The Social Media Guys address the Association of Colleges
The further education sector faces unprecedented pressure on its funding, which makes the use of apparently 'free' social media platforms a crucial part of any strategy to attract students, which is why The Social Media Guys were invited to deliver the opening keynote at the Association of Colleges' Annual Communications Conference in Birmingham.
Well, I say The Social Media Guys, it was actually just two of us, but as Meatloaf sang: 'Two out of three ain't bad' and the keynote was delivered by Internet Psychologist Graham Jones and myself, Berkshire-based social media consultant Nigel Morgan. Missing was of course, Ant Hodges from online marketing consultancy To Infinity The three of us have complementary social media skills and while we often speak together, we also are available independently and in any combination. Ant and myself are working on a presentation for sales directors next month.
As a former Thames Valley Police Press Officer I understand the unique passion that public sector public relations professionals have. That belief was evident in the communications professionals I met from the Association of College's members and consequently they were throroughly engaged in what Graham and I had to say, although the lovely and fulsome introduction from the AOC Director of Communications, Ben Verinder, probably helped.
Being a school governor also made a difference personally as I have first hand experience of the safeguarding issues access to social media can bring, which understandably leads to reluctance among some principals to allow widespread use.
Posing the question, 'Do you really need a website', Graham confounded the audience by telling them their website almost certainly didn't work and how the best ones fulfilled a single use for its visitors and largely were actually written by the same users! Think about Amazon, or Wikipedia - users have created the content that drives more users. Obviously blogging can help and involving students to write them for other students is far more likely to attract visitors than creating brochure like websites.
I talked about Organic PR - the Morgan PR approach to making the most of your publicity opportunities and then how to use them through multiple channels. For example a blog post could be used in promotional material, linked to on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It could create videos for YouTube, photographs for Flickr and ultimately provide the content for press releases.
This should be straightforward for members of the AOC as take up of social media was near universal, although some did relate being prevented over e-safety concerns and a lack of belief in the benefits social media could bring.
I did stress the need to be using social media not only to improve recruitment of students, but also to defend your college in a crisis, especially online. I talked about a viral video that had broken just the day before and is becoming increasingly notorious. Shot on a student's mobile telephone, it shows a seventh-grader Ritchard Gale repeatedly tormenting, shoving and punching 10th-grader Casey Heynes at Chifley College in St. Marys North, Sydney, before the much-larger Heynes body slams Gale and walks away. The College has suspended both students and the student who filmed the incident and is holding an investigation... Meanwhle the video has gone viral and Heynes has become an internet hero and a page on Facebook secured over 100,000 fans inside 72 hours.
Perhaps worse if you Google the school where this happened 'Chifley College' you realise the true impact of that brief mobile phone captured video. The web will ensure the college will be synonymous with bullying for a long time to come!
Graham suggested that Colleges do have the perfect way to combat less than inspiring YouTube videos of their students - hold a video competition and upload all the entries to YouTube and the ensuing traffic will push the unwanted videos further down the search engine pages.
We had lots of questions, mostly around persuading those in charge of colleges to use social media more, although it was encouraging to here other delegates talking about how successful they had been. Many of the delegates came along to to chat to Graham and I after the seminar and during lunch and we were able to help them further with ideas of how their colleges could use social media.
If your business would like to learn more about how social media could benefit your organisation or need an entertaining talk for your conference, do contact The Social Media Guys today and you could experience the same input at the Association of Colleges.