How Colleges Can Maximize LinkedIn’s New Features
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LinkedIn is increasingly valuable for student recruitment, showing career prospects and networking opportunities.
Transcript of How Colleges Can Maximize LinkedIn’s New Features
How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New
Features
Slide 1
How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s
New Features
How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New
Features
Slide 2
1) Why LinkedIn is Valuable for Schools
2) Introducing Showcase Pages
3) Other Considerations
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New Features
How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New
Features
Slide 3
As post-secondary students become increasingly concerned
about their future career prospects when choosing a college
or university, many are taking to social media to compare
educational offerings.
Over the past year, professional social network LinkedIn has made
prominent strides towards providing data-driven college evaluation,
with the aim of transforming the college-selection process in the
same way it has changed job recruitment behaviour.
Last summer, it launched dedicated University Pages while
lowering its age limit to 14 to connect prospective students
with the school that fits them best.
While it eliminated its Products and Services tab from Company
Pages earlier this month, the new Showcase Pages feature should
more than make up for it.
1. Colleges and LinkedIn
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New Features
How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New
Features
Slide 4
Although at first glance it may seem counterintuitive for
colleges to recruit teenagers on LinkedIn, which has an
average user age of 44.2 according to a 2012 report, the site
has been steadily growing in student popularity.
Students may spend more time on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and
Instagram, but ambitious teens are already using social media to
develop their personal brand.
Many carefully craft their online profiles, conscious that employers
and college admissions teams use social media to screen
prospective candidates, and have adopted a wider variety of
platforms to serve specific functions.
LinkedIn says college students and recent grads are its fastest-
growing demographic, at over 30 million of its 300 million members,
and believes that the competitive college admissions process will
motivate younger users to build their own online resumes.
2. Why LinkedIn is Valuable for Schools
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New Features
How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New
Features
Slide 5
Unlike Company Pages, there is greater potential for
personalization and including more relevant information and
images for the university’s target audiences.
The appealing look and design of the new pages even rivals some
schools’ primary websites!
Career colleges will be most interested in the prominent
focus on professional post-graduate achievements, including
the opportunity to immediately network with alumni.
Prospective students can easily observe where alumni live, work and
what kind of work they do in the “Explore Careers” section to see for
themselves what they might expect after graduation and even
network with “notable alumni” to try to get an entry level position.
Colleges may receive messages from interested applicants
or send targeted messages to their followers based on
location, industry or major.
2. Why LinkedIn is Valuable for Schools
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New Features
How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New
Features
Slide 6
Although Showcase Pages were first announced back in
November, LinkedIn has recently made them available to
everyone with Company Pages.
The feature allows colleges and universities to create pages
targeted to separate audiences, such as various campuses,
programs, alumni groups or particular campaigns.
You can currently create up to ten free Showcase Pages to branch
off your main Company Page (with only three immediately visible).
Once someone has liked your Company Page, they can choose to
follow specific Showcase Pages for only the most relevant updates
without following the Company Page.
The most apparent feature of Showcase Pages is the visual focus,
similar to Facebook pages.
The large “hero image” of the banner is 974px by 330px, including
the integrated logo and number of followers in the bottom third of the
image. Content is clearly displayed in two columns with easier
audience interaction, again similar to Facebook or Google+.
3. Introducing Showcase Pages
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New Features
How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New
Features
Slide 7
Segmenting the right message to the right audience is the
most obvious benefit of the new LinkedIn changes, a
philosophy which should extend to your overall social media
strategy. As each social network has its own purpose and best practices,
determine how your LinkedIn content will differ between pages and how
it will be differentiated from profiles on Facebook, Twitter and other social
media marketing networks.
Universities such as UBC have developed formal protocols to guide the
nature of content, editorial tone, frequency of posts and interaction with
followers.
Integrating relevant keywords in your headline, summary, and more will
elevate your SEO and connecting your optimizing your institution’s
website with Google Analytics will help demonstrate the effectiveness of
this social media channel in your overall marketing strategy.
Take full advantage of the platform by joining groups and interacting with
your community with valuable posts and comments.
4. Other Considerations
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New Features
How Colleges can Maximize LinkedIn’s New
Features
Slide 8
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