Get Connected, Stay Involved, Be Relevant: Part II of International Student Recruitment through Social Media

Any commitment in life should be taken seriously, and, to be done well, should involve a willingness to invest in that relationship, project, or strategy over a period of time. More importantly, to succeed you need to be relevant and appealing whether that be to a significant other, business partner, or institution.


The greatest professional frustration I hear from colleagues in international student enrollment management circles comes when a college/university administration pays only lip service to how much value they place on international students and/or refuses to commit over a period of time to allow a particular change in strategy or the opening of new markets to have a chance of success. Too often administrations that don't understand international markets well (or know the implications of expanded international enrollments on campus life) see full fee-paying students from overseas as quick fixes for enrollment and/or budgetary shortfalls.  That's a topic for another day, but the same commitment to these kinds of strategies as a institution should also apply to outreach conducted through social media.


Get Connected


As I outlined in my previous post, step one is identifying where key student audiences are in target countries/regions, next is establishing a presence on those platforms. Who does that at each institution will vary dramatically depending on the size of the college as well as the marketing and communication/IT office's role on campus. Let's say for argument's sake we say that the admissions or international office that is responsible for recruitment abroad takes on this role. Speaking with one voice is key in this process, which can involve multiple individuals contributing, but certainly makes training an absolute must. One blogger that speaks to the importance of character & commitment in social media is Tony Teegarden. If you are becoming more immersed in this world, give Tony a quick follow.

In social media world, however, it is essential that going in, everyone understands, institutions no longer control the message.  If there are any doubters out there, please have them watch Social Media Revolution 2 (refresh) put out by Socialnomics last year. It really explains the fundamental shift from traditional marketing approaches to a listen first, sell second attitude.


Stay Involved

If there ever was an antithesis formula for success to the Field of Dreams approach, social media is it. Throwing up a page or group on Facebook, simply having a Twitter feed or YouTube channel simply is not good enough. Messaging on a regular basis, responding to comments (especially negative ones),  re-tweeting, sharing, and managing what kind of content gets posted are bedrock essentials that will require continual care to see growth and eventually to bear fruit. Think about a school like MIT, where the admissions office's homepage for at least the last two years, has been driven, content-wise, by student bloggers hired to share their experiences. Similarly, over recent years, the admitted freshmen cohort at MIT have on their own created a Facebook group to which over 85% of their future classmates have become members. Without an office wide commitment to embracing social media from that initial impression of MIT online, several members of the admissions team also regular post on Twitter.


Be Relevant


Interpreting relevancy of messages can often be a moving target, but in admissions circles there are some very core take-aways prospective students should receive: opportunities to interact with current students/staff/alumni, admission requirements/deadlines, aid available, services on-campus, and the all-important "Can I picture myself as a student there?" Internationally, when budgets and travel don't allow admissions staff to get everywhere the students are, social media represents an opportunity, used correctly, to paint these pictures for future students.

• Involve current international students in online chats or virtual events like CollegeWeekLive  
• Post student/alumni testimonial videos on YouTube
• Tweet news on deadlines or upcoming events
• Engage in conversations on Facebook and blogs on topics that matter
• Explore ways to better present your campus via video, e.g.
• Why I Chose Yale?
• Grand Valley State U.'s Lip Dub
• Oregon's Call Me a Duck

One institution that I've seen recently that really gets it when it comes to international admissions is Roger Williams University. Every traveling staff member in their office is required to tweet at least three times a day. Too much? Actually, the simplest things from tweeting interesting articles from the student newspaper, to Twitpic'ing a photo as they stroll across campus, to announcing when a rep will be visiting a country or school, have all produced very positive and engaging content from which international students, who rarely get a chance to visit campus before enrolling, truly benefit. These efforts allow these students to begin to paint their own picture of what their lives might be like at RWU.

What is clear with the rise of social media is that U.S. higher education institutions have new opportunities to better reach their audiences.  The approach, which I'll discuss more in Part III, must have as the end goal to Keep Them Coming Back For More.  Stay tuned after NAFSA for more.

Live Where Your Audiences Live: International Student Recruitment Through Social Media

For as long as I've been in my current position, social media has become a second professional passion of my life, surpassed only by my love of international education.  In the last two and a half years, our EducationUSA network's use of social media is truly transforming and expanding our reach beyond the physical walls of our centers. Later this year we will be launching a useful new tool for prospective students that will be using social media extensively, as we spread the good news about the five steps to U.S. study.


Our chief guiding principle in marketing EducationUSA is to "Live Where Our Audiences Live." Not simply physically, through our network of 400+ centers in 170 countries, but in the virtual world on platforms that our key audiences are using. For purposes of this post, part one of a series on social media in international admissions, we're talking students. 


We all know how Facebook started on a U.S. college campus, and has grown like wildfire to the point now, where recent ComScore data (as reported by InsideFacebook.com) showed that 72% of all U.S. internet users were on Facebook, that works out to over half the U.S. population. While the U.S. is a fairly mature Facebook country with, at present, more baby boomers signing up than any other age demographic, the rest of the world is a different story. Facebook will reach, based on conservative projections, 700 million users worldwide in June. Here are a couple of staggering numbers for international admissions folks to chew on. This data comes direct from Facebook's advertising module.

• 70% of all Facebook users reside outside the U.S.: 490,000,000
• 60% of FB users outside the U.S. are in the college age demographic (16-25 yr. old): 294,000,000

If you haven't already considered using social media more actively in your international student recruitment, these numbers should give you some motivation. To see the incredible growth particularly in the college-age demo in some of the most populous Facebook countries, check out my earlier blog this year. Even more revealing is the level of penetration Facebook currently enjoys in some countries. Social Times, an excellent social media resource/RSS feed to follow, recently profiled the Top Ten Countries Where Facebook Rules that outlined internet usage stats v. Facebook usage where each of the top 10 had more than 86% of its internet users on Facebook. Those 10 countries are:

1. Philippines
2. Israel
3. Turkey
4. Chile
5. Argentina
6. Malaysia
7. Indonesia
8. Peru
9. Colombia
10. Venezuela

But Facebook is not a universally dominant social media platform. I encourage you to check out a recent presentation I gave at the Ohio NAFSA Drive-In Meeting in April, that highlights some of the other fascinating facts on other social media platforms that enjoy dominant market positions in certain countries. 

Here are just a few places where Facebook doesn't rule (yet):

• China – Renren (Facebook knockoff), QQ (like MSN Messenger chat), and others including Youku (YouTube ripoff), and Sina Weibo (Twitter clone) 600 million internet users
• Russia – Vkontakte, Russian language, 111 million users globally
• Netherlands – Hyves, 11 million (2/3rd of Dutch population)
• Japan – Mixi, but Twitter is about to surpass Mixi in terms of total users
• Brazil – Orkut, but Facebook and Twitter gaining fast

Happy hunting, everyone.  


For those who'd like to connect IRL and talk more about these topics, I'll be at our EducationUSA Pavilion in the NAFSA Expo Hall in Vancouver Tuesday-Friday next week (May 31-June 3), booth #537, so please stop by to say hello!


Part two, next week, from Vancouver, will focus on how to approach social media in international admissions-Get Connected, Stay Involved, Be Relevant.

http://issuu.com/martybennett/docs/socialmedia-in-international-recruitment