Social networks can be a great tool for marketing for schools. With a large number of people currently using these sites, it is a fast and easy way to get the school's name out to the public!
Our school currently uses a social media site to advertise to prospective students.
It has been very successful. Several students have found us using several of the social media sites. Not only do we use it for advertising we also use it to communicate with some of our former students as well as our current ones, so that we can see how everyone is doing, we also put some fun things on there like questions pertaining to the courses that we teach, as well as blogs.
I agree that social media is a great way to reach prospective students.. At our school we have a social media campaign and use a fan page to reach our desired audience. It is a great medium to get information out to the public. We are also looking at getting information out to the public through community websites/twitter etc. From a marketing stand point the goal is to get information to the public. twitter allows us to do that quickly and effectivly
It can be good and bad. I don't think we use this method to communicate with students.
It's so important, the impact of these sites is so massive. I think anytime you can get the word out to more students it's a good thing - amazingly some people aren't familiar with career colleges. These social networking sites are just one more tool we have to connect with them.
Our school has created a Blog, so that former/current can follow current events and school news.
Today people spent so much time on social networks. I think its one of the best ways to communicate with prospective students. The school i'm with can be found on a social network site.
Social networking sites such as facebook and twitter do affect communications with prospective students. It's a great tool to reach our current student population.
My campus has a page on Facebook :)
I agree, it is a much faster way to communicate.
The addition of Social Networking Sites has given Agents/Admissions Reps another way to contact their prospective students in the case that they can't reach them the traditional ways via telephone or email. Our campus has a facebook page that they post campus updates and stuff like that on so that they can keep the students up to date on what is going on around campus.
I agreealso that SN has a great impact in communicating with prospective students because it opens up a new forum of accessibilty and it provides a way to communicate with students more rapidly
The impact of social networking impacts every facit or our lives... which would include schools. More importantly, schools that understand this should be reading this and using it as a powerful virtual "grapevine" to leverage positive public comments that would be readily recievied as genuine due to the source and equally important, following up on possible negative comments to validate and address.
We do effectively use social networking sites in our efforts to reach out to students...and it has proven to be an effective marketing tool.
Our school has the use of facebook as part of its marketing plan. It's a great tool to use to network for new leads and keep up with students.
We have done e-mail blast in the past, sometimes its effective sometimes it is'nt. I think with our school population the phone numbers change so frequently that it makes things tough.
We do not currently have a marketing plan that includes the SN sites, but we do refer all of our prospective students to our website. If we do have a marketing plan in the future that includes the SN sites, it would have to remain professional at all times.
SN sites have increased the enrollment of students at our company. Our company has utilized, fb, twitter, myspace, linked etc to inform students of all of our services as far as assistance, career services and placement, alumni, job opportunities, q&a's and so forth. There has been a tremendous amount of positive feedback since launching this. because it fits our target marktet of the students busy life of being able to find what they are looking online instead of scheudling a one on one interview with on of the representatives.
I personally have not used social networking for prospective students however, myself and our career services individual have been communicating with current students and graduates to get their student tesetimonials for prospective students knowledge. This was the quickest and most effective way we have discovered thus far.
Social networking has been an outstanding way to stay in communication with students. Keeping them up to date with what is happening and news around campus.
