Peer-to-Peer Marketing

After my previous blogpost, I really wanted to find some examples of peer-to-peer marketing of writing centers in high schools, universities, or other institutions that used peer consultants in their writing centers. Unfortunately, it proved to be more difficult than I imagined to find marketing tools that reach out to the students instead of requiring the professors to be intermediaries between the writing center and those that it was created to help - the students. Why can't the writing center speak to the students themselves? Though I did not find specific examples, I did come across an entertaining video online created by a high school writing center that had some great ideas and points on marketing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtDg6Nks3pI

The video itself was pretty hilarious, but I garnered some great ideas from their presentation that could possibly be applied to the University of Richmond context.

1. Making a youtube video - As we have discussed in our readings on literacy, new media is essential to the new literacy of this generation. Everyone goes watches youtube videos, makes videos themselves, and posts them on their myspaces, facebooks, blogs, websites, etc. Thus to ignore even the content of the video itself, the idea of making a video to put on the writing center website as well as youtube introducing the writing center, what it does, and maybe the tutors themselves would be an extremely prevalent and effective way of getting the information out to the student body themselves.
2. Posters - I have noticed writing center posters in the center itself and some in Jepson, but no where else. The reality of this campus is that posters are the primary marketing tool used by clubs, events, and organizations, so why shouldn't the writing center jump on board? Putting posters in every academic building, as well as in bathroom stalls for special occasions would guarantee that every student will at least have heard of the writing center.
3. Word of Mouth - I felt fairly stupid when I watched this segment of the video for not having thought of this marketing tool before. Our student body is fairly small and tight-knit, and so word of mouth would be a great way to not only get the writing center's name out there but also what it really does. Maybe tutors could be encouraged to talk with their friends/classes about the writing center. Even better, the example of the tutor providing a student with a pass to fill out gave me another idea. The center could table in the commons every now and then with a way for people to sign up for appointments right there, bringing the center to the students instead of requiring them to go searching for us.
4. Attitude - Throughout the video, especially when they were demonstrating the "good" vs "bad" marketing techniques, the thing that set the good apart from the bad was the atmosphere and attitude created by the center and the tutors. Though we have discussed this before, I think it is extremely important to remember that the center should be a relaxed, casual, peer-motivated place where writers from any background, discipline, or stage of the writing process can come and discuss and work in a collaborative atmosphere. The minute the writing center gets grouped with terms like "failures", "problem students", or "mandatory", it loses the power that peer tutors give it.