Your Students Are Talking About You, Even If You’re Not Listening
“This school is a rip-off!”
“Don’t attend this school – it’s not worth it!”
“The teachers at this school are awful!”
“This school won’t help me find a job!”
A fear of posts like these may be keeping your school from using social media to connect with your students, graduates, and prospects. While you may think that by avoiding social media, you’re avoiding comments like these, that isn’t the case. People will find a way to say what they want online, whether you’re listening or not.
If your school has started using social media, and has posts like these on sites like Facebook and Twitter, your first instinct may be to immediately delete the post, and maybe even block the person who posted it. Reactions like this may actually cause more damage to your school’s online reputation than the original complaint. Rather than dismiss the complaint, consider how your school can respond in a timely, positive, and helpful manner. If a person showed up at your school’s reception desk with a complaint, how would you handle the situation? Treat your Facebook page the same way.
Here at Effective Student Marketing, we focus on taking a student-centered, customer service approach to social media. We believe that when your school responds publicly to questions and customer service issues, you are generating some of the best brand awareness possible and gaining loyalty from your community. You’ll also be creating a positive online reputation for your school, where you are known for your helpfulness, rather than your censorship.
In our work, we often see loyal members of a Facebook community who will defend a school from people who might never be satisfied with a school’s attempts to fix their problem. Responding privately over Facebook to a student, prospect or graduate with a specific question or problem is also a very direct and effective way of handling any situation that may arise.
You may even discover that students are complaining about issues on campus that you wouldn’t have heard about otherwise, and that are easily remedied. Social media can help you bridge the gap between corporate offices and individual campuses, helping to keep everyone in the loop and held accountable.
We work hard to act as the intermediary between your school’s campuses, corporate office, and social media sites. Not only do we act as your eyes and ears, helping you discover problem areas; we also strive to capture the voice of your school, and develop customized responses that will help resolve these situations. We can act as an outsourced marketing and public relations department for your school.
While there are rare occasions when some individuals post profanity or other crude, irrelevant content to a Facebook page, these are often few and far between. We can help your school create a set of terms and conditions for your Facebook page that outlines what those occasions may be, and how you will react. But, it is best to reserve deleting and blocking users for the most extreme cases.
Your school’s social media campaign is designed to help build a sense of trust between your school and the students, graduates, and prospects that are using social media to connect with you. By instantly blocking or deleting anyone negative, you could create a firestorm where they will go out of their way to do what they can to tarnish your reputation in front of anyone who will listen.
And, just because you blocked them from going to your Facebook page doesn’t mean that they won’t try to find blogs or other websites where they can further their rant on sites you never knew existed. We recommend a best practice where you deal with problem people directly, in a timely manner and on your turf.
Don’t let a fear of negative comments and complaints on Facebook stop you from using social media for your school. With the right strategy in place, you can use social media to connect with your students, graduates, and prospects, help improve your school’s customer service, and generate incremental enrollments.
