How to Institute Internal Communications On a College Campus

While applying for a college, a potential student is bombarded with Facebook interactions, emails, Tweets, and text messages. But once the student arrives on campus, the communication hype stops.

Sometimes, higher education institutions slack with their internal communication efforts.

When this happens, the campus communications team must reassess their responsibility and strategies to keep the student body, faculty and staff informed.

What’s not working

Campus communications teams can sometimes revert back to old fashioned communication methods to get a message out. These include:

• Email blasts for campus news. This method fails because those emails typically land in the junk folder. Because of this, commuters frequently miss or receive wrong information about campus activities.

• Small mailboxes in place of faculty offices. This promotes a non-interactive connection with students and other members of campus, and isolates faculty from campus events.

• Printing out paper flyers and tacking them onto bulletin boards. Students, faculty and staff are often too busy to stop and look at these bulletin boards, and the messages are overlooked.

Why do internal communications matter?

In such a fast-paced, high capacity environment as a college, these forms of communication fall short. Information can quickly change, resulting in wasted time, energy, and money.
As a result, colleges should invest in newer internal communications strategies.

A communicative campus is an inviting one; campuses with internal communications strategies have a strong morale and a positive reputation. It develops a sense of community and belonging among staff members, faculty, and students.