Susan,
Keep in mind that if you have multiple goals, your group may not be the best means to accomplishing all. It sounds like you established the group to create a supportive community to address the feelings of "isolation" as you mentioned in a previous post. Additionally, the community can act as a resource for students/alumni to help each other. With a group, you must take the role of community builder - facilitate and guide discussion and ask for community support. There are no magic bullets with how to respond to all posts but as an example, if an individual is saying something like "I'll never find a job," how might you respond in a way that demonstrates support and encouragement while also trying to get the community involved or key influencers in the community? For instance, maybe there is a star alumni who loves your department. Might you ask this person to share their advice/words of encouragement? If they are an advocate of Career Services, it is likely they'd be glad to help.
You may find that you need multiple accounts. For example, I used to use a Facebook group for Alumni and my strategy there was to have the community help themselves which extended my capabilities. I could ask the community questions, ask them to help others, provide advice, share information, help with job leads, etc. The Facebook Fan Page was to improve student relations and build affinity with the Career Services department so our strategy there was to share helpful information, increase participation through a variety of tactics, etc. Additionally, we had a Facebook profile. We established this because our policies were that we were not able to "friend" students but we could "friend" graduates. The benefit of "friending" people is that you can private message them, view their wall posts if they are set to private, etc. which helps with data mining and strategic engagement. So, we would market our Fan Page to students but when they became graduates, we'd send a friend invite. This gave us multiple options and allowed us to use Facebook in multiple ways for our intended purposes. Facebook Fan pages do provide stats and metrics so it is something to consider if you'd like to measure your growth, engagement and what types of posts students are engaging with which can help you adjust your strategies.
Anecdotal evidence is ok - not everyone feels the need to measure hard numbers and analytics. In fact, sometimes, it can be overwhelming so do what makes sense for you and just know that your bottom line goals are what matters. Social is just a tool to help you accomplish those goals. Just as we have used tools such as the phone, the fax machine, or computers, we must also use social media as merely one more tool in our toolbox to accomplish our goals.
Thanks for sharing.
Robert Starks Jr.
We don't really have competitions but I was hoping to increase participation in various graduate surveys (related to employment, student loan issues). To date, this has not been successful. But there have been some technical complications: people in the group are people whose data we already have and the facegroup group function doesn't allow us to invite "outsiders". My facebook account was also temporarily blocked for several days because facebook said I was "looking for too many friends".
Our page is a "group" so we don't get data per se as far as measurable growth is concerned. I can only offer anecdotal evidence. I can see students coach other students (having career related negativity such as: "I'm never going to find a job!") using phrases I've used whereas several months ago, these students would have commiserated with the negative comment.
Susan,
Do you do any competitions or other strategies to use the Facebook platform to drive goals such as increased one-on-one appointments, increased event participation, earlier completion of resumes or portfolios, peer job search assistance to expand career center capabilities, etc.? Could you share your experience in using platforms to drive career center goals in various areas such as the examples mentioned? It sounds like you are doing a great job using the platform for rapport building, career center awareness and marketing - I'm wondering if you could talk about your "conversions." For instance, contest A resulted in a 30% jump in one-on-one career center appointments and resume review appointments. I'd like to hear any examples you may have.
Robert Starks Jr.
We use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ but the Facebook is the most active. The twitter is now inaccessible.
Originally, the facebook "group" was established solely so that students could connect with one another and we had no connection to the group at all.
I access the facebook account for data mining (find missing grads, determine employment status),to increase the visibility of career services (job search tips, polls and humour) and to provide information for students which ultimately makes them more successful (student loan repayment information, budgeting tips) and then consequently, the school as well.
We are a young school and we haven't given a lot of time or attention to our efforts in the area of social media. Our main use of social media has been with facebook. That effort has been limited. After this course, I plan to develop a much more broad and developed strategy to engage our students and build an interactive community!
We have only been using facebook. However I'm quickly learning that we could be using at least a few more platforms that would benefit our school. I'm excitied to branch out, and use the different types of tracking tools as well.
facebook and linkedin. Mostly to reach out and build relationships
Hello Amy,
Your struggle of whether or not to accept invitations to connect is normal. Without institution policies, I advise people to use their personal judgement since the institution has not provided guidance. I personally look at the following variables when connecting: Do I truly know the person? If I don't know the person, are they transparent with why they want to connect? Is it clear from their profile that we have commonalities? Does the person requesting a connection have a complete profile (lack of a complete profile means unwillingness to disclose and I don't accept)? With students, again, it is a personal choice on whether one feels comfortable accepting or having their own "policy" of only accepting graduate requests. I accepted requests only when students had profiles that aligned with career center instruction on how to optimize their profile. I used this as a means to help students with their profiles before accepting requests and personally felt that if a student was engaging, it was a good idea to accept requests and coach them on LinkedIn through online interactions and through the content shared via my feed (such as articles on tips for interviewing, etc.). These are some things to consider when there are no policies to provide guidance.
To answer your question regarding course length, one enrolled, participants have 4 weeks to complete the course so you have a month. This is why it is key to make sure that once you enroll, you have actually set aside time to focus on learning and interacting just as one might do with an online college course. However, The Lounge (www.careercollegelounge.com) is our post-course informal learning platform that allows you to continue interacting and engaging for the sake of further learning. I am responsive to all who participate in the Lounge just as if they were leaving comments in a course forum so we can still interact there as well. There are also some downloadable resources provided in this course to allow participants to deepen their understanding of the content and to provide guidance. Don't worry - I'll still be around to assist even when the course is complete and would be happy to further engage with you via the Lounge.
Robert Starks Jr.
HI Robert,
Currently I use facebook for professional purposes only. I am able to find and message graduates via facebook as well as keep up with what they're doing and where they're working. Sometimes, I get more information that I actually care to have! I have a professional profile on linked in and encourage my near graduating students to create a linked in account as well. I struggle with whether or not to accept their invitations when they send them to me prior to graduation...and in some cases after they graduate. We don't currently have policies - but I'm not comfortable adding them to my professional network until after they graduate. This course has my wheels turning. I'm anxious to really "dig in" to creating an actual strategy with goals etc. There is so much great content in this course! How long will I be able to access the content and resources when I'm finished? I haven't even begun to be able to look at everything like I want to... I've been focusing on the modules and getting completed before my course deadline. However, I'd love to have more time with this material even after I'm officially finished.
Jessica,
Great strategy. Have any surveys been done with students/graduates to discover what they would like to see from the Facebook page?
Robert Starks Jr.
I have asked for stories, opinions, and pictures in the past and have not seen a response. Our Facebook page has only been up and running for about a year now and was not actively updated until I came into the school in March.
Currently I am regularly posting pictures of graduates, providing links to noteworthy jobs, links to our "hot job" emails, and also links to the weekly employment newsletter that I began back in June. We have seen steady "like" growth of about 3-4 likes per week from this activity.
The tactic I have used so far is that I add them as a friend to our job development profile that generally only has a newsfeed from our page just for exposure. I have added our facebook tag to our stationary as well as gotten everyone on board with including it in all communications. I have been considering posting questions or comments to some of the major trucking fan pages for exposure for the job development department but have been waiting a topic to be posted where the school can have a sincere response.
Jessica,
Facebook makes sense for the demographic you have and because it has 1 billion users, making it the likely platform for future late adopters. I wonder if asking truck drivers to post their pictures of where they travel might be one way to engage them - seems like it would be such a great way to get them involved and more engaged by showing others where their career is taking them. Have you thought of other tactics to try to get them actively engaged? I would love to hear your ideas.
Robert Starks Jr.
Mostly we use Facebook. Our average student is a male mid to late 40s. While they are not completely comfortable using computers some do use Facebook. Upon graduation if it is agreeable with the student we post their picture and they really enjoy sharing the school page with their friends and family.
Brent,
I'd like to play devil's advocate and ask you the benefits of not waiting until you have graduates to begin initiating your social media strategies for Career Services. How might establishing a Career Services presence now influence your relationship with students who will become graduates? What benefits can you identify of beginning immediately vs. waiting for more graduates?
Robert Starks Jr.
At this point we are mainly focused on Facebook. However, we do post the occasional video on Youtube. We honesly are not at a point right now where using social media for the purpose of job placement is going to help much so we are using it for the purpose of promoting our product and branding ourselves. We are looking to be in a position to use social media for assisting in job placement onece we have a larger number of graduates of our program.
Mary,
In the resources section, you'll find an entire guide on getting started on Facebook that offers very detailed information including how to market your new Facebook page. Can you explain why you have chosen Facebook and LinkedIn? How do these platforms align with your objectives and your audience? What will you use each platform for and how will you differentiate your strategies on these two unique platforms? Please think about these questions - I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Robert Starks Jr.
Well, personally I use Facebook to keep up with my kids and friends. I took this course to get educated on social media and have learned quite a bit. I intend to create my department a Facebbok and LinkedIn pages. I look forward to seeing all that's out there and finding out what most of my graduates and employers are using.
Right now, our school only uses Facebook. The career services department utilizes Facebook to communicate quickly to our graduates when an upcoming event is taking place and also if there is news the school would like to share with potential students and all graduates all at once. Also, there are semi-private group discussions that take place between instructors and their students, if anyone has individual questions. I try to also use Facebook to contact graduates that are more difficult to reach by email or phone. I would like to build more effective strategies to make the most of the other social media platforms available.
Stacey,
Great idea to get students started early. I noticed you stated you use Facebook for tracking down students and you indicate LinkedIn being helpful to discovering where people work if you have trouble contacting them. These are definitely two benefits of these platforms but I am very curious how you might start using social media to accomplish other career center objectives. What are some ideas you might have to improve student participation, employer relations, career services programs, or events? Any ideas on just one other aspect beyond employment? I'd love to hear your ideas at this point in the course if you'd like to share any with the forum.
Thanks Stacey.
Robert Starks Jr.
We are currently using Facebook, which has helped to track down students/grads. I would really like to implement LinkedIn for the students. Right now upon acceptance into the program they need to turn in a resume, I am thinking to also require them to create a LinkedIn account which will help them network throughout the program, which will really help them with their job search in the end and help us find out where they are working if we are unable to get in contact with them.
