This month’s “Best Practices” article is inspired by two growing trends in higher ed marketing and recruitment.
Trend #1: Student-to-student marketing
Nobody likes talking to a brand, digital natives can see right through typical precision messaging that uses warm campus images with ethnically diverse groups of students studying, engaging in a civic duty, or having a one-on-one with a faculty member that rearranges their schedule to accommodate every student. If you don’t think digital natives can see right through your scripted sales pitch, then you need to attend more industry meetings.
Trend #2: Less is best marketing
Admissions offices implementing a specialized programs and activities marketing strategy have seen an increases in qualified applicants. They are achieving this by making it easy for students to find the information they want and they are ensuring an early connection by giving their strongest opportunities prominent placement online and in social networks.
What we know
Research shows that 40% of prospective students say the first link they look for on a college website it academic programs and majors.
Students loathe perfect messaging and communications from brands.
92% of people trust brand recommendations from people they know.
Finally, 70 percent of prospective students would like to hear from current students during the college search process.
What readMedia users are doing
Colleges and universities are using readMedia to promote unique programs, clubs, and activities. By doing this, they are able to target, inspire, and drive prospective students to action. Here are some great examples of your peers using readMedia to market their institution’s valuable and unique opportunities:
Space the Final Frontier
Budding astronauts, physicists, engineers, and astronomers, can’t do better than landing an internship at NASA. Clemson University granted Molly Townsend of San Diego an achievement for participating in NASA’s Glenn Academy Space Exploration program at the Glenn Research Center.
Pop Quiz: What would be more valuable to Misericordia University, posting a description about Intro to Astronomy on their Facebook Fan Page or having students share their participation in Intro to Astronomy with hundreds of family members and friends on Facebook and Twitter?
Real life Indiana Jones
Did you know that Mesalands Community College offers a week long Paleontology Field Discovery class, excavating fossils and processing them at an actual Dinosaur Museum? Until this Achievement came through, neither did we. Gary shared his Mesalands branded achievement with his 1,061 Facebook friends, and received great engagement through likes and encouraging comments.
Mesalands effectively used readMedia to market one of their unique and highly valuable hands-on courses.
A student and a sorcerer
Marquette University granted Chelsea Greco an achievement for participating in the inaugural club quiddich team. Chelsea’s achievement was awarded a institutionally verified sports badge.
Marketing upper lip hair
A word of advice for all of our new readMedia users. Look to your unique clubs like Carleton College’s official Mustache Club for inspiration. Granting the members of the Mustache Club an achievement for participation or holding a fundraiser, is a great way to make current students feel important and connected. It also gives students, institute branded, content to share with their family and friends on Facebook and Twitter.
readMedia equips you with a social media strategy that leverages your student’s Facebook wall to promote your institution. Rejuvenate your content and social media strategy with powerful testimonial, word-of-mouth marketing that is scalable, predictable and measurable.
Are you using readMedia to promote unique programs, course, clubs, or activities? If so, send us a link to one of your achievements and we’ll feature it in our November newsletter!
Tapping into the international student market is on the admissions plan – so it better be in your 2013 marketing and communications plan. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, international students contribute more than $21 billion to the U.S. economy, through their expenditures on tuition and living expenses. College communicators can, and should, take advantage of the international market by making a few small tweaks to their communications strategy.
Get In The Game
If your college or university is among the top eight host states, California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio or Indiana you’re up against stiff competition. But you can’t compete if you’re not in the game.
If you don’t already have a strategy for recruiting international students in place, you need to get up to speed fast because you’re losing revenue and making it harder for admissions offices to meet the goals that tie their efforts, and yours, to your institution’s strategic plan.
Here is a list of colleges that have launched new international recruiting programs:
Source: Zinch China & ISAA Cornell
The State University of New York System is using international student tuition revenue to fund rapid expansion of scholarships to students, and grants to faculty.
Purdue University is increasing diversity by setting a goal to double international enrollment by 2015.
Cornell University has a team of ambassadors frequently email and host special instant messaging sessions for prospective students in China and other parts of Asia.
Cornell is right on track with targeting China. U.S. colleges and universities experienced a 43 percent increase in undergraduate students from China in 2011. China sends more students to the US than any other country, 157,558 to be exact. India is the second largest student population studying on the U.S.
Promote Your Programs
Colleges are seeing the number of international students choosing schools in the U.S. rise over the past five years. More than 723,000 international students enrolled in U.S. universities in 2011. In spite of efforts by countries like Australia, Canada, and the UK, America remains the top choice for students looking to expand their education.
Start leveraging your programmatic strengths to target key audiences. You need to communicate how valuable and flexible your programs are and you have to do more than write about it on your website. The top three most popular fields of study for international students in the U.S. are business management, engineering, and mathematics and computer science. But the number one reason students choose a college in the America is because we offer programs with strength, expertise, and diversity.
If you’re looking to increase your international enrollment, develop brand communications that showcase how your university is at the forefront of technology, research, and leadership. Showcase faculty thought leaders, research funding opportunities, and state-of-the-art facilities.
Being The Guest Not The Host
The marketing channels you choose are just as important as the programs you choose to highlight. According to Internet World Stats, about 70% of Facebook’s 835 million users are outside the U.S., making a strong case for using Facebook and other social media channels to connect with prospective students.
Traditional marketing initiatives invite students to read their content and engage. But, smart campus communicators are finding ways to be invited to the, searching for a college, party. Universities are getting creative and finding ways to bring international students down the admissions funnel skipping right over prospecting and going straight to flooding the funnel with direct inquiries.
Colleges are reengineering their content and social media strategy using readMedia, a platform that makes it possible to enter prospective students’ social networks. Campus communicators are creating personalized content for current students and handing those relevant and customized stories over to students to share in their social networks – and it’s working. Here is perfect example of a student taking his schools branded message into his international network in Quito, Ecuador.
This word-of-mouth marketing endorses Berklee’s program, value, and its rich opportunities for international students to thrive and succeed. In this example you can see that two of Pablo’s friends, still living in Ecuador, one an obvious aspiring musician, have really engaged with Pablo by way of his Berklee branded achievement. When Gaby and Mauricio start looking at U.S. colleges, you can bet Berklee will be top-of-mind.
Burn The Midnight Oil
Noel-Levitz reported that 69 percent of students and 72 percent of parents have had online video conversations using a Webcam. In addition, both groups showed interest in communicating with campuses via Webcasts, but who would they want to talk to? More than 75 percent of high school students and parents prefer interacting online with current students and admissions representatives. That means, you have to make yourself available when they’re available.
If you’re looking to target prospective student rich countries like China and India, you’ll need to assign someone the graveyard shift. Miami University has had great success with hosting late night chat rooms for international and transfer students. Going the extra mile to make time for students when it’s convenient for them is a strategy that will give your school bonus points – ask Cornell, international students make up 20 percent of their total student body.
Ann Stock, assistant secretary of state, remarked, “Young people who study abroad gain the global skills necessary to create solutions to 21st Century challenges. In turn, international students globalize our campuses and communities.” International recruiting is not getting easier. Revise your communications strategy and ramp up your international recruiting activities, and it’s critical that you do it now and do it better than competing institutions.
Admissions and communications offices share similar goals, i.e., develop a marketing strategy that supports your institutional goals around enrollment, retention, and development. If you haven’t looped admissions into your social media “Achievement Strategy,” now is the time. readMedia benefits every campus office that is looking to replace low-value spending with measurable, higher-ROI social media.
We know that 85 percent of higher ed institutions use social media to support admissions and student engagement. readMedia users in marketing and communications are bringing campus offices like admissions, alumni relations, and career services into the loop. These institutions realize readMedia unites content marketing and social media in a way all university’s stakeholders can share and support.
Admissions offices have a narrow window to capture the attention of prospective students. Here are some strategies for getting the most out of recruitment activities and dollars.
1. Find the right channel
Ninety four percent of undergraduate admissions officers agree Facebook is the most useful social media tool for recruiting prospective students. Yet, only 27 percent of students and parents are looking at college’s Facebook page. Evaluate the effectiveness of your communications channels and be honest, do the result map back to the goals with demonstrable ROI?
* readMedia allows schools to be carried into their students social media networks.
2. Enter the conversation
Ninety-two percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and testimonials from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising. Enter the conversation through your students, not your brand.
* readMedia gives students compelling content that they’ll want to share in their personal, online, and social networks. Leverage the experiences and achievements of current students into powerful and authentic brand messaging.
3. Make it personal
Driving the point home, Kenneth Elmore, dean of students at Boston University, was quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, stating, “Blast e-mails are too impersonal. People want to know you’ve thought about them.” If you’re going to use email as a communication channel, eliminate generic eBlasts and adopt a personalized mass-blast strategy.
* readMedia offers institutions the capability to mass personalize stories about every student on campus. Recognizing individual achievements is a strategy that resonates with student audiences – long after exposure.
4. Keep it real
Shrewd admissions offices understand authentic messaging is as important, if not more important, as the channel of communication. A substantial 70 percent of high school students want to hear about a college from a current students.
* readMedia engages students by giving them personalized stories that showcase their academic activities and scholarly achievements. readMedia gives you the ability to trade empty marketing jargon for candid commentary and authentic content from real students at your university.
Georgia Southern University
Georgia Southern University is a brilliant example of a school using personalized stories to optimize their social media presence and create early connection with prospective students. Georgia Southern University uses the readMedia Achievement Strategy to connect with high school senior Briana Boyd. This same content strategy brought Briana down the admissions funnel from early connection and qualification through enrolled freshman and entrenched sophomore. Here’s how:
Create an early connection
Briana was invited by GSU to attend their Leadership Excellence Academics and Dedication (LEAD) Conference, she and 40 other students were awarded a $1,000 scholarship to attend GSU.
Qualify prospect
To be invited, students must score a minimum of 1100 on the SAT, earn a 3.0 grade point average in high school and have experience in leadership and involvement through extracurricular and volunteer experience. All the attributes that qualify an applicant making them a great fit for GSU and increase a student’s chance for success, i.e. retention.
Personal recognition
Briana along with 39 other high school students received a personalized story that showcases their accomplishment. This story was posted online at readabout.me where it could be easily shared with friends and family in social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Social media sharing is the end result of a genius content marketing strategy that gives students branded messages to take into their social networks. This strategy uses individual accomplishments and turns students brand champion.
Recruit and retain
After attending the LEAD conference in April 2011, Briana enrolled at GSU, was accepted, and before she even started classes, she participated in a two-week, Habitat for Humanity, volunteer project that helps incoming freshman learn about their college and their new home. In one year, Briana joined five student clubs and organizations, she has made the Dean’s List and was inducted into the National Honor Society.
Become the conversation
The 2012 dean’s list announcement generated 2,343 personalized stories, 591 students shared their achievement in various social networks. Posts to Facebook alone drove 2,609 family members and friends to the original story.
The spring dean’s list achievement received 6,395 page views. In one year, GSU generated more than 7,500 personalized stories, reaching a Facebook audience of 1.8 million and drove 16,736 family, friends, and prospective students to 16,736. Hendrix College Communications and admissions offices can work together, using readMedia, to create an early connection with students, build brand affection, fill the admissions funnel, and normalize the number of accepted applicants and actual enrollment. Hendrix College uses readMedia to grant achievements to students before they are officially enrolled. This is a great admissions strategy for creating an early connection, top of mind awareness, value from personal attention, and finally, Hendrix gives undecided students a compelling, institutionally branded story to share in their social networks. With very little effort Hendrix can apply powerful social media strategy from communications to support admissions marketing. This authentic word-of-mouth marketing supports admission marketing at GSU, Hendrix, and many other colleges using readMedia. The stories that current students share in their social networks comes from a trusted source and not a brand and these achievements are a powerful testament to the value of your institution’s experience. If you would like more information about using readMedia to support admissions marketing contact us, schools@readmedia.com.
Research conducted by the Office of the Provost at the University of Rhode Island, claims 80 percent of students learn about schools from parents, family. Sixty five percent of the same students surveyed learn about colleges and universities through online searching.
So how are your higher ed peers using readMedia’s Achievement Strategy to stand out to attract students in desired market segments?
Savvy readMedia users search for current students in their target geographic markets and look for trends among those students. For example, are multiple members of your lacrosse team from a few specific communities? If so, grant achievements to these student athletes that they can share with their friends, family, teammates and coaches! Their shared enthusiasm will increase your institution’s exposure and brand frequency within these target markets.
Similarly, readMedia users are using standard mass marketing tactics to recruit students from outside their established feeder communities. Institutions are developing content strategies that promote common and unique student achievements. Communications offices are expanding the type of achievements they grant in order to showcase their students’ accomplishments, market programs, and demonstrate the value of the student experience.
Instead of relying on Dean’s list and graduation announcements, institutions are using readMedia to highlight internships, athletics, club participation, and more. The logic is simple, each new type of achievement you publicize exponentially increases the chances of your students sharing your institutional brand across their social networks.
Butler University, Indianapolis, IN
Butler University is using differentiated marketing tactics to broaden their reach and capture the attention of new audiences. To supplement standard achievements like dean’s list, graduation, and enrollment, Butler strategically choose to recognize a very unique segment of their student body – ”Legacies.” In doing this, Butler was able to reach audiences in over five target markets.
The heat maps found in your Delivery Reports are an excellent way to see exactly what areas you’re reaching. Use them to determine just how well you’re covering your desired target markets and grant more achievements to the students from these areas.
Emporia State University, Emporia, KS
With the prospective student pool decreasing and neighboring cities attracting students, ESU was determined to extend their reach beyond rural communities and appeal to out of state students and metropolitan markets. With capability to distribute student achievements and share the institution’s collective story through readMedia and readabout.me, ESU could reach a broader audience in key in- and out-of-state markets.
When students and parents share their pride in their achievements online, they increase awareness and draw more attention to the quality of ESU’s academic programs and activities. Having students and parents bring ESU’s brand into their social networks endorses the institution and authenticates the rich student experience ESU wants to promote to constituencies.
University of Wisconsin-River Falls, River Falls, WI
David Moteelall, a student at UWRF, is from Cologne, MN, a small township in Norwood Young America, located 40 minutes southwest of Minneapolis – right in UWRF’s target market. In April 2012, Moteelall was awarded a scholarship from the UWRF College of Business and Economics. To celebrate this accomplishment, UWRF used readMedia to distribute a personalized story to Moteelall and the media.
The achievement was published on readabout.me and David shared his success with family and friends on Facebook. This UWRF-branded story was promoted in the newsfeeds of over 400 friends in David’s network, 11 of whom imported UWRF’s brand into their own social networks by “Liking” the achievement; seven others left encouraging comments for David that in turn are featured to their own networks. The 18 Scholarship Achievements awarded to students at UWRF drove 45 family members and friends back to readabout.me to read the full story.
Leveraging student achievements gives you the power to systematically build your institution’s reputation and brand in competing markets. Geo-targeting isn’t the only marketing strategy readMedia supports, we have several social media strategies and best practices that demonstrably support your institutional goals around enrollment, retention, and development.
If you would like to learn more about getting the most out of your current readMedia subscription, contact us, schools@readMedia.com – we have a variety of tips and tricks to help you succeed.
Educating students and stakeholders isn’t a one-shot deal, we encourage you to promote readabout.me throughout the academic year – keep the morale and excitement high. To help you communicate the benefits of readabout.me we developed an quick FAQ’sand messaging.
What is readabout.me? readabout.me is a platform we use to publicize your accomplishments, like making the Dean’s list studying abroad, or landing an internship. This platform allows us to organizes all of your achievements online at readabout.me where you can claim and view your personalized stories. You can even share these positive stories with family and friends in social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Why are you using readabout.me? We want you to get the recognition you deserve for your hard work, academic success, and scholarly activities. readabout.me is the best way to showcase these accomplishments and we send a copy of your story to your hometown newspapers.
Who really cares?
Everyone really – family, friends, and particularly prospective employers. Did you know that 75% of company recruiters are required to do online research on job candidates and 70% have rejected applicants because of information they found online.
What’s readabout.me do? It creates a visual, institution verified, resume that showcases everything you’ve achieved from the time you enroll through graduation and all the great accomplishments in between. readabout.me helps you create a powerful professional profile and positive online identity. The best part, it doesn’t require you to do any work, we do it for you.
Most higher ed institutions let students opt-out of releasing directory information about them during the admissions process. You may want to have a quick conversation with your registrar or student records office to find out about your institution’s opt-out process or just verify with them that these students have been omitted from the spreadsheets you use. If a student slips through the privacy net, here’s what you should do:
Don’t panic! The information contained in your Achievements, like First Name, Last Name, and Hometown, does not conflict with FERPA and is considered “Directory Information.”
A student can remove their profile and achievements immediately after claiming it on readabout.me. They’ll see an “Opt Out” link while logged into their profile.
If a student doesn’t want to claim their profile but would like to opt-out, they should use the “Contact Us” link on readabout.me. Additionally, you can email the student’s request to our customerservice@readmedia.com address, and we’ll opt them out for you.
Use your delivery report to follow up with the media their achievements were sent to. Your delivery report will contain the phone numbers and email addresses of the newspapers their story reached. Drop them a quick line and ask them to omit the student’s name.
Once a student opts out, our platform will never send another achievement notification about them again… Even if they accidentally make their way back onto one of your spreadsheets.
Feedback from readMedia users is critical to client success. Our symbiotic partnership with over 450 higher ed institutions helps us define new best practices and drives our technology roadmap.
readMedia users are strategic, results-driven, and creative; we continue to learn from your success and we want to share your wisdom with the readMedia community.
You can find examples of how schools are promoting readabout.me on campus in our online guide, but we cherry-picked some great readabout.me marketing tactics; giving you an opportunity to learn from and model your peers. These brilliant ideas for educating students will jump-start the student engagement process, increase sharing in social networks, and help you leverage your students’ success into powerful brand communications.
Giving students an incentive
St. Louis College of Pharmacy placed banners around campus encouraging students to share their achievements for a chance to win a $50 iTunes gift card.
Create a video
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette positioned readabout.me as a new student recognition program. UL Lafayette’s custom badges reinforce the university’s brand and they’re awesome looking too!
University of Wisconsin-River Falls created an informative, how it works, video.
Use your PR skills to land a placement in the student paper
Many colleges have had success with getting their student newspaper to run a feature on readabout.me. Students trust students, and student news is a reliable source of information that draws a strong student readership.
One more from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, a Facebook promo that received 213 likes, 4 additional shares, and 15 thoughtful comments!
Our clients’ readabout.me marketing inspired us and hopefully it inspired you. We are thinking about holding an end of year, best of, contest, where readMedia users submit their best readabout.me marketing strategies, creative badge designs, interesting stories, social media engagement, and more – for great prizes. This is still just an idea, but we’ll keep you posted.
Just about a month ago, Danielle and I, and about 250 higher ed communication heroes made their way to the palatial Fairmont Hotel in D.C., for what turned out to be, according to participants, CMC’s most interactive and engaging conference yet!
If you didn’t get a chance to make the pre-conference program, “Crafting Your Digital Strategy: Social Media and Beyond,” oh man, you missed a series of sessions that were worth their weight in gold. The pre-conference speakers did a fantastic job of presenting concepts and strategies that you could take back to your institution and apply immediately.
I was able to attend three out of four concurrent sessions, here are the actionable highlights from session speakers:
Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic, she’s a self-proclaimed “content therapist,” that recommended institutions to create a sustainable infrastructure to support your content strategy.
Melanie Moran, associate director of Vanderbilt University’s office of news and communications, tackled the challenges of having tons of content in a de-centralized environment, sound familiar? Her solution, “Create multiple doors to the same repository of content.”
Tom Evelyn, vice president for communications at St. Lawrence University & Mount Mercy University’s, Assistant Vice President for Communications and Marketing, Fritz McDonald, dialed down the formality with a conversation style session, but turned up the heat by asking folks if they’ve experienced the “social media revolution on their campus.” Some words of wisdom from Tom and Fritz: 1) strategy should drive choices, 2) condense your media channels, 3) kill the Pinterest buzz, and 4) try new ways of pitching stories, e.g., tweet-a-pitch to the media.
Michael Stoner, president of mStoner, gave a pointed word to the wise, “…the web is about content, not color.”
CMC 2012 Tag Team Champions, Mike Petroff, digital content strategist at Harvard University and Executive Creative Director at North Carolina State University, Tim Jones, did a deep-dive, case study-style, and here are some takeaways:
If you get one thing out of this session, it would be to look into using Storify!
Create relationships with current students; let them be your brand champions.
Messaging architecture that takes your institution’s name out of the headline will get you more attention!
Tim Jones gave social media a little jab when he said, “I’ll take a placement over a +1 any day.”
Communication isn’t about communicating; it’s about influencing outcomes.
Some trend alerts from Wednesday’s pre-conference include: condense, refine, and distill your social media channels and web pages, include photos in your communications, they rank high & get picked up, create a goal oriented strategy to drive any communications initiatives, and try to always think of ways to repurpose content.
Danielle and I interviewed session speakers and attendees, gathering their thoughts on this year’s conference. The videos below cover participants opinions on session tracks and we even got some great advice from session speakers, like David Jarmul, assistant vice president for News and Communications at Duke and Melanie Moran, associate director of university news and communications, that we want to share with you.
Session speakers on blending traditional PR and social media
Participants talk about their favorite sessions
Overall thoughts
That pretty much sums it up; we can’t wait to see everyone next year!
P.S. Check back with this post on Monday afternoon, I’m adding a video interview of Laura Wilcox, director of CMC, as she shares with us what to expect in from CMC in 2013.
In his post, Warner writes about the proper and improper use of corporate social media marketing to engage audiences. Warner’s tidings can be applied to any industry, and certainly to higher education.
If I had to delineate and apply Warner’s wisdom to a higher-ed institutional marketing and brand communications plan, it would boil down to these key Do’s and Don’ts:
Social Media Marketing Do’s
Give students a stage to tell and share their story
Use social media to create conversations between people (not with your brand)
Create stories to share by giving students great content and experiences that make them the hero, i.e., smarter, cooler, motivated, and generous
Social Media Marketing Don’ts
Create social media experiments that simply invite people to participate
Use everyday college-based information to promote discussion, i.e. brand to fan conversations
Enhance your institution’s brand over your students personal brand
In the end, we all want the same thing: schools want students to increase performance, graduate, get a job, and give back; students want to have their achievements recognized, publicized, and shared; and, campus communications and public relations offices want to share their students’ achievements, bring big attention to their institution, and create a brand that represents the ultimate academic community. Let’s not forget, parents. Parents want, well…they want it all: school reputation, child’s success, and the proper recognition of their child’s achievements.
At readMedia, we see the big picture and our readMedia application allows you to successfully create social media content, based on the activities and achievements of your students.
Stop wasting time trying to engage your academic community and let it happen naturally by showcasing your stakeholder’s Achievements. Getting them noticed, will get you noticed.