©2010 Effective Student Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
May 19, 2010 – Effective Student Marketing just released a new white paper titled “5 Ways Social Media Can Help to Improve Your School’s Customer Service.” The white paper is designed to help teach career, technical, and vocational schools how to use social media more effectively.
Social media can be an important tool to help build your school’s brand and create a sense of community online. But it can also be an important piece of a vibrant customer service program. Most students, prospects, and graduates are already using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to talk about your school. It only makes sense for your school to join the conversation.
“Many schools think of social media as a place where they can post pictures and tell people about upcoming events,” said Andy Kelley, President of Effective Student Marketing. “But social media can be used for so much more. It’s a place where the marketing, public relations, and customer service staff can all work together to interact with your prospects, students, and graduates.”
“5 Ways Social Media Can Help to Improve Your School’s Customer Service” outlines the top reasons why a well-managed social media campaign can benefit career schools and colleges. It explains how social media can provide school administrators with warnings about where the pain points are in their schools. When done correctly, social media even provides a controlled environment for online reviews, where school officials can respond quickly and appropriately.
Using social media as a customer service tool may be new to the education industry, but other companies have already begun putting Facebook and Twitter to work for them. According to USA Today, “More than half of the Fortune 100 companies are using Twitter for customer service.”* By interacting with people in a public space like social media, these companies are showcasing the great personal care and attention they give to each and every customer. When you use social media to improve your school’s customer service, you can show your prospects and students that your school is listening and working to resolve issues.
“We’ve noticed that once a school responds to a negative post with a helpful answer, other online community members will chime in, impressed with the school’s response,” said Kelley. “When your community knows that you are engaged and listening, you will see very positive results, both online and off-line.”
Effective Student Marketing has helped career schools across the country develop social media strategies that blend customer service with marketing and public relations. By working closely with the school, ESM has been able to formulate appropriate responses for any number of potential complaints, comments, or questions that may appear on the social media pages. These responses can help to improve student relations, retention, and default management if handled correctly.
If you’d like to use social media to improve your school’s customer service, you can download the whitepaper “5 Ways Social Media Can Help to Improve Your School’s Customer Service” here or call ESM at 978-475-0880.
*http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-11-18-twitterserve18_ST_N.htm
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Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Effective Student Marketing will be presenting a webinar titled “Leverage the Power of Social Media Marketing” on May 5, 2010 at 3 p.m. EST. The webinar is sponsored by the College Bound Network, and is designed to teach schools the importance of utilizing social media marketing. Andy Kelley, the President of Effective Student Marketing, Inc., along with Michelle Collins, who handles business development for the company, will be giving the presentation.
Effective Student Marketing specializes in developing, designing and managing sites like Facebook and Twitter for schools, creating an online community where students, graduates, and prospects can connect and interact with one another. The College Bound webinar will show examples of successful social media campaigns ESM has launched, as well as provide best practices for maintaining your school’s online image.
“People are already talking about your school, whether they’re on Facebook or somewhere else,” Kelley said. “The worst thing you can do is nothing at all. It’s crucial to become an active part of these conversations, while simultaneously building brand awareness and generating leads and referrals. Having a vibrant, active social media community for your students, graduates and prospects shows that your school is involved and listening, and provides you with direct feedback from your target audience.”
Social media is an interactive community that can result in a referral base for the school, if managed effectively. Conversations that happen on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere can provide direct feedback to the school, helping to improve customer service initiatives. In this webinar, ESM will drive home the importance social media, as an integral part of your marketing plan, with the end goal of turning once unreachable prospects into high quality leads. In addition, ESM will show how to best respond to positive and negative discussions that can occur, and how this can help your school standout over your competitors.
ESM manages several social media campaigns for career schools across the United States. The team at ESM has created Facebook pages for schools with only one campus to schools with ten campuses, with a wide range of programs including healthcare, HVAC, information technology, business and criminal justice, and cosmetology.
To sign up for ESM’s College Bound webinar, “Leverage the Power of Social Media Marketing,” go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/431656225. The webinar will take place on Wednesday, May 5th at 3:00 p.m. EST.
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