Turning Your Staff into Blog Celebrities
NACAC08 was a great experience. I have been following many people in higher education through various social mediums as well as working with institutions across many states. Meeting these great folks in person has made my relationship with them on social media even stronger!
Does your institution have a Twitter account? Does it identify the author of those tweets? Do you give your admissions counselors a presence on social media? If the answer is no, you may want to talk to us and rethink your strategy.
If your counselors are out traveling, like many this time of year, social media should be central to your overall strategy. Your counselors should have established relationships with various students via social media which can now be reinforced with a face-to-face meeting. On the flip side, as you meet new students and gather their information, you should immediately begin engaging them through social media channels upon your return to your institution.
This combination of social media and real social interaction builds a powerful relationship between high school student and counselor. Seeing where a college representative went to school and identifying similarities between counselor and student create opportunities for connecting that would not otherwise exist. The miracle of social media is that it creates the opportunity for conversations to take place after college fairs and high school visits by being accessible beyond phone and email. Furthermore, this form of interaction is already familiar to most high school students. Social media is ultimately a relationship medium… use it to build those personal relationships!
In addition, I see that The University of Toledo has also found the value in this thought. I wish them luck, and I thank D.W. for pointing me to this information in her blog! Are their any other admissions counselors maintaining blogs? I’d love to hear from you!
Related posts:
- NACAC comes up short on Blog, but gets it right on Facebook
- Starting a Social Media Campaign
- OSU on Social Media
- Social Media Experiment: #NACAC08
- Generation Gap: The Convo never stops!
2 Responses to “Turning Your Staff into Blog Celebrities”
Leave a Reply
This is interesting. I work in marketing (web team), and I maintain several social networking features (twitter, facebook page, etc). But I have never “outted myself” as to who I am. Since I don’t come in direct contact with students, do you think it’d still be a good idea for me to identify myself and make it more personal?
@Ann,
A lot of organizations miss the full opportunity in using “social media” because they use it as a traditional one channel medium just pushing information out and not encouraging a personal “social” connection.
I understand you are behind the scenes, but it adds a lot of value to know that a human is behind the messages, and that they have a name! There is a fine line here between organizational and personal which I’ve helped people navigate, and I can tell you it has been different in every situation. I encourage you to reflect, think about how you can keep it focused on the school while giving it a face.
Also, there is a lot of value in having the individuals that have direct contact with student participating in your social networking. The value added to a marketing campaign from true conversational marketing may be too much to over look! I wish you luck and know that I’m here to help.
Leave a Reply
This is interesting. I work in marketing (web team), and I maintain several social networking features (twitter, facebook page, etc). But I have never “outted myself” as to who I am. Since I don’t come in direct contact with students, do you think it’d still be a good idea for me to identify myself and make it more personal?
@Ann,
A lot of organizations miss the full opportunity in using “social media” because they use it as a traditional one channel medium just pushing information out and not encouraging a personal “social” connection.
I understand you are behind the scenes, but it adds a lot of value to know that a human is behind the messages, and that they have a name! There is a fine line here between organizational and personal which I’ve helped people navigate, and I can tell you it has been different in every situation. I encourage you to reflect, think about how you can keep it focused on the school while giving it a face.
Also, there is a lot of value in having the individuals that have direct contact with student participating in your social networking. The value added to a marketing campaign from true conversational marketing may be too much to over look! I wish you luck and know that I’m here to help.