Signs Your College Needs Help Engaging Prospective Students
If an institution’s enrollment office spends thousands of dollars on “name buys” to dump in the fancy new CRM, yet fails to invest in student engagement, I guarantee that institution will not reach its maximum enrollment potential. Here are a few warning signs that indicate an institution needs help with student engagement:
- Not understanding the difference between engagement and communication
- Creating facebook groups for accepted students
- Having student ambassadors write blog posts for the website
- Assuming the young twenty-something admission counselor is a social media pro
- Believing traditional social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are all that’s needed to engage prospective students
- Sending a bazillion emails to prospective students
Don’t get me wrong. Several of these warning signs are not entirely bad. What I am stressing is that marketing to, and engaging prospective students has rapidly changed over the past 10 years. Why create facebook groups for accepted students when they have increasingly abandoned that social network in the past few years? Why assume your institution’s popular Snapchat account is effective when there’s no way to provide analytical data to support that claim? Why believe a twenty-something knows how to leverage social media just because they have always used social media?
If you’re a VP, director, or dean of enrollment, and know you need help in mastering the art of student engagement, please send me a message. I am thrilled to finally be in a position to help colleges and universities reach their enrollment goals.
