Jul 17th 09 Posted by Fritz McDonald in Featured Articles, Strategic Creative

Ten Ways Social Media Can Help Summer Melt

Summer melt—that dreaded dead zone in the recruiting cycle is upon us once again. It’s that time of year when institutions witness a sudden drop-off in students who have enrolled. Prospective students change their minds for reasons too numerous to count, and in this economy they have more reasons than ever. From the top ranking elites to everybody else, colleges and universities are struggling to find new ways to beat the melt in a particularly tough year. Can social media save the day? After all, as the newest tool in your marketing kit, social media is a prime relationship-building tool—and we know that winning or losing students often depends on the relationships we’ve cultivated with them. While it’s no silver bullet, social media can help by increasing meaningful contact between accepted students and institutions. Whether you’re building a presence on an external platform like Facebook or developing your own proprietary network, social media can help you win the summer melt battle in a number of ways, among them:

1. It decreases their isolation in the admissions funnel—accepted or enrolled students have transitioned from the recruiting to the fulfillment stage of the funnel. Some admissions offices are too under the gun to pay much attention to these students—they’re still trying to make their numbers. Others aren’t quite sure what to do with them. Now’s the time to invite them into your campus community, and what better way to start than with your social network—particularly for long-distance students who won’t be setting foot on campus until fall. Let’s face it; it’s easy for prospective students to feel disconnected in the college choice process. They can’t visit your campus every day. The worst thing that can happen, however, is if they feel distanced from the college at the top of their list. And sending them brochure after brochure won’t necessarily close the gap.
2. It offers them opportunities to forge genuine connections with your people—and your people are your best sales tools. For years, we’ve offered a substitute for human contact in the form of print testimonials and profiles. Now you can give them the real thing. And it’s time—the fulfillment stage is all about relationship-building.
3. It frees them to get to know a wider range of your people—too often, we limit students to pre-approved choices among faculty, staff, and students. Sometimes, we do the same for enrolled students. For a marketing-savvy generation, this approach feels limited, especially after they’ve already been through the mill of your marketing. Why not expose them to a broader swath of personalities? A social network will also make it easier for them to get to know one another.
4. It amplifies connections to resources—community members can connect enrolled students to numerous campus offices and services, give them the inside word on the best ways to find roommates and other key needs, and offer experienced guidance they won’t find elsewhere.
5. It’s a great way to surround them with your brand—on a social network, your brand becomes a living, breathing thing, expressed through the quality of your people and the things they say. It may be the best way to prove you really mean what you said in your marketing materials.
6. It allows them to share ownership of your brand—social networks exist for the sole purpose of giving community members a space to create their own content. When you let enrolled students do the same, you enable them to make their own mark on your institution and make it feel like their own.
7. It will cut down costs—eventually, when the community has reached a productive stage of growth, it will maintain the necessary contact with students and let you put your print to rest…at least until the next cycle. The community will do all the work. And letting them do it might just cut down your mailing costs.
8. It’s ongoing—the connections prospective students forge with your people and your brand are continuous on a social network. Those life-changing relationships can happen anytime.
9. It will impress them—nearly every bit of research we’ve seen tells us this generation lives on social media.
10. It will earn their trust—this generation (and the one behind it) favors authenticity over hype…and who can blame them? Inviting them into a social community tells them you really care about them as people in a way no other form of marketing can touch.

Of course, none of this will happen instantaneously. Social networks take time to grow and flourish, yet as my good friend and Stamats consultant Jim Reilly points out:

“Any school that is using social media to build relationships with students at the front-end of the recruiting process should be using it at the enrollment phase of recruiting as well, including transitioning intending-to-enroll students to enrolled students. If not, all your strong relationship building efforts at the front-end of recruiting will ultimately come off as insincere. In brief, be consistent and show intending-to-enroll students that you care and that you are interested in their success.”

I agree. Start early; build a network now that will help next year and the years to come. Among institutions we’ve seen recently, both Duke and Abilene Christian University have built robust social media programs worth studying. Rachel Reuben’s work at SUNY New Paltz should also inspire you. In the long run, social media will never be your only tool in this fight—just one worth serious consideration.

Photo by miss karen