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

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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

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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)

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0 20 40

Message …

LinkedIn

Futurity

Flickr

Blogs

iTunes U

Twitter

YouTube

Facebook

Used

Didn't Use

Student Engagement – DeVry University

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Student Engagement – Dartmouth

Student Engagement – Jack Welch Management Institute

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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?

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“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

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“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

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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

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• 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)

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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