebook Groups to consider starting with:

• Community Exchange
• any specific club group that might be relevant to your topic

Twitter

Post your flier on Twitter and use the hashtags you discovered. How many hashtags should you use? As many as you like but some studies have shown that 1-3 hashtags will perform better than tweets with more than 3 hashtags. 

Instagram

Post on Instagram. Include your image formatted for Instagram and a brief announcement and include your best hashtags at the end. You can use up to 30 hashtags. 

6. Reaching other groups

Academic Advisors

When you have course flier ready, you can send an email to the UAF Campus Advising Coordinator, Holly McDonald at hamcdonald@alaska.edu, and she can forward it to the UAF academic advising list-serve.

Student Support Services

You can share your course announcement/flier with the departments of Student Support Services and Rural Student Services. Both departments provide academic advising, tutoring and more to key student populations at UAF. 

Dual-enrollment

Amy Bristor is the Alaska Advantage & Dual Enrollment Coordinator at UAF. She often meets with school representatives and students and their parents about available programs and courses. It may be a good idea to send your course flier to Amy at albristor@alaska.edu so she’s aware of its availability and can share as appropriate.

Your colleagues & other departments

Don’t forget to send out an email with your flier to any colleagues you might know who could forward to others. Be sure to include any student support staff in your department such as academic advisors, student support specialists, registration coordinators and course schedulers. Also, if your course is relevant to another department, send it to the department admin staff. 

For courses that would be good for students in service, share your course flier/announcement with the UAF Office of Military and Veteran Services. 

And, finally, post your printed fliers around campus.