subject: International Student marketing [print this page] International Student marketing International Student marketing
International departments are using as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube for outreach and recruiting which is similar to domestic admissions practices. Some respondents noted using country specific sites in addition.
The responsibility of social media outreach activities fall upon a variety of staff across departments. As institutions learn more about their online community's needs and goals, departments are collaborating and sharing responsibilities to provide relevant information to their online communities.
Videos, pictures and blogs are the most popular content being shared on social networking sites. Half of respondents use alumni and current students to contribute to social networking sites. Of those, international students or alumni write blogs and produce videos about their experience.
University staff use social media to reach international students because students are already there to start a conversation with and because it's cost-effective.
The top three benefits of social media use for international student recruiting and outreach are direct contact with international students, more interaction with prospective students and building better relationships with prospective students and families.
The top drawbacks of social media use are the ambiguous results, the lack of guidelines and information on effective strategies and unfamiliarity with changing technologies.
Like others across industries, international departments are experimenting with different metrics but lack guidelines for measuring efforts and success. Some universities reported using Facebook metrics (though no respondents noted that they count the number of retweets (RT) and mentions (@) on Twitter). Others suggested they measure results by the amount of interactions in their community such as questions and responses and RSVP's to events by students. There was a noticeably lower response rate in the metrics section compared with the previous section.
University staff need to redefine the concept of a lead' from a social site and need to develop a tracking system to follow those leads from first contact on social networking sites through to application and ultimately enrollment.
Universities stressed the lack of guidelines as a challenge to using social media for international student recruitment. There is an immediate need for information on best practices and strategies in the international education community.
