By: Deborah Johnson Wood
It all started when Muskegon Community College wanted to recruit high school students and found they weren’t reaching them through traditional advertising methods. MCC turned to Qonverge, a Muskegon-based marketing firm, who responded with Harump.
Harump is a social networking web site similar to Facebook and MySpace, except that it’s created for use only by MCC students and faculty. Prospective students can access the home page to see what the site has to offer and watch an introductory video.
“We started with focus groups of students and talked about media they were most interested in and receptive to, and that came back to social networking,” says Jason Piasecki, Qonverge CEO. “We created Harump to complement Facebook and MySpace, not to replace them.”
Users need only an MCC e-mail address to access all the information on the site, to connect with other students and faculty members, find job and internship opportunities, view an event calendar, arrange carpools and locate area businesses. Businesses update their page themselves to add coupons, specials and other advertising attractive to students.
The “bandwagon” feature allows users to find out about an event of interest and see who else from campus plans to attend.
“Users can post a personal photo for their space, but we didn’t build in photo albums because we didn’t want to compete with Facebook and MySpace,” Piasecki says. “Having a personal photo helps students [who don’t know each other] identify each other on campus.”
Qonverge is working on similar projects for private schools in Detroit that will connect parents, faculty and staff, and is working on another site for golfers.
Source: Jason Piasecki, Qonverge
Related Articles
Qonverge doing advertising the new way
Downloading Muskegon's Makeover
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.