Is Your College’s Social Media Presence Beyond the ‘Beginner’ Level?
You have probably noticed that the majority of schools, companies, businesses, and organizations have a social media presence at this point. It actually seems less common to not have a presence nowadays. Hopefully as you read this, you are relieved thinking that your school is up and running on these platforms. Establishing a presence was the first breakthrough though. The next step was getting in a pattern of posting fresh and relevant content in a timely manner (ok, not everyone understands this yet, but it’s better than it was even six months ago). Now that your school has accomplished that successfully, don’t think it ends there! Social media offers your school’s online presence so much more potential. This is something that shouldn’t be overlooked, unless you want to fall behind your competition.
Below are some ways that you can strengthen your school’s social media presence even further.
Coordinate Your Strategy at the Campus Level
Starting your school’s social media presence off at the central level was a good place to begin, but chances are your school has multiple campuses. Students, graduates, and even staff think in terms of being at the campus level, not the centralized level. Their campus is a community of their own, underneath the centralized umbrella. While it’s great to have one main Facebook page or Twitter account for your school, eventually rolling out a Facebook page or Twitter account for each campus is ideal. In doing so, you are also creating more fresh and relevant content for your school’s main Facebook page or Twitter account.
That being said, all of your school’s social media should be managed in a centralized location to ensure that your school’s online presence stays consistent. It is also important to make sure that appropriate content is being posted and that the same voice is being used throughout every Facebook page and Twitter account. Whether your school works with an outsourced marketing department or has a full-time person dedicated to just social media, those people need to work with the individual campuses and departments to gather information, organize it, post it to the appropriate pages, and maintain consistency. When a student, graduate, or prospect visits an individual campus page on Facebook they should feel as though it is that particular campus running the page and not think twice about it. Appropriate content from the campus pages can then be posted to your school’s main Facebook page, tagging the respective campus in the status update.
Incorporate Different Departments Into the Social Media Mix
Social media should not only expand to the campus level, but to the department level as well. Whether your different departments are centralized or at the campus level doesn’t matter. Your individual campus pages are great to help form a community of students, graduates, prospects, and staff at that particular campus, but wouldn’t it be great to have a Career Services Facebook page, Twitter account, and LinkedIn group that specifically focuses on helping students and graduates with the job search? Communication methods have changed so your school needs to make sure they’re keeping up and have a presence where their audience is. A social media presence for your Career Services Department has the potential to connect your students and graduates with local employers, increase attendance at job fairs, provide resume tips or interview assistance, and much more. It’s taking the great job that the department already does at the campus level and expanding it to online mediums. Expanding other departments such as Admissions and Student Accounts should also be part of the plan.
Educate and Train
Having a presence on social media platforms and continuously updated everything, is great, but the real way to measure success is by successfully connecting your students, graduates, prospects, and staff on these platforms. Prospects looking to attend your school should be able to post on the Facebook wall asking current students or graduates about their experience and actually get a response. Graduating students should be able to connect with alumni for assistance with the job search or other business networking opportunities. Your school probably has thousands of its alumni on LinkedIn, but they may not know how to conduct advanced searches, join relevant groups, or use the platform to professionally connect with local employers. This makes networking for them difficult.
So, what can your school do to improve this and boost placement numbers? Provide training! Offer workshops, webinars, one-on-one help for not only current students and recent graduates, but alumni from years back. Cover topics such as how to build a professional online presence, how to create a LinkedIn profile, how to search for relevant connections, how to find and join relevant groups, how to participate in groups and get the most out of them, professional networking etiquette, how to research companies and different career paths, and much more.
Encourage Student Engagement
Students are what build your on campus community. They know what the typical everyday life is like at school better than the centralized office. Why not encourage engagement in unique ways? The more positive feedback they provide, the better chance your school has of keeping prospects coming back to the Facebook page. It may be difficult getting students to post pictures from class or around campus, so why not hold a photo contest on Facebook? That way you are engaging your students in a fun way and generating new content that can be recycled over and over. Or maybe your school is looking for student testimonials? Why not hold an essay contest through Facebook? There are many different ways to engage your students on the school’s social media platforms. All it takes is careful planning and management (also be sure you don’t violate any of Facebook’s promotional guidelines).
These are just a few ways your school’s social media presence can graduate from the ‘beginner’ level to ‘intermediate’ or ‘advanced.’ Today you should no longer be satisfied with just an online presence.
