Building Relationships Before the Bags get Unpacked: New Opportunities Through Social Media

ed ed Social Mediawww.edsocialmedia.com

www.admissionsquest.com

Monday, May 10, 2010

http://www.edsocialmedia.com




ed ed Social Media

Building Relationships Before the Bags get Unpacked:

New Opportunities Through Social Media


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“I remember when...”


We talked about the rate of change and its dizzying pace. I am constantly amazed at how fast things are evolving & maturing. While creating this presentation and thinking about building connections with students & parents, I decided to take a look at certain growth numbers since I visited last year’s WBSA conference.

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0

80

160

240

320

400

April 2009 February 2010

Source: Facebook http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline


Facebook saw over 200 million new accounts added in less than 1 year.

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline

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0

30.0

60.0

90.0

120.0

150.0

April 2009 April 2010

Source: eMarketer: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007271Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-stats-2010-4#twitter-now-has-106-million-users-1


Twitter grew from 12 million in April 2009 to just shy of 106 million in April 2010.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007271

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007271

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Eric Qualmanwww.Socialnomics.net


I could talk facts and figures until I’m blue in the face, but Eric Qualman’s “Welcome to the Revolution” does a wonderful job of laying out the fact.

http://www.Socialnomics.net

http://www.Socialnomics.net

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Racing to 2000 fans!Tweeting to1000 followers!


Social media participation is growing. Schools are actively pushing to build their networks.

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Connect with our school!


We’ve created our channels and have begun to promote them - perhaps via email; on our sites.

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All good steps in an effort to boost our networks and connect with a broad range of people who matter to our schools. How many of us feature “follow us; become a fan, connect; etc” twitter & facebook buttons on our sites?

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What do you do when you get there?


Big question is how do you engage your network as it grows?

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Create & share compelling content.


Your school enjoys a fan base that, for lack of a better word, “consume” your narrative stream or long story. The object is to begin bringing applying families into this stream.

This requires that you give fans and families substance- not necessarily formality, but substance- events, stories, narratives, happenings and achievement on campus. Show the ways students are growing and learning- real and substantive. Engage your fans by sharing the school experience.

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Photo credit: shanebeehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/


How do we do this? I advocate that schools commit to a content library. One that isn’t as concerned about polish, but a library that catalogs a form of content that offers a birds eye view of what it’s like to “experience” your community.

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Something that you as an admission office can add to & draw from at key points in the admission process to deepen your connection with prospective families. It can come in a variety of forms- blogs written by students, livestreaming events, student produced shows, videos filmed by kids, or blogs maintained by faculty.

Which methods you use most is determined by which media you can produce most consistently with reasonable effort and quantity.

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Show rather than tell.


I like to live by these simple words whenever we create content - show rather than tell.

ed ed Social MediaPhoto credit: Northfield Mount Hermon Schoolhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/nmhphotos/4008777735/in/set-72157622454626351/



If you’re talking about your great art program. Show students drawing by the creek. Highlight their work on a regular basis.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fernando/3199872017/


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Photo credit: Vermont Academyhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/31278469@N04/3919640397


If you’re excited about your school’s fall mountain day. Show students climbing to top. Interview them about the challenges of the climb and how the event impacts the school community. Let them connect the dots and their share it with your online communities.



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We all talk about school spirit. Let your students capture it via short videos.

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“Your fans love nothing more than to see what’s

happening & feel connected to your school.”


Your fans- students, parents, alums- love nothing more than to see & hear what their kids & their friends are doing.

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It all comes back to building a library. Check out the content when you need it. Add to it throughout the year; keep it current. Use it to show what’s happening on your campus.

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You don’t have to be a tech guru to produce content (from left to right- edSocialMedia’s Steve Ritchie & Ernest Koe; Hiram Cuevas, St. Christopher's School; Travis Warren, WhippleHill Communications).

Point is that I suspect that most everyone sitting in the room use social media in some form or fashion to journal daily life and stay connected with family, friends & organizations.

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It could come in the form of twitter...

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...or photo sharing sites like flickr...

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or the most obvious of all... facebook...

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When you think about it from an institutional perspective, you likely already have a wealth of content capturing campus experiences. It’s a question of aggregating it and checking out the content from your ‘library’ when you need it.

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Admission Timeline

Yield Season

School Visit& Follow Up

Browsing for Schools


Lets relate your content to the admission timeline to see how we can strengthen your relationships so that when an enrolled student steps on campus they feel like they’re already a connected member of the community.

By the way, this is an approximation of course- it may differ in your office - but it works. Lets take the timeline and see how we can apply the tools & content to enhance & support what you’re already doing.

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Admission Timeline



This is an approximation of course- it may differ in your office . Lets take the timeline and see how we can apply these new tools to enhance & support what you’re already doing.

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Admission Timeline

Student & Family Profile•New family to boarding school•Structured environment•Talented writer•Soccer goalie (collegiate talent?)•Interest in audio/video production•Interests in science with a particular focus on sustainability


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Admission Timeline

•New family to boarding school


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"When we blog, we tend to talk like humans. When we write home page

copy, we write like marketing brochures"

-Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot


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Even organizations like the New York Times & CNN have gone the way of the social web. They use all sorts of media to tell the story from different angles - even soliciting their readers for their opinions on news.

Use of blogs allow their reporters to add frequent updates that may or may not be part of their daily reporting assignment. In many cases, they're expressing their points of view on a variety of topics and allowing their readers to get involved via comments.

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What do families want when they first come to your site? Proctor does a really nice job of weaving their content with that of their fans.

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Browsing for Schools & The Inquiry


Hyde has a done a really nice job of talking about & showing their school in through many voices. They avoid typical marketing speak and focus on language that fits their culture. As a result they’re able to use images, video, sound & text to paint a clear picture of who they are and give families a reason to remain connected with them via their social media channels.

They’re able to answer everyones questions & make folks feel warm and at ease.

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They invite people to see what they do and they support it by consistently producing content that captures and presents what happens at Hyde. It comes in the form of streaming their twitter feed, like Proctor.

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Using video produced by students & faculty to show events.

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And inviting site visitors to not only read & watch, but ask questions...

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For those of you who don’t know this is Chuck Will’s blog at Proctor. He’s a leading voice and the institutional memory to a certain extent. He knows current student & parents, alums, you name it -they know him and he knows what the school stands for. His job is to capture that in words and pictures 2-3 times a week.

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His posts capture the attention of prospective families and gives them a way to stay connected to what’s happening at Proctor- he helps them to envision what it’s like to be a Proctor student.

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Northfield Mount Hermon’s NMHbook - a dedicated section of their site (www.nmhschool.org/nmhbook) that aggregates all of their social content providing an up-to-minute snapshot of what’s happening on campus both from the perspective of their faculty & students.

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“Brian Rosenberg aka the President of Macalester College”


I don’t know if it started out this way, but this is one of the most effective outreach pieces I’ve seen. It was done by the President of Macalester College. Self-deprecating humor, showcased his campus, told you a lot about the school and what the feeling about the campus is like.

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“I have received several hundred e-mail messages from alumni,

parents, current and prospective students, as well as from other

college presidents and from folks I simply cannot identify, and from

countries including Pakistan, Japan, Spain, Singapore, and China

—where one alumnus, from the class of 1950 no less, managed to

circumvent the national blockage of YouTube and get the video

directly from the college's server. Amazing.”

The Chronicle of Higher Educationhttp://chronicle.com/article/What-I-Learned-From-YouTube/65141/




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“Yet positive responses to our annual-fund solicitations spiked after

the video's appearance, reminding us that reputation, institutional

pride, and general good will can have as significant an impact on

development efforts as projects that are more deliberately focused on

raising dollars—and are far more expensive.

With this project, I have begun to learn about the nature and power

of the social media that are reshaping the way we communicate

with one another and should be reshaping the way organizations of

all kinds communicate.”

The Chronicle of Higher Educationhttp://chronicle.com/article/What-I-Learned-From-YouTube/65141/




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Admission Timeline

Yield Season

School Visit& Follow UpBrowsing & Inquiring


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Admission Timeline



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Photo credit: Pumbaa80http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soccer_ball.svgInterest in Soccer


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Interest in Soccer


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Talented writer


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Interest in audio/video production


Students in a new media course at New Hampton School have created & produced a weekly student produced news program called New Hampton TV. They report on a variety of topics from world news, to campus events, to humorous roving reporter bits.

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Interest in audio/video production


I showed this clip for 2 reasons - 1 it made me chuckle & 2 because it reminds me of the president’s day video.

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New Hampton School TV www.newhampton.org/tv

2,941 views October 2009


http://www.newhampton.org/tv

http://www.newhampton.org/tv

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Interests in science with a particular focus on sustainability


How many schools in this room participate in the Green Cup Challenge? How many share your videos with prospective students & families, especially those who’ve demonstrated an interest this area?

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Show rather than tell


Every example of content that I showed you came from outside of the admission/communication office. It’s a product of the classes, daily life, athletics and each does an excellent job of showing what it’s like to experience your schools. Perhaps even more so than a highly tailored marketing piece.

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Facebook and tour guides.

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Admission Timeline

Yield Season




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Admission Timeline

Yield Season


Yield season

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Facebook groups for a variety of purposes. Lets focus on newly admitted students. I can share Northfield’s approach: With every acceptance, they sent an invitation to join a facebook group. The students then went through, saw links and different discussion topics. Students run the discussion and talk to each other unless they asked a question NMH’s admission office had to answer.

What are you all doing? Experimenting?

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Yield Season


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Yield SeasonPhoto credit: shanebee

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/


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Yield Season


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Jesse Bardo


Last year Jesse Bardo was tasked with managing social media in their admission office.

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NMH started out fast posting basic updates. Sports scores, travel schedules.

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www.nmhschool.org


Jesse understood that a web site is fast in terms of posting information, but that social media offered a faster, more focused opportunity to connect with fans of the school.

http://www.nmhschool.org

http://www.nmhschool.org

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Social media provides an opportunity to publish instant information to large networks. But Jesse knew that he needed to do more than publish scores and travel schedules to excite their fans. He used these new tools to plug people into the incredible stories popping up on campus each day.

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Newspaper

Radio

English Dept

Science Dept

Math Dept

SID


He built a network of people on campus. Folks feeding him stories about the goings on on campus.

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His ‘sources’ loved seeing their stories appear on facebook, twitter, flickr, etc. The excitement fed their desire to provide Jesse with more information.

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Majority of tweets or facebook updates point to an item of substance. Giving the fan or follower more to consume and additional reasons to connect.

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4394

1505


Great numbers supported by compelling, meaningful content. Makes the relationship that much stronger.

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Final thoughts...•Focus on building your content library•Show rather than tell•Build on something that already works


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www.edsocialmedia.com




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Stay Connected!Peter BaronAdmissionsQuest

Email [email protected] (617) 623-4212

Twitter twitter.com/peterdbaron twitter.com/admissionsquest twitter.com/edsocialmedia

Vimeo vimeo.com/boardingschoolsYoutube youtube.com/user/BoardingSchoolsFlickr flickr.com/photos/30990415@N02/

Site admissionsquest.comedSocialMedia edsocialmedia.com


mailto:[email protected]

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Building Relationships Before the Bags get Unpacked: New Opportunities Through Social Media

Education

Transcript of Building Relationships Before the Bags get Unpacked: New Opportunities Through Social Media