I’m coming to the end of my time on the Search and Social Media Marketing course at the Universtiy of Salford and it’s time to look back and analyse what I’ve learned and how I can best put it to use at work.

Let me start off by introducing myself . I‘m Rachael and I currently work in a full mix marketing role for international student recruitment at the University of Salford. My role involves all elements of the marketing mix from marketing and advertising strategy to marketing communications to writing for the web to finally….social media!

My experience of social media is somewhat of a mixed bag. Personally I’m a big user of social media with profiles on facebook, twitter, linkedin, bebo(i know, im too old), pinterest…..but professionally there have been some nerves. This is where the course has informed me and given me some ideas for future working. But let’s start at the beginning.

Where are we now?

Working for a large public sector organisation, we’re not the most dynamic or organised when it comes to embracing “new technologies” on a wide scale. What tends to happen, which I suspect may be the same across many industries, is that you have a large handful of people across the organisation who are particularly interested in social media (and I count myself in this group) who try to use this for professional purposes. And then you have the rest!!! There is somewhat of an ingrained fear that there are so many platforms we wouldn’t know where to start or that we will post something unsuitable, and inadvertently take down the organisation in one foul tweet, which all too often results in an “if you can’t do it all, do nothing” approach.

So, what happens?

When there is a culture like this I suppose it makes sense that we stick to the main platforms that even the most anti-social media among us have had some exposure to, ie Facebook and Twitter. This at the very least gives us a social media presence if only for back and forth communication on a small scale.

What should we do?

This is where I feel the search and social media marketing course has made a real impact on my thinking. I felt at beginning the course that I had quite a decent knowledge of social media. However, what I’ve been missing, and what I feel many marketers in a role like mine are probably missing is the importance of the “search” aspect. This one element should inform the whole of the rest of the strategy – both social and other! Tools like SEOMOZ and Opensiteexplorer, the classic Google analytics and tweetdeck newer tools like found can and should first be used to determine what your customers are searching for and how and most importantly if you’re website and social presence is measuring up – this can then inform how and where you need to engage with them socially.

EG: At the moment we find that international students use our facebook page as a customer service type forum to ask questions . We have always put this down to the fact that the majority of our digital advertising is via facebook and therefore encourages this type of interaction – however, could this actually be a symptom of our website not delivering the answers or that our website is not ranking highly for the search terms they are entering?!

We also use twitter for a more “social” interaction, and I have to admit I’ve been slow to adapt this for the international market due to the nature of enquiry on facebook. I’ve fallen into the trap of fear that I won’t be able to respond in time and it will have a negative impact on our brand!!

The problem is with a small team, we can’t do it all. However, each week following our class I come home with a list as long as my arm of new tools to try new ways of optimizing, new link building ideas and the strong feeling that we are way behind where we need to be.

So, how do we change this?

Well, I think the first step is to look at your target market and look at all of the social media channels available to them. For me, working with international enquirers and applicants I need to be aware of what channels they are using not only to search for courses and universities but also to get more information be it from the uni or from peers. How are they searching? What are the lead in times for the conversion of an international student ie how long before the start of a course do they start to research? Are they using directory sites or are they going straight to google/bing etc. Are they using long or short tail searches? What course titles make sense internationally? Do they search in English or in their own language? Are they social media savvi or would they prefer the traditional contact of email and phone?

It is knowing the answers to these questions that will inform a future social media strategy for the sake of international student recruitment.

And most importantly I need to remember…. you don’t need to be on every platform, just be where your customers expect you to be! Easy eh? I’ll keep you posted on my progress. Thanks for reading.

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