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Showcasing your campus digitally: developing an innovative virtual tour
Katie Connolly
Digital Marketing and CommunicationsManager, University of Birmingham
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What we’ll cover
• Why a virtual tour is important• Case study from Birmingham –
o our challengeo process: from initial research to launch
• Questions and discussion
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Why a virtual tour?
• Universities are places• Campus influence on identity• Campus/space vs course, reputation• A differentiation factor – your USP
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The challenge
• How can you represent your campus and University digitally?
• How can this be done in a way that is easily communicated to prospective students?
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Our challenge
• What do you do when your campus looks like this…
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What we had
• Website, YouTube and Flickr• Rapidly growing social media communities
with positive sentiment• Open Days – 50% more likely to accept an
offer from us if they have visited campus first
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What we looked at
• Off the shelf, ‘fixed’ solutions• Animation• 360 panoramas• Campus maps
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What we got
• In November 2012 invited three Birmingham agencies to pitch
• Launched our new Virtual Tour site in April 2013
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What we got
• A bespoke virtual tour site • Social validation• Live broadcast capability• Google api
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Our virtual tour site
• The ‘365’ site:
• Google maps and streetview
• Our own high quality 360 panoramas
• Instagram and Twitter posts from students and prospective students visiting campus – social validation
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Our virtual tour site
• 365 site - virtualtour.bham.ac.uk
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Our virtual tour site
• The live site:
• Live video streaming
• Live Q&A
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Our virtual tour site
• Two UG Open Days broadcast live online in 2013
• Hugely successful bespoke live Open Day for North America region in 2014
• Global live Open Day planned for November 2014
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Our virtual tour site
• Taking the best – and most translatable – parts of the Open Day experience online
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Some results
• 50,000 people have visited our virtual tour site since launch
• 2,000 visitors to our first live online Open Day
• North America live Open Day – 245% increase in applications
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Where next?
• Version 2 – multiple campuses/locations
• Ring-fencing and targeting content
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Summary
• Find your University’s biggest challenge and biggest asset
• Don’t box yourself in – find a solution that can grow
• Use technology to your advantage
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Questions and discussion
• What does your University currently have?
• What assets could you utilise?
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Thank you
Katie ConnollyDigital Marketing and Communications Manager, University of Birmingham
@connolk