That's great Kallie. Let us know how it works out for your team.
We do not necessarily have a team or individual responsible for social media on a local level. I think the introduction for us would be more along the lines of delegating specific responsibilities to different departments. This way we can have the possibility of multiple views and ideas and the entire campus can be held accountable as a group.
Radio marketing is a terrific PR plan, especially when it's created around a public or community event at your campus. Both the event and the radio spot can help with brand recognition and image. Thanks for your post!
Interesting idea, Michael. How do you think this would help your school? What would you hope to learn?
Kallie,
These are all great ideas! What steps can you take to introduce these ideas to the team that is responsible for social media at your institution?
I would really love to see the #4 Tell The World concept better incorporated in our school. At the time we utilize social media such as Facebook on a regular basis for student, graduate, client and employer interaction, but there are still additional avenues I feel would be beneficial to our campus. The use of Twitter and UTube is something that I believe would make a dramatic impact on our customer service as well as the Admissions and Placement process. I think incorporating something like a Twitter did you know or a shout out to our fabulous students or graduates would showcase the small, family oriented institution that all of our staff is proud of. I also truly appreciated the fact that it gives you an opportunity to directly respond to a complaint or a negative perception prior to the wildfire that can happen when a customer/student/graduate feels as though their needs may not have been addresses. Tell The World is an extremely powerful trend.
I would like to see more radio marketing. It is a great way to get many people into our school to learn about our program as well as the services we provide to the public and the community.
online facelift being able to chat and get feedback through surveys on our schools website.
I would like to see the brands are listening incorporated with our school. We have a high volume of young customers that utilize social media websites and it would be great to be able to respond directly to their concerns.
John, thanks for sharing this piece. So now that you have come up with this concept, who needs to be involved to make something like this happen for your students?
Dr. Jean Norris
I would like our school to allow our students on-line access to their school information. Currently, they have to request the information from the applicable staff member who can print out that information for them.
It would improve our customer service if our students could pay their bill on-line or obtain their grades without waiting for that information to be mailed to them. I think it would help our students feel better connected to the school and it would free the staff to help our students with issues that cannot be handled on-line.
Taking that extra step with or for a student can make the difference between an average or an exceptional experience. Think about the purpose for their visit and ask yourself how you can exceed their expectations. I like your idea to involve other departments. What steps do you think you need to take to make that possible?
My office deals with students face to face. So the customer service we need to implement is going that little bit further for a student. If a student asks for something and it's not quite your department, take them to the department it belongs to don't just say go see so and so. If the department is not there, get some details and tell the student you will see the person and bring it up to them so that when the student gets a chance to come back, the other department has a chance to have the information at hand to answer the question.
It sounds like you understand that we can only change ourselves while we continue to try to influence the big picture. I'm sure your students appreciate your extra effort and hopefully it will help in making memorable experiences for them.
I try to accommodate the student in any way that I am able to. An example of that would be a few times I have stayed late or come in early to meet with a student at a time that is a little more convenient to them. I figure since I can't do anything to change the big picture I try my best to do little things that will hopefully add up to make sure that the students time at our school is a little more enjoyable.
I like where you're going with this. How can you be more student focused within the limits of your current program schedule?
I would love to see our school incorporate "It's no about your product†I feel our school is very much focused on our program (which is our product) and not so much the students (which is our customer).
For example there is no flexibility for our students to adjust their schedule. There is no room for a student to drop from a full time student to a part time student. Pretty much if a student enrolls into the full time program they have to stick with it our drop out. I know a lot of our students are not happy with this. I think that we need to be more focused on our students and accommodating them with their schedules. I can't imagine that a student that drops out because they have scheduling issues and we were unwilling to accommodate them is going to spread the word to people they know that our school is great. I think it will be the exact opposite.
So I'd really like for our school to start focusing on our students and not so much the program. Yes the program is important but there has got to be a way to accommodate our students and their schedules.
Thanks for sharing Carol. How do you think this will help the students?
Personalization for client and students by setting up clinic floor classes. The students can choose which type of class they would like to participate in.
Ralph, you make some great points here. Product knowledge is an extremely important skill that all advisors should have. We also have to be wary of assuming and ensure that our students leave with all of the facts in order to make an informed decision.
Dr. Jean Norris
