Higher education institutions are facing challenges in engaging millennial students and preparing them for careers in a social business world. Universities can address this by integrating social concepts to more deeply engage students throughout the lifecycle from admission to employment. This involves transitioning students from being personally social on networks like Facebook to being professionally social on LinkedIn. Companies like 7Summits are helping universities build social communities and solutions to connect with prospective students, current students, alumni, and enable this personal to professional social transition. Examples include communities 7Summits created for MSOE to improve admissions and for Northwestern to reengage alumni.

1. Social Business enabling the Enterprise
University
Overview:
In an increasingly competitive market, forward thinking institutions of higher education are integrating
social concepts and practices to gain market share and more deeply engage prospective and current
students, and alumni. Higher education faces two emerging challenges: adapting to how millennial’s
live, interact and learn, and properly preparing students for the emerging social business workforce by
bridging the transition of Facebook to LinkedIn.
Currently, the student lifecycle, college admission to landing a first job, is a largely unmanaged process,
making social evolution a greenfield opportunity for higher education. University graduates experience a
substantial transition in their core knowledge and understanding as well as in how they use social tools,
behaviors, and networks when they enter the workplace. This evolution can be viewed through the
prism of three social personas:
Personally Social: Actively engaged in social
networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.
They are connected to “people” like them, use
social media to find, subscribe and connect to
people and businesses in new ways, and leverage
community input for key decisions like selecting
a university.
Academically Social: Academic “customers” that
freely share their opinions on courses, professors
and campus life. They seek and create
communities where none exist and influence the
decisions of others.
Professionally Social: Alumni who become active on professional networks like LinkedIn. They initially
find jobs by leveraging their academic contacts and then build a professional network to develop
business opportunities and advance their careers.
Institutions that create their own open communities have been proven to have a much greater degree
of credibility and engagement. The opportunity for higher education is to more deeply engage all
aspects of the student lifecycle by bridging the gap between personally and professionally social with
academically oriented social communities

2. 7Summits Social Business Solutions
From strategy to design and build, we have been helping these higher education organizations through
their social business transformation.
Portfolio Highlights
MSOE “Bridge” Admissions Community:
Our team created a purpose built admissions community designed
to allow the MSOE admissions team to connect directly with
prospective students and enrolled students and faculty throughout
the application process.
Notable Success and Highlights:
• Helped MSOE connect with the “Facebook Generation”
• Dramatically improved prospective student retention (25%
improvement)
• Reduced admission cost of sale (decrease invest in
traditional media spend – print, billboard, radio)
• ABET, the accreditation board cited “Bridge” in its annual
review as a strength (the first time ever for a non-academic
feature)
• MSOE recognized as an innovator in the higher-ed space
beating Harvard
• Reduced training time of new admissions councilors staff
PennFoster Student Community:
PennFoster is a career school with students all over the world. The
school came to us because of this vast geographic reach with a
requirement for a powerful community to help support and unite
their prospective and current students, parents, and alumni.
Notable Highlights:
• Community drives enrollment and reputation management
• Highly personalized social content by audience
• Members’ Map, allows students to discover others who share
similar interests or proximity
• Over 1 Million Pages Views a month
• 40,000 registered members and counting

3. Northwestern “Engage” Alumni Community:
Northwestern approached 7Summits to develop alumni community
focused re-engaging their graduates in ongoing conversation and
providing an ability to host and coordinate events.
Notable Highlights:
• 550,000 alumni across all colleges to be invited
• Deep integration with back office to enable seamless
information management
• Digital yearbook
• Interactive digital maps help pinpoint local alumni
Student Lifecycle Stages 7Summits Solution Alignment
Awareness:
 Search and Relevancy
Optimization
 Social Listening and Response
 Activation and Outreach
 Sales Enablement
Relevancy:
 Managed Social Sites
 Social Web Sites
 Social Commerce
 Social Commerce
 Customer Support
Communities
Engage / Retain:
 Customer Service
 Distributed Business
Processes
 Culture and Collaboration
 Social Intranets
Higher Education Related Experience

4. Our Project Experience includes:
• Social Marketing and Outreach: MSOE,
PennFoster, Infilaw
• Customer-centric Communities: MSOE,
PennFoster, Northwestern
• Social Business Management: MSOE,
Northwestern
• Social Business Processes: MSOE,
Nortwestern
• Employee-centric Communities: MSOE,
UW Madison
Highlights:
 Admissions Communities & Alumni
Communities
 Opportunity for “Enterprise University”
 7Summits certified by Education Alliance
 University Press Coverage
 MSOE recognized as Top 10 Innovative
Colleges
 7Summits Excerpt coming in Dr. James
Martin’s Book
 7Summits just won an industry award for the
MSOE Bridge Community