1. Show that you care – In the wake of the pandemic, a smart campus recruitment strategy is to show prospective students that you care. And by putting up a virtual tour on your website and social media pages, you can show how you take social distancing, isolation and safety seriously. Plus, students from anywhere can access these tours without having to waste time on visiting your college physically or spend a lot of money on such travels. Using virtual tours to market your institution also shows that you are in sync with what the new generation wants and prefers, as they are way more tech-savvy than their parents and grandparents.
2. Get more visibility and traffic – Campus recruitment through visual media like virtual tours can boost your website’s rank on Google. Why? Because people tend to click more on sites that have visually attractive content. Plus, if the tour is optimized for search engines and features on your Google My Business listing, it will get more visibility and traffic. Google will read this as relevance and rank your site higher than competing colleges.  
   
   Read – 4 Sure-Shot Ways to Attract International Students to Your University
   
3. Get better engagement and conversion – College virtual tours, being immersive and exciting, usually encourage students to stick around on your site for longer and explore everything in detail. And the longer they stay, the higher is the chance of engagement. Greater engagement also translates to more conversions. The fact that everything about your campus, from the manicured lawns and bright lecture halls to the swanky gym and cozy library, seems real, helps the student make an informed decision.  
4. Help spread the word fast – One of the top campus recruitment tips is to get the word out about why your college is special, fast, and virtual tours can do just that. They hook potential applicants in seconds, give them a fair idea about what you offer and why, and are easy to share on social media channels. In fact, you can include a link to your tour when you send emails to both students and their parents. If they like what they see, they will simply share your virtual tour link in their circle and get you more exposure in the process. Plus, “seeing” what your institution is all about is way faster and simpler than going through a lot of text on your website.
5. Show that you are different from others – Using virtual tours for campus recruitment is a wise choice because it lets you highlight what’s unique or different about your college. After all, every other higher education institution is vying for the attention of the same students. With a virtual tour, you can give prospective applicants a chance to find out about your highly qualified faculty, or exclusive majors, super clean residence halls (the pandemic has made safety extra important), placement cell (you can include snippets of past students who bagged great jobs), student support groups, scholarships, community life and more, in detail. You can showcase impressive figures, glowing testimonials and track records in a stylish way.    

So, what are you waiting for? Give your campus recruitment strategy an extra edge with virtual tours that connect deeply, evoke the right emotions, guide a potential applicant’s journey and get you more enrolment. Not sure how to get started? Connect with us at info@massinteract.com.

Read Also –  Top 5 Ideas to Make your College Virtual Tour More Winning

1. Connect better with website visitors or social media followers – Virtual tours are immersive and realistic in nature, and when created professionally, can be bright and attractive. So, when you add them to your school’s website or social media pages, you are likely to get more engagement from prospective students and their parents. They will tend to spend more time on your sites as well, which can lead to more queries or applications. In other words, the conversion rate will shoot up on adding custom virtual tours to school websites.
   
   Read – Using Virtual Reality in Education Has Many Benefits
   
   
   
2. Showcase what is unique about your school – 360 tours give you the unique opportunity to highlight all the best things about your school, be it a sunny cafeteria, vibrant playground, beautiful garden or sparkling white classrooms. In the wake of the pandemic, you might also want to showcase your health aid facilities and what measures you are taking to maintain social distancing and hygiene. So, one of the benefits of custom virtual tours for schools is that they help you to stand out from others and drive the decision-making process of potential students or their parents. 
   
   
3. Create more awareness and rank higher on Google – Apart from your website and social media pages, you can add virtual tours to your Google My Business listing as well giving it a bump in its SEO ranking. This will get you more clicks from students near you. And when Google spots that, it will rank you higher than others in local search results. Naturally, this will boost awareness about your school and your site will get more traffic. Plus, 360 virtual tours are easy to share, which means students can easily let their peers know about your school if they like what they see. 
   
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4. Give easy access to information – The need of custom virtual tours for schools becomes especially evident when students and parents want to gather all the information they can, but cannot step outside or travel. So, in the middle of this pandemic, you can do your bit by offering them informative virtual tours that are easy to navigate and combine images, videos and text. This way, they can zoom in and take a closer look wherever they want, jump to different areas of the school without having to follow any particular sequence, and even get in touch with admission authorities to get their doubts cleared. You can also embed a VR button in the tour for those who want to enjoy a more live experience with their VR headsets.  
   
   
5. Earn trust and make them comfortable – Using custom virtual tours for schools in COVID is agreat way to earn the trust of potential students, their families, and maintain transparency. It will help them visualize how your school environment will feel like, in reality. Moreover, these tours can lend a professional and progressive touch to your online presence, thereby building credibility. Even before students or parents pay an actual visit, they will know what to expect or enquire about.

To wrap up, the benefits of custom virtual tours for schools are many and extremely relevant in the wake of COVID. By adding these to your website, you can show how much you care about the student community and want to make their lives easier. What better way to market your institution than by leveraging goodwill, while you let digital technology take care of engagement and conversions? So, to create a virtual tour that steals the show, shoot us an email at info@massinteract.com.  

Read Also – Tips To Get More Applications During COVID With Your College Virtual Tour

Here are some more benefits of teaching through virtual field trips in 2021:  

1. Fun, appealing and engaging – Bright and beautiful images, realistic motions, great sound effects and even animation come together to make virtual field trips super fun and exciting. They grab eyeballs in seconds and boost student engagement. Students can understand and appreciate it all just like on an actual field trip, which keeps them focused. They can zoom in on a particular view or area, rotate an image in different directions and take their own sweet time to understand things.  
   
   
2. Explore anything, anytime and from anywhere – This is a big reason why virtual field trips will steal the show in 2021. Students can not only take the trip from anywhere they want, but they can also explore the depths of the Pacific, the summit of Mount Everest, the museums in far-off countries and life on the Gobi Desert, without having to actually go. From planets, volcanoes, rainforests and mighty waterfalls, dangerous islands to art galleries, and national parks, they can see everything up close and learn in a manner that encourages better retention. Physical or geographical restrictions won’t matter in this case.   
   
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3. Absolutely safe – Another major reason behind virtual field trips becoming popular is that, they are completely safe. No teacher or parent supervision is required. Plus, since everything is a virtual affair, no one risks having to get hurt or end up lost. Another advantage is that students won’t feel rushed in virtual field trips, as is often the case when an instructor takes them around. 
   
   
4. Cost-effective and energy-saving – Taking students to a zoo, park, archeological site or one of the top museums can be expensive. It usually involves tickets, meals and transport costs. However, with virtual field trips, none of those costs will worry parents anymore. An internet connection is all that they will need. And instead of wasting their energy on chaperoning students, teachers will have more energy to take them through interesting facts and figures and address individual questions in a better way. In case the students involved have special abilities, it will be easier for teachers to guide them, make sure they understand and handle all their concerns.
   
   
5. Can be customized as needed – Virtual field trips in 2021 will earn brownie points due to their ability to be customied. They can be aligned with your school’s lesson plan or syllabus, so that you can ensure maximum outcomes from students in terms of grades. Plus, quizzes and tests can be added in between or at the end to make the field trip more robust and effective. For example, a set of questions might be based on how the student hopes to apply what he or she learnt virtually in real life. 

By now, you probably have a fair idea why virtual field trips are going to be big in 2021. Engaging, interactive, budget-friendly, safe, and designed to improve learning outcomes, these trips will make your educational institution ready for the future. By embracing innovative technology, you will not only be able to keep students hooked, but you will also be able to convince parents of your progressive view. So, if you can’t wait to get started with some amazing virtual field trips, but not sure how to create them, send us an email at info@massinteract.com and we will get back to you soon.   

Read – Why Visual Marketing is the Future for Businesses

1. Simplify complex concepts

Traditional textbook teaching or oral lectures cannot go very far when it comes to educating students about how a brain tumor is operated, or an inverter is repaired, or a perfume is put together. But VR can make such complicated concepts or processes crystal clear as it is realistic, interactive, and the next best thing to seeing everything in person. By using virtual reality, teachers won’t have to waste time in explaining the same ideas over and over. Students will be able to absorb information and retain it better too.  

2. Grab attention immediately

This is one of the top benefits of virtual reality in education. If students get the chance to explore the Amazon rainforest in all its lush green beauty or the interiors of a space shuttle up close, right from where they are, imagine how fast they will get hooked to VR lessons. Vibrant images, panoramic views, realistic navigation, a three-dimensional effect, and zooming options make virtual reality a whole new ball game. Remember that VR can be used while crafting college virtual tours as well, so that potential students realize that you are into the latest tech and your courses will be exciting too. It is a great way to whet their appetites even before they enroll.

See Also – 5 Effective Ways to Improve Student Enrollment at Your College

3. Minimize distraction the easy way

It is easy for students to get distracted when they need to go through pages of plain text with a few static images thrown in here and there. Just listening to lectures without anything to intrigue their minds can be dull too. Luckily, one of the major advantages of virtual reality in education is that it encourages students to imagine, see the world in its true form, and find out more. And it goes without saying that less distraction means better understanding and better grades.

4. Let students learn anytime from anywhere

The pandemic has emphasized the importance of virtual reality in education like nothing else, since students need to keep achieving their educational milestones without compromising safety. Which means, remote learning needs to be flexible yet effective. And the good news is that students can learn different lessons anytime and from anywhere, with VR. They don’t need the conventional classroom environment or predefined schedules to understand and excel in multiple subjects. With virtual reality, students can concentrate on lessons whenever they are in the perfect frame of mind, even on the go.  

See Also – Top Ways to Make College Virtual Visits Meaningful

5. Don’t let time and space become constraints

It’s true that taking your class on a trip to Antarctica or Pluto can be super expensive or impossible as of now. But with virtual reality, students can watch how glaciers break, learn about the polar ecosystem, or study why Pluto is uninhabitable! Distance simply doesn’t matter in this case. Or VR can also allow students to travel back in time when dinosaurs ruled the earth or when the Inca civilization was at its peak.

6. Allow students to err and learn

By introducing virtual reality in education, training sessions can become way more exciting, engaging and safe. For instance, students can use virtual reality to learn what to do if a car is on fire, how to mix different chemicals to create paints, how to operate heavy machinery at a construction site, or for that matter, how to fly a plane. Though at some point, they will have to take practical lessons, VR can pave the way for a more confident experience. Plus, it can present different real-world scenarios to students, give them the freedom to make mistakes, and learn without causing any real damage.

7. Give students a taste of their future careers

Whether your students intend to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, firefighters, oceanographers or librarians, virtual reality can help them understand what the work environment looks like in each case. They will know what their day-to-day life will be like, what kind of situations they might need to address, and how rewarding it can be. In short, VR in education can help them make career choices with ease and work towards their goals in an informed way.  

So, are you ready to give virtual reality applications in education a sincere shot for your school, college or university? Email us at info@massinteract.com and let us make your lessons more engaging, interesting and effective with virtual reality.

Read Also – 5 Creative Ways to Increase College Enrollment

Wondering why? Read on.

1. Highlights the best and unique aspects of your campus – Whether you have a beautiful lawn, state of the art library, funky cafeteria or an amazing location, a custom college virtual tour can showcase all that in the best light. This way, students can quickly zero in on what’s special about your college and why they should choose you over others.
   
2. Saves cost, time and hassle – Apart from keeping prospective students safe during this pandemic, virtual tours let them explore your campus without travelling long distances or wasting time. Students get to save money and energy too.  
   
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3. Offers students a familiar and personal experience – The best part about custom college virtual tours is they help students visualize themselves on your campus. Candidates can explore all nooks and crannies, become familiar with what will become their home for the next four years.
   
4. Tells a story – Virtual tours for colleges are a brilliant way to spin a compelling story about your institution’s history, milestones and achievements. For instance, students will prefer seeing impressive statistics during the virtual tour (like number of medals won when you are showing the sports arena or the percentage of students who got placed last year) rather than read about them in the form of plain text on the website.
   
5. Easy to embed on website and social media channels – When you create a custom virtual tour for students, you create a marketing resource that can be used across different channels for years to come. You can embed these tours on your website and also share on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and so on. This means, you will get more traffic and leads without spending money on ads. It’s a smart way to boost brand awareness and generate interest. Plus, those who watch these virtual tours can share them with others quickly without your intervention.
   
   Read – How Virtual College Tours are Changing the Student Recruitment Game
   
   
6. Earns trust and helps you stand out from competitors – Virtual tours tell prospective students that your college has nothing to hide and you are proud of your offerings. This, in turn, earns their trust. Also, by adding a virtual tour to your Google My Business listing, you can make your college stand out from others. It will make you easier to find on Google when local students search for a college like yours. Additionally, having a virtual tour will mean that you are aware of the latest trends and this will attract students in 2020.   

To wrap up, custom college campus virtual tours are your best bet, whether it is about spreading awareness or generating the right leads or getting more applications. All you need to do is create a tour that is interactive, immersive, premium quality and exclusive. And if you need a bit of expert help, shoot us an email at info@massinteract.com.  

Must Read – Get Your College the Attention It deserves with a Custom Virtual To

However, with so many virtual tours for education out there, you need to follow these best practices, to stand out and convince students to choose you over others:    

1. Tell a story – Did you know that the average age of those who take virtual tours of colleges is 16.6? This means, they are at that juncture of life when they have plenty of dreams as well as questions, and they are keen to know if your college will take care of them and nurture their ambitions. So, your virtual tour should clearly tell them why you are unique as an institution and better than others. It might be your awesome location, beautiful campus, great recreational facilities, vast library or the exclusive courses you offer. Here is how the Art Institute of Vancouver nailed it.
   
2. Focus on the basics – No matter how wonderful your college virtual tour is, it won’t engage with students unless it is easy to find and navigate. So, have it on the Home page of your website or on the Admissions page. The tour should load quickly but look compelling too. Share the tour on social media pages as students are more likely to come across it there, given their age. Also, the tour should be easy to explore across all devices. Check out how University of Windsor is making it happen.   
   
   Read – How Virtual College Tours are Changing the Student Recruitment Game
   
   
3. Ensure an immersive experience – This basically means that students should be able to imagine themselves on your campus, in various settings, whether they are doing their own thing or interacting with others. In other words, your college virtual tour shouldn’t just be a walk through the different campus areas or facilities. Like, instead of just showing what the cafeteria or classrooms look like, cover the types of foods served or students attending a live teaching session. Highlight students having fun in the dormitories or counselors offering career guidance. This will show candidates that your institution is a living, breathing affair and can actually cater to their needs.   
   
4. Use Call to Action or CTA for better engagement – University virtual tours need to incorporate powerful and specific call to actions to convert the viewer into an applicant. For example, if your tour zeroes in on the admission office at the end, include a button for application here to nudge the prospective candidate to apply online. Or, if your state and city regulations permit, you can add a link to schedule an in-person visit later on. CTAs can also encourage a student to ask more questions or connect on social media.   

To wrap up, virtual tours have become absolutely necessary for higher education institutes to reel in candidates, impress them, and establish a meaningful connection. After all, this year, high school students are checking out such tours at a 228% higher rate than in 2019. So, if you feel that you need some expert guidance to put together a unique virtual tour, just email us at info@massinteract.com. 

Must Read – Get Your College the Attention It deserves with a Custom Virtual Tour