PS&L Blog

Social Parasite or Friend?

Did you see the article “Top recruit quits Facebook following ‘living nightmare’” by Cameron Smith, a Yahoo! Sports blogger?  The article talks about how the high school student, who has been dubbed the top football recruit in the country, felt he had to shut down his Facebook account because the assault on his pages “has made my recruiting experience a living nightmare.”

We are not all trying to recruit the top athlete, musician or science student to our colleges, but we are all working very hard to enroll our own top recruits. The Chronicle of Higher Education featured an article not long ago where prospective college students complained about text messages in the same way.  Too many texts, sent too frequently, and from too many people, many of whom they did not know made an unpleasant experience for the prospects.  Part of managing our social sites and communications has to focus on managing the access to the people with whom we are communicating.

Much of the talk in college admissions and marketing offices is in regards to protecting the institution.  We are careful to shut down chats when someone signs on and is inappropriate, condemns the college, or personally attacks a staff, student or faculty member.   Colleges are equally careful to monitor entries on social sites, and remove any posts on, for example, a Facebook wall, that is deemed unsuitable.  Some colleges have gone so far as to not allow anyone, other than staffed marketing professionals, to post on the college wall.

While the “top recruit” remarked that there was a lot of trash talking being done by both of the schools at the top of his list, it is interesting to note that this was not his reason for quitting Facebook.  So, I wonder, who is doing the trash talking and is there anything we can do to prevent it or stop it altogether?

It is not enough to integrate our marketing.  It is important to consider how we monitor access to our prospective students, particularly those we are most interested in enrolling.  So often when talking to admissions staff, scholarships representative from the college foundation, coaches, financial aid, faculty, alumni, student services staff, they openly say that while they own their own communications with prospective students, they are not fully aware of what is happening across campus.

The very first step is to coordinate across campus.  Do you want a prospect receiving 5 texts, letters, or emails in a day, or a week, from different organizations on the same campus? Is there a context where that is okay, or are you overwhelming the student?  Coordinated recruiting efforts, like an integrated marketing and communications plan will produce more enrollments of your institutions top recruits.

There is a distinct difference between creating an opportunity and forcing the connection.  To create opportunities we want to:

• Give the student the chance to personalize their own admissions page
• Provide the prospect with access to people who can assist in the admissions or financial aid process
• Ask the prospect if they would like a call or text from a faculty member or someone who shares a special interest
• Create live chats with current students
• Open  a dialogue about meaningful issues through a call from a student with similar interests or an admissions counselor
• Create social media spaces where like-minded current and prospective students can safely interact
• Ask  prospects how they prefer to communicate
• Provide  prospects with the opportunity to decline specific types of communications

Our end goal is to enroll the student.  As stated earlier, we are not all trying to enroll the top athlete in the country, or the top violinist, or the top science student, but we are all trying to enroll our own set of top recruits. If we choose communication means that offend them, allow too much access, or the prospects feels it is grown out of their control, we are not helping our enrollment goals.  The idea is to give prospects reasons to engage with the college and the people who represent the institution, not reasons to shut down communication altogether.  There is a line between feeling like people care about you and you have a connection, and feeling so overwhelmed with attention that you want to shut it all down.  We want to stay on the side of the line that enrolls the top recruit.