IT’S ALL ABOUT COMMUNITY: Like Clubhouse “rooms” and Facebook groups, Twitter has recently announced their own group gathering space on the platform. ‘Communities’ is a new feature they unveiled at an analyst day presentation (no target launch date yet). “We're working to create a product experience that makes it easier for people to form, discover, and participate in conversations that are more targeted to the relevant communities or geographies they’re interested in,” Twitter wrote in a slide.
Why you should care: As an enrollment marketer, tapping into communities is critical. While presenting moderation challenges, Facebook groups for stakeholders like alumni and current students are effective ways to maintain brand allegiance and cultivate ambassadors. Now, Twitter offers its twist on this feature, paving the way for these groups to form on their site. Enrollment marketers could create or participate in groups about their programs or related industries. This gives them the ability to organically reach micro-targeted community audiences across social platforms and be part of their conversations. Along with paid social advertising, investing the time and effort into these groups could prove incredibly worthwhile.
SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS TO MIND: In a recent column in Inside Higher Ed, Liz Gross writes that higher ed marketers are measuring social media through all of the wrong metrics. Social media endeavors need to be measured against campus priorities, she says, not just indicators like followers, engagements and impressions. “Measuring the entire social media conversation about your institution -- not just your contribution to it -- along with direct goal-related conversions prompted by social media content is a better way to assess your social media efforts,” Gross writes.
Why you should care: Paying attention to social listening metrics will give you the opportunity to hear what people are saying about your institution, shifting the focus from the content you’re producing toward the conversation about your brand, Gross says. These brand metrics include total conversation volume (the number of times your institution is mentioned), earned conversation (the mentions that don’t come from students, prospects and alumni), and voices (the number of people who speak up). And of course, social media efforts must be measured against key enrollment conversions, she adds, like signing up for a campus visit or starting an application. These metrics can be tracked through web analytics software like Google Analytics or HubSpot.
MYTHS TO LEAVE BEHIND: HubSpot has put together a list of 19 social media myths to forget this year. Whether you’re new to social media management or have been at it a while, you may want to scan through the post and see if there are any fables you’ve unintentionally bought as truth. These include messages like: multiple hashtags are essential, an omni-channel approach is the superior route to take, bottom-line metrics aren’t possible, and you need to have lots of fresh content to post to sustain a platform.
Why you should care: There are important ways enrollment marketers can measure the return on social media, as we discussed earlier. Providing that you have the right tools in place, “you can identify exactly how much traffic social media drives to your website, how many leads social media generates, and how many of those leads become customers,” Corey Wainwright says. For enrollment marketers, those customers can be deemed app starts or enrolled students. As far as the content conundrum, it’s often a challenge for strapped higher ed marketers to invest in new assets, but that’s where remarketing comes in. Repurposing your existing content and continually promoting evergreen pieces will help fuel your social media engines. Check out our post on The Enrollify Blog for tips and ideas!
Each week, The Enrollify Podcast equips you with insights into how the latest trends in marketing and technology are affecting enrollment managers. Every episode is designed to inspire new, creative ideas for how to optimize the resources you have to generate the results you need.