I’m not going to waste your time explaining the importance of social media in the student recruitment process to you. If you work in student recruitment, then you already know how distracted potential students are by social media and their phones.

According to a recent study into teens and media use by Pew Research Centre, 95% of teens now have access to a smartphone, and 45% say they are online “almost constantly.”

Your future (and current) students spend hours per day on social networks sharing their thoughts, opinions, and seeking advice – even about potential universities.

As we covered in a previous post, over 80% of potential university students now use social media to research their university of choice. In other words, prospective students can contact your existing students, which gives them total access to any query they could possibly have about life on your campus.

Pairing social media with Salesforce

If left unchecked, social media use can injure your university’s reputation with these potential students. However, if you can hear what these potential students are saying, discover who you’re competing with, uncover potential concerns, learn the students’ language, and engage with them; then social media can become your most powerful asset in recruiting new students.

Previously, this level of tracking and social media management would require large teams working around the clock. However, a properly implemented Salesforce platform can help even the smallest recruitment team to mine social media for prospective students, whether that’s tracking applicants at their initial touchpoint with your university, right through the entire student lifecycle, or even contacting them as alumni.

With Salesforce, recruiters can build, view, and deliver reports and dashboards themselves, reducing your reliance on your IT staff. You can even dig deeper to see which applicants haven’t completed their requirements for admission.

Alternatively, if you’re tracking your admissions and find that your numbers need a push, then Salesforce lets you easily conduct email campaigns, build online forms, monitor social media conversations, register for events, and automate tasks – all from one easy-to-use, cloud-based application.

How Simplus can help

At Simplus, we’ve partnered with some of Australia’s top universities to help them better track and measure their student experience. Visit our Education Industry page to find out more.

As a Platinum Salesforce partner, we’re backed by Salesforce Ventures, we have full access to the entire suite of Salesforce offerings, and the experience to faultlessly implement them.

From Salesforce CRM, which allow you to better track your existing student experience; to Salesforce for Recruiting, which will enable you to boost recruiter productivity and performance; to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which allows you to drive meaningful and targeted engagement with your target market; our experienced team can tailor a Salesforce Platform to meet your precise needs.