Last two to three years have drastically changed the techniques and tools of education marketing and promotions in India. And the larger brands are waking up to the new digital revolution in educational services marketing all of a sudden. It is almost a rude shock to many. Most education brands, the larger ones included, have been happy with full and half page ads, with faces of bosses, appearing in national dailies, and usually in English. That has been their ‘marketing effort’. Added to that, have been the media net route to get stories published by paying for the same, and participation in educational fairs and putting up huge outdoor hoardings.

The scene is very different today.

All educational institutes are understanding now the power and the need of the New Media to reach out to its audiences. For example, the executive education focused on working professionals has almost exclusively gone into the internet and mobile mode. A few days back, XLRI  announced an executive management training program through the SMS route, as it can be discerning and focused on a specific audience. Many social networking portals are used to identify the network of similar needs professionals and such campaigns are pegged there for better results.

The portals focused on creating education domain-specific communities, have become a major tool of marketing now for this sector. Minglebox.com, Shiksha.com, Studyplaces.com, HTcampus.com, educationtimes.com, etc are raking in the moolah and creating institute specific and domain specific platforms for networking with the youth online. We at ISB&M have also used these and Google to reach out to our audiences, and have got rich dividends in this admission season. Apart from ads on these portals, they have info-links and domain specific segments, and opportunities for conversation to happen between the site, the institutes and the users at large.

Further, pagalguy.com has emerged in the last three to four years as a strong platform for online users among MBA aspirants. Though the forums need administrator’s intervention to avoid abusive language and the marketing potentials of it still can be much better leveraged, still this site is a strong platform for all B-school aspirants.

Several institutes, including a few constituents of my last organization, Symbiosis, have created alumni network portals to keep tab on job opportunities for working professionals, and also linking the alumni through an ongoing online conversation with current students for projects, internships, mentoring and counseling. Professional education increasingly will need to create such conversation routes alive for credible branding and industry positioning of its trainees.

On the other hand, negative campaigns, comments and posts by present and past students about some institutes have given rise to serious branding challenges for a few educational institutes. One known group of B-schools, name withheld, devised an e-brochure of positive testimonials of its current and past students with email ids and some cell numbers as well and uploaded the entire brochure and the individual testimonials selectively across various online platforms to generate a counter campaign while facing disgruntled elements making disparaging and blatant remarks on social media about the institute.

Often it has been seen that on-ground activities, like Unmaad of IIM Bengaluru, Xavotsov of St Xavier’s Kolkata, Media Pulse of ISBM School of Communication Pune, Y-Factor of NSHM Kolkata or Mood Indigo of IIT Mumbai and others, have been marketed to its audiences through the social media largely: by connecting link and landing pages to Facebook and Orkut communities created around that event or festival. These seamless blending of online campaign with on ground activation leads to a strong stake-holder driven buzz or viral which is good for the brand of the institute concerned.

Seeing is believing. One of the ways of promoting image is to upload videos made by students onto YouTube and other places, and create the institute’s own portal of video and photos for all times onto the virtual space. I have done it twice for two institutes so far.

The best part of social media is its conversationalist non-hierarchical communication which makes information turn into a virtual buzz or viral. The worst part of social media communication is that loads of rumour passes off as genuine information, and credibility of the source of a lot of information will always be under question.

All things said and done, with flat organizations and flat mindsets becoming the norm, online conversation will gradually become the mainstay of many an educational branding in the days to come.

One of my educationist colleagues and an expert on Social Media, Prof Shyama Dutta, notes and I find it interesting to quote her here,

We are not yet using it as effectively as possible, because social media is treated as a urban vision. In fact if one looks at the entire treatment of visualization and ideation in new media it is still very urban centric. However, the potential exists – because by default it allows all opinions in it. The strongest way forward is because social media is now extensively integrated with 3 G mobile technology – which means it transcends the urban walls. If we harness the existing technology along with social media – such as webinars and the power of user generated content then we would find a way.

Note: Views of authors are personal, and do not represent views of IndiaSocial or its partners.

Education in India has come a long way and have been seeing some changes-both on the technological and social front. First, there was long distance learning and few years back, we began hearing of virtual classrooms. Then came online education and online tuitions became a rage. In fact, Educomp started online education for schools in Karnataka. They also were the early adopters of online tutoring for engineering students. Schools, colleges, universities started revamping their almost dead websites and also include new features so as to make them more accessible and student friendly.

Educational communities in India are growing by leaps and bounds and it is a delight to know that most of them are as well present on social touch points like Facebook, Orkut despite of having their own forums etc. EdServ is a common name in the education space and had gone ahead to acquire firms like Schoolmate, SmartLearn Web TV. Where the first service helps parents know more about their child’s academic performance through mediums like SMS or emails, SmartLearn Web TV is again a service for e-learning and tutorial courses for IIT, JEE, and AIEEE aspirants.

2tion which was also acquired by EdServ is a highly active service, if used. A student can post a question from anywhere using his/her mobile phone. And with more and more people having mobile connectivity than internet accessibility, the service somehow bridges the gap between urban and rural education systems.

From sometime-books are the centre of attention, either for their non-readability or new devices being launched to make them more popular. In short, the blackboards and notebooks are being replaced by laptops. The HRD ministry launched a $35 laptop which is aimed to bring internet to most students in the country and is being debated in the market over its use, functions and technology.

From engineers who can get tutored online to photography students who can create online portfolio’s, from whizkids who can showcase their products and innovations to a student who simply connect and reach out to another student in another part of world for more exposure, there is an impact of social media on education. The E-learning is becoming a trend and everything is available on a touch of the finger. However, there is no doubt that the trend is also contributing in the generation being a white bread generation. Keeping that aside, India still has a long way to go when it comes to e-learning.

Whenever I think about the impact of social media on education, I tend to remember one of my professors who said that it took more than 3 decades for radio to reach people and almost a decade for TV to become so important. Internet, of course, seems to have broken the record with almost 5 years in process.

Category: Long-term Initiatives

Title : Paper Preeti Visits the World

Share a little about your organisation

Since 2000, Pardada Pardadi Educational Society has been improving the lives of girls in rural India. Its mission is to uplift and empower girls from the poorest sections of society by providing free education and vocational training and creating a new generation of self-reliant and educated girls who will break the cycle of poverty in the region.

Executive Summary

The Paper Preeti Project was begun as a way for students at Pardada Pardadi Girls Vocational School to learn about the world outside of their village in Uttar Pradesh India. 25 girls were selected to create Paper Preeti versions of themselves (small drawings of themsleves) – these versions were then sent to friends & supporters of Pardada Pardadi throughout the world.

Background

Inspired by the popular children’s book, Flat Stanely (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley#Synopsis), about a boy who wakes up flat as a pancake one morning and decides to use his flat shape to his advantage by easily traveling the world.

We are always looking for ways to learn about the world outside their village and to keep them engaged and excited about education.

Approach/ Strategy

• We began the project in April 2009 and it is ongoing. With an initial batch of 24 students, we have had tremendous response.
• When a person receives a Paper Preeti in the mail, they are instructed to take a photo of the girl somewhere and then upload the photo themsleves on our Flickr page. So far, we have received 47 photos.
• We will continue with this project as time permits

Stakeholders

• We reached out to our extensive network of friends and supporters through our website, newsletter, blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts to tell them about this initiative.
• We asked people interested in receiving the Paper Preeti to send us their address, and upon receiving, mailed them their unique Paper Preeti.

About the initiative

As a busy NGO, we designed our initiative to be easily executed but with big benefits. Once we had selected the 24 students to participate, we simply needed them to draw themselves. Secondly, we used all our marketing channels to tell the world about the project and ask for volunteers to receive the Paper Preeti.

Here is an example of how we used all our communication channels to advertise this initiative:
On our website: http://www.education4change.org/Extra/PaperPreeti.html

Our newsletter: http://www.education4change.org/Extra/May2009newsletter.html

Impact – Outcome

We measured our success in three ways:

1. By the excitement generated by the students to learn about different parts of the world through their Paper Preeti, and their increased passion for education.
2. Through the number of photos uploaded by recipients of Paper Preeti. The current number photos are 47.
3. Through general awareness for the work we are doing by the number of emails we have received in support.

Learnings

We learned that Paper Preeti was a very good educational tool, as well as a wonderful way to tell the world about the work we are doing in a corner of the world often ignored.

Our biggest challenge is keeping the momentum going for the receivers of the Paper Preeti. In our digital age, people are less accustomed to handling physical mail and tend to let their Paper Preeti sit on their desk for weeks.

What Next

We will be evaluating the program after one year (in April 2010) and discussing launching the next batch of Paper Preeti’s into the world.

Reasoning

• Not only is our initiative a wonderful tool for us to excite our students about education and learning about the outside world, but it turned into a fabulous tool to discuss the importance of attention for the girl child in rural India.
• You see, Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES) is based in the village of Anupshahar, in the Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh, India. This area is one of India’ poorest. It is infamous for being crime-ridden. Moreover, it is one of the least-educated and least-literate sections of India.
• PPES was founded by Virender (Sam) Singh, a retired head of DuPont South Asia. Sam grew up in Anupshahar; although he left many years ago, he moved back in 1999 to use his success for the benefit of the people he left behind.
• Sam knew that to break the cycle of poverty, he had to first focus on improving the quality of life for the weakest members of this society: rural female children. Since they’re often neglected and uneducated, they’re forever dependent on male family members for their livelihood.

Credits Strategy

Self

Credits Execution

Self

Factsheet

Name of the company: World Toilet Organization
Number of Employees: 1-10
Category: Not-for-profit institution
Case submitted by: Jenny Steeves
Website: http://worldtoilet.org/