Snapchat users can add OKCUniversity as a friend.
The university will take advantage of the Snapchat Stories feature to share photos and videos with everyone who is a friend.
“We always have three goals: recruitment, retention and resources,” said Sandy Pantlik, senior director of university communications. “Recruitment-wise, we want to reach out to our target market, which is high school, mostly. It’s to connect with them, but to help with retention of students on campus as well.”
The university’s Snapchat will feature campus events, tours and giveaways, Pantlik said.
Students are worried about the university having an account.
“If it’s one of those things where people can send photos and then everyone can see it in their story, then I think it’s a bad idea,” said Liam Hill, cell and molecular biology freshman.“I think it would be popular if they do things such as giveaways and campus events. Things like Midnight Breakfast and Pizza Feast were successful, so it’s even more advertising for stuff like that.”
The photo messaging application launched September 2011. The Snapchat Stories feature was developed in October 2013. Snapchat Stories add Snaps together to create a narrative and every Snap lives for 24 hours before it disappears, according to the Snapchat blog, blog.snapchat.com.
“Our goal is to keep it fresh and ideally we can be a little more funny and a little less serious,” said Chris Cox assistant director of marketing services. “For example, the snow day was pretty fun to use Snapchat on. We got some cool pictures and videos. People were playing outside and our buildings look beautiful in the snow.”
The university communications and marketing divisions work together to run the Snapchat account.
The university also requested a geofilter that would say Oklahoma City University in custom text, Cox said. The filter would be available to anyone on or around campus simply by swiping.
“We want to particularly capture things that we hope are of interest to prospective students as well as our current student body,” Pantlik said. “And we’re open to ideas, so send us some.”
Students can email ideas to communications@okcu.edu.
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