The document discusses how higher education institutions can leverage social media and social CRM to improve the student experience. It provides an overview of how social media can be used throughout the student lifecycle, from recruiting to student success to alumni engagement. Additionally, it outlines best practices for developing a social media plan, including building a team, setting policies, engaging audiences and measuring results.

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Leveraging Social Media and Social CRM to Maximize Student Experience
Bryan Hinz
Apex IT – Principal CRM/CX Consultant
2013

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2
Program Agenda
 Apex IT Overview
 Social Media in the Market Today
 Social CRM/CX Applications
 Social Throughout the Lifecycle
 Creating a Social Media Plan
Program Objective
Learn how Social Media and Social CRM are playing an important role in Higher Education to
improve overall student experience and Success.

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3
Customers
Apex IT Higher Education
Private Public / Non-Profit For Profit Business Schools
2 Year Schools

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4

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5
How Does Social Influence our Behavior?
Social Influence
23.1 MILLION discover new brands through social media
UP FROM 18 MILL. (IN 2010)
22.5 MILLION use social media to learn about unfamiliar brands
UP FROM 20.5 MILL. (IN 2010)
17.8 MILLION
are strongly influenced in their purchase decisions
by opinions in social media
UP FROM 14.4 MILL. (IN 2010)
15.1 MILLION refer to social media before making purchase decisions
UP FROM 10.7 MILL. (IN 2010)
of americans said that social networks
influenced their buying decisions
32%
Last Year
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
of americans said that social networks
influenced their buying decisions
64%
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
BUT THIS YEAR
has the greatest impact on their purchases
47%
said that
facebook

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6
Demographics: Average Age Distribution
Social Media
3/4 of social
media users are
between
25 - 54 years old
70%
Know the audience! Good to know:
 Continuing Education
 Hiring Faculty & Staff
 Alumni Development
? What about High School recruits?

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7
Demographics: Age Distribution per Site
Social Media
22%
High Schooler’s may not be in
the obvious places
? Where are Students?
9%
8%
18 8%
8%
7%

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Demographics: Age Distribution per Site
Social Media
44%
Students are in different places
? Where are Alumni, Faculty, Staff?
33%
31%
18-24
30%
25%
20%

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Demographics: Age Distribution per Site
Social Media
Social not just for recruiting
prospective students
55%
63%
35
65%
79%
? What are the trends?

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10Social Media
Compared to 2.5 years ago
Avg. user age has
gone up 2 years…
getting older
Avg. user age has
gone down 2 years…
getting younger
Demographics: Average Age per Site

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11
Program Agenda
 Apex IT Overview
 Social Media in the Market Today
 Social CRM/CX Applications
 Social Throughout the Lifecycle
 Creating a Social Media Plan
Program Objective
Learn how Social Media and Social CRM are playing an important role in Higher Education to
improve overall student experience and Success.

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12The Social Divide: Constituents and Institutions
Students, Faculty, Staff,
Alumni are social
What about your
Institution?
How do we Bridge the Divide?

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13Social Applications
MARKET
ANALYZEENGAGE
LISTEN COLLABORATE

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Marketing
Social Applications
 Develop and promote your brand
 Manage multiple social networks and
profiles
 Deliver a consistent message across
social channels
 Focus various departments on
shared social media strategies and
goals
 Optimize your social presence to
mobile devices

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Listening / Monitoring
Social Applications
 Capture relevant conversations from
global web and social channels
 Cut through the noise to track key
topics, trends, and influencers
 Understand what people are saying
about your brands
 Identify positive, negative, and neutral
posts with sentiment scoring

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Engaging
Social Applications
 Filter conversations for the right
action by read status, channel,
message type, label, assignee, and
date to expedite access to required
information
 Route messages to appropriate team
members within the recruiting team or
retention organization to best address
the constituent need
 Respond to messages in context, in
real-time
 Grant permissions to the correct
people in the right roles

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Analyzing
Social Applications
 Track Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) to understand how customers
view your brand
 Analyze emerging trends, spikes,
and anomalies
 Monitor relevant conversations that
uncover unmet needs or underserved
segments
 Improve your social footprint by
continual adjustments
 Keep tabs on your competitor
schools by viewing their social media
presence, conversations, and
perceptions and compare against your
brand

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Collaborating
Social Applications
 Collaboration through contextual
conversations and real-time updates
 With students, faculty, staff, alumni
 Embedded into CRM application
 Follow or pin Students, Companies,
Inquiries and other transactions
 File sharing collaboration

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19Let’s Apply This to the Constituent Lifecycle
Use Cases

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20Let’s Apply This to the Constituent Lifecycle
Recruiting Use Case
HS Seniors prefer to go to colleges' Facebook
pages for information about social life65%
HS Seniors Watched a YouTube video created
by a school57%
HS Seniors want to connect to a current
student on Facebook75%
said a college or university’s presence on a social
media made them more interested in applying22%BUT ONLY

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21Let’s Apply This to the Constituent Lifecycle
Use Case: Recruiting
MARKET ENGAGELISTEN COLLABORATE
 Make sites visible from your
homepage
 Listen for various key works
(school abbreviation)
combined with topics (sports)
 Across multiple social sites &
blogs
 Filter by sentiment
 Continually narrow results
 Generate an audience list
 Communicate to recruits,
tailoring the message by
channel
 By department
 Link recruit’s social profile to
CRM Constituent record
 Recruiter can message to
recruit with real-time
information
 Recruiters can create
discussion forums about high
schools where they’ve had
success
 Recruiters can collaborate on
events
 Create blogs and forums for
students to interact with
recruits (or recruits with other
recruits)
 Posts on Facebook that
cover a wide range of
topics. Drive “likes”!
 Tweet relevant material
to the audience.
Make strong use of hash
tagging relevant key words
 Create student interaction /
reference videos on
YouTube
#

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22Let’s Apply This to the Constituent Lifecycle
Use Case: Student Success
MARKET ENGAGELISTEN COLLABORATE
 Communicate about on-
campus events and news
 Educated on Student Life
Services (tutoring, career
placement, clubs, etc.)
 Create loyalty with surveys
and contests
 Advertise Bookstore
 Offer students to submit self-
service requests via social
media (logging a service
request ticket via Facebook)
 Listen for positive posts &
tweets
 Listen for negative posts &
tweets… respond quickly
 Negative sentiment may be a
sign of an At-Risk student
 For At-Risk students, have
Advisor reach out
 For positive messages, offer
“pats on the back”, discounts
to athletic events, student
union, etc.
 Create a social profile of the
student in CRM
(preferences, sites, etc.)
 Student Life to managed
discussion forums
… between students
… between students and
Alumni
… between students and
potential employers
 Online group chats between
professors and students in
class
 Study groups on various
topics

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23Let’s Apply This to the Constituent Lifecycle
Use Case: Alumni Development or HR Talent Acquisition for Faculty & Staff
MARKET ENGAGELISTEN COLLABORATE
 Create a social profile of
alumni in CRM (preferences,
sites, etc.)
 Message/Advertise on
different sites (LinkedIn)
 Listen for various key works
(school abbreviation)
combined with topics (sports)
 Across multiple social sites &
blogs
 Filter by sentiment
 Continually narrow results
 Generate an audience list
 Tailor the message by
channel
 By department
 Can message to alumni or
recruit in real-time (twitter,
facebook, linkedin, etc.)
 Create blogs and forums for
alumni to interact with faculty
… or each other
… or prospective students
 HR can collaborate with
Hiring Managers about a
position or Job Fair

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24
Program Agenda
 Apex IT Overview
 Social Media in the Market Today
 Social CRM/CX Applications
 Social Throughout the Lifecycle
 Creating a Social Media Plan
Program Objective
Learn how Social Media and Social CRM are playing an important role in Higher Education to
improve overall student experience and Success.

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25
With 95% of college admissions offices
using some form of social media…
you’ll need a social media strategy to
differentiate your organization from the
other 20,000 colleges and universities
around the world vying for student
attention
Developing a Social Media Plan

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26Developing a Social Media Plan
1 Build a Social Media Team
 Social Media Manager owns the social
media initiative
 Community Managers will be the face
and voice of your brand, out on the front
lines of Twitter and Facebook
 Social Strategists will be measuring and
analyzing your social media efforts
 Content Creators can write blog posts,
ad copy. Content Producers to handle the
design and technical side of production.
 Editor is responsible for meeting content
quality and publishing deadlines
2 Set Up a Social Media Council
 Social Media Manager oversees the council
 Create and update policies and guidelines
 Approve new social media channels
 Ensure consistent branding and messaging
 Identify social medial tools, coordinate
integration with other systems
 Share best practices throughout the institution

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27Developing a Social Media Plan
3 Draft a Social Media Policy
 Review other school’s and corporation’s
policies
 Leverage the in-house lawyer
 Remind of individual responsibility and
liability
 Staff must post disclaimers that they do
not speak for the organization
4 Train the Staff
 Anyone from Admissions to Athletics to Alumni
may be using social media to engage with your
community
 Prepare them
 Answer the questions:
– What is social media?
– Why does social media matter (to me
personally, and to this school)?
– How do I use social media?
– What is our social media policy?
– How do I engage with our community?

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28Developing a Social Media Plan
5 Develop a Plan
 Segment your Audience
 Define Goal / Objective
 Determine Social Channels
 Develop Content (themes & topics)
 Write an Engagement Playbook
 Use a Content Calendar to track
development and timing of messages
6 Engage
 Execute the Plan
– Give a glimpse of campus life
– Tell Stories about Student Success
– Reward Fans
– Foster Discussion
– Spread the Good News
 Provide a medium for students, faculty, parents,
and alumni to provide feedback

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29Developing a Social Media Plan
7 Listen & Adjust
 Measure fans and followers (your Reach)
 Compare Results to Goals
– Increase in Donations?
– Increase in Student Applications?
– Increase in Retention?
 Bring feedback back to Council
 Continually Improve
8 Get Social!
 Start Small
 Focus on Your Objectives
 Then Grow

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Contact Information:
 Bryan Hinz
 bryan.hinz@apexit.com
 612.964.5596