More Than Just a Moment: Appalachian State
"Appalachian State"
There are only a few things that may come to mind when thinking about this school from North Carolina, the most prominent being quite possibly the biggest upset of all time in a sporting event. Perhaps you know them from flicking through the channels and getting an ad for the university (but that's only likely if you live in the area). Moreover, you may recognize the university for when they placed a tenured Sociology professor on leave after showing an anti-pornography film in their class. Perhaps you don't recognize the university, and if you don't, let's correct that.
Appalachian State University is a four-year public university located in Boone, North Carolina. In 1899, brothers D.D. and B.B. Dougherty founded the school (for reference, 28 years after the University of Arkansas was founded and 10 years before Southern Arkansas University was founded). In 1971, Appalachian State joined the University of North Carolina's academic system and currently has about 20,000 enrolled students, offering 176 undergraduate degrees, 42 graduate degrees, and one doctoral degree in educational leadership.
Let's get to the point of this paper then. How does Appalachian State market themselves to enroll students?
The first thing that pops up on the Appalachian State website a link to their internship programs, which they have a lot of. They don't specifically list where exactly each of the internship programs can take you, but it looks like (according to the image on their website) there are numerous places in the United States to go, as well as overseas including England, France, Spain, India, and China? Or maybe that's Russia, but my money's on China. At the bottom of the internship page, they have 'profiles' of unique internship experiences which is seemingly updated every year.
The rest of the front page of the website lists the basic information you'd want to find about a university, but it also links to all of their departments on-campus including Arts, Diversity and Inclusion, Global Learning, and Sustainability, which appears to be a big part of their marketing as the home page markets the school as a place to 'Find Your Sustainability'.
The Mountaineer athletic program is also heavily marketed on their web page, as they brag about their graduation rate of student-athletes. The Mountaineer Football squad can also boast making the NCAA Top-25 last year, coming in at #25 in the middle of the 2018 campaign.
The bottom of the website lists all of the events going on around campus and from what I can tell, also lists any events going on at the main University of North Carolina campus about three hours away.
The Twitter account for Appalachian State University (which got really lucky with such a simple username: @appstate) is very active, updated almost daily, except for on the weekends where they usually just retweet whatever is going on with their athletics program. They have a lot of blog posts that go around on the account, including some similar to what we do here. Like most major university, Appalachian State has numerous Twitter accounts for their different departments, including the Office of Alumni Affairs and the Athletics account.
Appalachian State also has a Facebook page, but you would think it was more of a photography blog with how often they post pictures of the scenery around the campus. I'm not going to lie though, it looks like one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen, situated in the middle a valley surrounded by trees. I could only wonder what it looks like in the Fall, which I'm sure is a major marketing point. I fear for cell service though.
The university's social media department also has a very unique page called the 'social media cheat sheet', which is quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen and I plan on saving for future reference. In short, it's a page with almost every social media platform listed and a graphic displaying what kind of font and imaging should be used for the best looking page possible, as well as encountering as few difficulties as possible. It's actually awesome.
Appalachian State uploads videos periodically on their YouTube channel, including podcasts and award videos. I did manage to track down this video, which went viral online. However, the video is no longer used to market the university after student protests, which I think is sad.
Appalachian State stays out of the news, which is a good thing most of the time. However, I think it's a unique and beautiful university that deserves more recognition, kind of like SAU.
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