It’s time to let go …
Thank you! I have really enjoyed my month as an eduWEB blogger, and hope that those readers coming to the conference in 3 weeks will knock me on the shoulder and say hello in Atlantic City! (Also, I’ll be presenting 9:45am sharp on the 3rd day of the conference - I hope you’ll stop by!) Today is June 27 and our Canadian offices (where I work) will be closed from now until July 2nd - so this is most likely my final post, and then on to Carmella, the July guest blogger.
So I am letting go. I am letting go of your “ears” with my final post. And if you do not hear from me again, it will mean I successfully let go of the web over the long weekend (horrifying!) I hope that any readers out there that are still debating social media will let go and dip their toes in sometime soon - just to see if the water is warm. I am here if you have any questions, so please ask.
Social media is NOT the answer for everyone. Earlier this month I blogged about Target vs Wal-Mart and the disaster that was the “Wal-Marting across America” campaign. If you have more critics than supporters, you will definitely want to approach the social web with a cautious strategy - and there are definitely some schools out there that feel this is the case, my heart goes out to you. We have looked at some solutions such as a Facebook Page with the wall and discussion boards removed - and with “Ask the University” forms and other custom widgets that replace the wall/discussion forums as the primary activities on the page. We are also launching solutions for comment moderation and content control on social platforms such as Facebook and MySpace, coming soon to a network near you.
Social media can be VERY cost effective. The costs are usually time, rather than money (although money certainly helps - one national company offered a $40 incentive for students to join their online community). If you are an over-worked department (ha), you will definitely have to decide ahead of time how much time you can invest in social strategies - and whether you can maintain that commitment over time. The nice thing is that students and young grads are well versed in these technologies and can bring you new ideas, and can be paid via bursary or something nice like that.
Here is why I want you to let go: Higher ed is flagged as a field that trails behind corporate and commercial marketing, due to silo’d department structures, level after level of decision committees, and goodness knows what else. I don’t think that is very fair. There are more than a handful of schools doing fantastic things with social media (wayy too many to name, so watch bloghighed.org for updates from some very active folks). Whether or not your school has gone “social” depends on the enthusiasm of your decision makers, and sometimes on the level of necessity. In regions that are facing bleak demographic outlooks, online video, interactive recruitment portals, and social network liaison officers are definitely more the norm than abnorm. If you’re out there, wave you flag and show off your brave new world of marketing because not all of higher ed is trailing.
If you are not one of these brave schools, but are looking at them and thinking “hmm, nothing bad has happened yet” - go with it. If you spend 2 months researching the technologies, another month drafting an internal proposal and another month convincing your committee to buy in - and then 2 months trying to get marketing and IT to work together (let’s not even touch on departmental and faculty marketing units) - guess what, your plan is 6 months out of date by the time it goes live. And in terms of web, that is a big problem.
Get buy in to go social, and then move fast. Keep your initial research broad and focus on the fact that COMMUNICATION IS NOT THE SAME. People, namely your alumni, donors and applicants, are talking to each other differently and expect you to talk to them the same way. Once you have permission to heaven forbid install a blog, go with the most enthusiastic potential blogger and get them onto blogger, wordpress, typepad - whatever. These are all fantastic free services. You can build your beautiful branded blogging microsite later, but get the activity started. This way you get to do 2 news releases, one for the blogger launch and one a month later for the microsite launch - yay! Do the same with everything else, test it fast, test it live and then expand. You can hypothesize all you want, but you really won’t know what your audience is going to do until you let them go at it.
The last way I’d like you to let go is to let conversational marketing into your tightly woven brand identity. I’d throw stats at you but we all know that social technologies are doing well because they simply fit human behaviors and needs, and we all know that a large chunk of your applicant pool is in that young, mediated generation of web addicted millennials. It’s not all because of technology - many teens are actually not tech savvy at all. But they know how to talk, and talking is important to them. Last year our national applicant survey (100,000 applicants) found that 87% consulted their friends for information during their school decision process. That’s more than viewbooks, family and teachers.
If you aren’t ready to drop your guard and chat with your applicants and students on your official .edu, or if you are just looking for a way to reach applicants effectively online, I invite you (implore you!) to take a look at our free student network. Students join for free and get read outs of where their friends are going, why their friends are going where they are going, whether they got a scholarship and where they turned down an offer. Our SkoolPool community started on Facebook and is now much, much broader - and is free for both students and schools. We have paid level packages with custom higher ed applications designed to meet your unique marketing and recruitment needs, but we also have a basic level option that gets you into the conversation in a safe, comfortable environment. If nothing else, registering for the free level replaces your “?” icon with your logo and gets your admissions contact info out there for students who want to get in touch.
So please, let go. Don’t over plan, and don’t try to control too much information. Whether or not you are “social”, your students are and there is no embargo to stop them from voicing their opinions.
That’s it from me - please drop by our booth in Atlantic City and check out our presentation on Wednesday (abstract below). I will be publishing the results of our annual applicant web trends survey on my normal blog early in July - so please consider stopping by once or twice to stay in touch!
“SkoolPool: Energizing your applicants with Facebook & OpenSocial”
Wednesday, July 23 @ 9:45 - Cayman A - eduWEB 2008
87% of college and university applicants are influenced by their friends when making their school choices. SkoolPool.com is a social hub that allows applicants to share choices, ideas, comments and decisions about school choices with their peers as well as institutions – across all major social networks! The SkoolPool network is powered by the peer feedback that applicants crave, and also creates a safe place for schools to tap into social media. Applicant demographics, interests and decision factors are collected and provide a 24/7 window into the decision process. This presentation will take you inside the making of a Facebook/OpenSocial application and review the insights won from joining students on popular social network websites. We will include statistics on applicant technology use, the ups and downs of building third-party social network applications and best practices for promoting your institution via social advertising.
Melissa Cheater
eStrategy Consultant, Education Marketing
Academica Group Inc.
email | web | blog | facebook | twitter | del.icio.us | skype: MelissaAcademica
Check out our new application for the Facebook platform, “SkoolPool,” that helps potential students track their consideration set and share it with their friends. www.skoolpool.com
Add comment June 27th, 2008
