More Than Just Friends: Creating Vibrant Social Communities for Recruitment & Retention
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More Than Just FriendsCreating Vibrant Social Communities for Recruitment and Retention
Jeff Berg
Social Media Strategist
jeff.berg@cunet.com
The Faceless Voice You’ll Be Listening To
Agenda
• The World of Social Media
• What is Social Media (And Why Should You Care?)
• Social Media for Recruitment and Retention
– Inspiring Human Interactions
– Acclimating New Students
– Enabling Existing Students
– Spotlighting Students and Staff
• CUnet Offerings
• Q&A
What is Social Media?
• Social media has changed how human beings communicate, organize, and spend time online:
– 75% of all adult internet users.
– More than 20% of all time spent online.
• Comparisons of most well-known social media:
– If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest in the world with 600MM residents.
– If Twitter were a book it would be equivalent to 1,500 complete works of Shakespeare each day.
– If YouTube were a movie it would take over 400 years to watch.
• And social media has big implications for business
– 91% say consumer reviews are their #1 aid in purchase decisions.
– 87% trust their friends recommendations over critics.
– Three times as likely to trust peer recommendations over advertising when considering a product
Social Media for Educational Institutions
• Aid Student Enrollment
– Provide a feel for school life through an online
community.
• 3 to 5 times more successful than
standard marketing targeting
• Peers are more influential in college
choice than advertising.
• Facebook fans are almost 70 percent as
likely to recommend a product. Twitter
followers are even higher.
Social Media Inside Educational Institutions
7
Heiberger, “Have You Facebooked Astin Lately?”, “New Directions for Student Services” no. 124
Student Usage
• Prospective students today…
• Grew up with Internet technology
• Nearly three-quarters use social media
• 18 percent use Twitter
• More than 9 out of 10 own a cell phone
• 67 percent own an MP3 player
• 81 percent access the Internet wirelessly
• 70 percent believe colleges should have
a presence on social networks
• 70 percent want online contact with a
school as they complete an application
“Scrolling Toward Enrollment,” Noel-Levitz, 2009
Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2010
Prospective Students Want to Be Engaged
“Scrolling Toward Enrollment,” Noel-Levitz, 2009, “Recruit at Bowling Green State University: The Role of Social and Digital Media,”
Glassford , Dec. 2010
• What do they want?
• 70% of prospective students want
colleges and universities to create a
social media presence
• 51% want to be contacted directly
through a social network
• 75% want schools to create private
communities
• What do they find most effective?
• 50.1% said event notifications
• 47.7% said posts from other students
• 46.6% said posts from the school itself
Why Aren’t More Schools Doing It?
• Overwhelmed by all the choices
• Measuring success seems difficult
• It requires dedicated staff
• Confusion of ownership
Don’t Feel Like This
11
Social Media for Recruitment &
Retention
You’re Probably Already Using It
• University of Mass, Dartmouth Center
for Marketing Research
– SM Usage
• In 2007, 61% of admissions
offices used at least one social
media outlet
• In 2008, 85%
• In 2009, 95%
• 91% said it was important or
somewhat important
Two Caveats
• We realize school rankings are contentious
– Weighting is not empirically determined
– Methodology changed from year to year
• Even if they weren‟t, social media is not a silver bullet
– Schools that engage students through social media are also more likely to innovate
– Innovation is the key
Social Media Adoption
• U.S. News & World Reports Top
30 National Universities
– 23 link to social media
presences from their front
page
– Active engagement
• Ten schools currently
use some type of active
social media
engagement
• Of those, six have
maintained or improved
their standing (and one
decreased by one rank)
15
0 20 40
Message …
Futurity
Flickr
Blogs
iTunes U
YouTube
Used
Didn't Use
Student Engagement – DeVry University
16
Student Engagement – Dartmouth
Student Engagement – Jack Welch Management Institute
18
Inspire Human Interactions
• Human interactions inspire confidence
• Don‟t be afraid to speak with your own voice
• It doesn‟t have to be every interaction
• What part of their lives do you want to be?
19
“Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can't be "picked
up" at some tony conference.” – Thesis 33, The Cluetrain Manifesto
Pre-Start Communities - Rutgers
• Problem
– How do you keep admitted students engaged before they start classes?
• Solution
– The school created Go Rutgers, a private community site for admitted students
– Encourage existing students to interact with enrolled students, sharing experiences and advice.
– Features
• User forums
• Social profiles
• Image sharing
• Results
– Within 72 hours of launch, 457 admitted students logged in, viewing the question forum 32 times
– Within seven months, 2,000 admitted students had joined.
Pre-Start Communities – Warwickshire College• Situation
– Lengthy period between program acceptance and joining the course caused students‟ loss of momentum, reconsideration of course and even college attendance
• Solution
– BTEC ND Media Games Development Group
• Students engage in pre-semester group projects
• Allowed for increased discussion and social integration prior to actual college attendance.
• Additionally, increased academic integration and faculty interaction
• Result
– Decrease in time spent on “ice breaking” curriculum
– 100 percent increase in overall retention rates
– Complete lack of course withdrawals
Acclimate Students
22
“Students can ask questions like „what's the food like?‟ or „what's there to do near campus?'. If I were 18 years old,
this is how I would want to get my information about university. It gives students an authentic look at the university.“
- Yuri Rodgers Milligan, Director of University Relations
• Some schools see huge success with this
• ASU‟s social community increased sophomore retention by 5% for students that
used it.
• Users of the UT Tyler Facebook community were five times as likely to enroll as
non-users.
• Social technologies allow you to make students part of the community before they‟re
geographically close
• Allow admitted students to talk to enrolled students
• Encourage admitted students to form their own social connections with each other
• Don‟t neglect the personal aspects
• Provide resources that enable students to hit the ground running
Private Communities - PhoenixConnect
• Released by the University of Phoenix School of Business in Sept. 2010
• Features
– Focus on existing students
• Support to students from peers and faculty outside of the classroom through message boards
• Specific interest-specific communities
– Focus on students nearing completion
• Profiles indicate academic information, employment aspirations and status
• Alumni directory with over 120,000 connections
• Outcome
– 99% adoption rate after one month
– Intended to be rolled out to all students by Sept. 2011
23
Enabling Students – University of Florida
• Goal:
– Provide a resource for students to find quality tutors
• Offering
– A Facebook application allows people to volunteer as tutors and tutees to rate them
• Result
– More than 120 tutors contributed information
– Organizes more between 50 to 100 hours of tutoring each week
Enabling Students
25
• Social media isn‟t just a megaphone
• Just because you offer it, doesn‟t mean that everyone uses it or
trusts it
University of Chicago - TweetChicago
• Launched October 2008
• On Dec. 10, 2009, totally replaced “A Day in the Life” blog
• Now 15 authors featuring both students and faculty
• Content ranges from the mundane to relevant to the legal community
• Launched October 2008
• On Dec. 10, 2009, totally replaced “A Day in the Life” blog
In Summary
• Inspire human interactions
• Acclimate new students
• Empower your existing students
• Showcase their successes (even if it‟s just finishing the crossword puzzle)
27
CUnet Offerings
So you want to…
• Monitoring of all brand-related topics across thousands of social media websites
• Near-real time updates on published content
– High priority or important posts
– Can be delivered right away, daily or weekly
• Monthly trend reports examining
– Key topics of conversation
– Trends in content categories
– Activity across multiple social media types
– Tracking of student outreach
– Expert analysis and recommendations
Discover What The
World Is Saying
So you want to…
• Social Engagement
– Reach out to prospective students, existing students and alumni
– Go beyond just a Facebook page
– Show thought leadership in your industry
• Encourage students, alumni and faculty to take part in existing massage therapy communities
• Aggregate discussions to showcase interesting conversations about the industry as a whole
• SocialThumb Social Media Management Solution
– Manage all of your social media presences through one control panel
– Assign tasks, manage approval processes and schedule content publishing
– Seamlessly cross-publish across multiple networks
– Track unique visitors from each social network to target more efficiently
Manage Your Social
Media Presence
So you want to…
• Social Media CRM Solutions
– Proactively address student
issues before they become a
problem
– Get real-time updates as issues
appear online
– Manage workflow through
social media engagements
– Auditing engagement trails
– Analyze positive interactions
Improve Student
Satisfaction
So you want to…
• Retention-Focused Communities
– 76% of incoming students in 2009 said they want their school to provide a private social network
– Customized communities address your students core needs
– Impact enrollment and engagement by driving interconnectedness
Increase Retention
or Enroll-to-Start
So you want to…
• Alumni engagement networks
– Help alumni network
– Create active job message boards
and recruitment channels
– Aid in fundraising
– Disseminate prestigious alumni
news
Help Graduates Get
Hired
So you want to…
• Social Media Consulting Services
– Create a flexible policy for your school‟s social media presence
– Learn effective techniques to streamline engagement methodologies
– Audit existing social media presences
– Receive strategic and tactical insight from industry experts
– Expertise on building
Figure Out Just
What to Do
Questions & Answers
Q&A
After this, who wouldn‟t have
questions?
Contact:Jeff Berg
Social Media Strategist
E-Mail: jeff.berg@cunet.com
Phone: 201.477.7687
CUnet‟s Blog: http://blog.cunet.com
For more information: http://www.cunet.com
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