Social Media and Community Engagement Strategy for GradPrep
I was asked by a grad prep startup to create a social marketing plan for their new online community targetted towards prospective law and mba students.
The basic concept I sketched out follows some simple principles involved in creating personal relationships with individual visitors by engaging them in the process. The ideas are based on personal consultative selling and permission marketing driven by internet communities, blogging, and social networking.
The 6-step process is outlined below with details for general activities and promotions involved in each step from attention to delivery.
Principles:
- Turn Strangers into Friends, Friends into Customers, and Customers into Marketers
- Create messages that are anticipated, personal, and relevant (Seth Godin, Permission Marketing)
Main Incentives to visitors for joining:
- Monetary reward
- To be heard
- Expand relevant knowledge
Step 1: Gain Attention:
The goal here is obvious, to catch the eye of prospective customers.
You can achieve this through online advertising, such as Facebook fan pages, events and ads or Google adsense.
Physical advertising is always an option, such as flyers at the admissions and advising offices or testing facilities and career centers.
Event promotions are another great way to attract visitors. Meetings with student orgs, professors and faculty, or influential student leaders are a great start. Marketing at career fairs or in newspapers, magazines and trade publications is another option. You could even hold Q&As, coffee talks, happy hours, study groups, or discussion forums.
Step 2: Create Interaction:
Once you have their attention, you want to captivate your customers long enough to deliver your message and open the floor for a meaningful dialogue. The secondary objective here is to create interaction remarkable enough to pass along to friends.
For this step refer back to the principles of incentives. Customers want to be heard, so offer polls, reviews, ratings, and content submission.
Customers want to expand their relevant knowledge, so offer info such as 'which school is best for me', or reviews and walkthroughs for the application process.
Step 3: Encourage opt-in
At this point you want site visitors to sign-up to receive updates and volunteer to continue the relationship building process so you can build trust and eventually create a satisfied customer.
you need to create an incentive for them to opt-in to a mailing list that will send meaningful content, updates, and added bonuses. Incentives may include exclusive free content such as getting started guides, interviews, faqs, a trial period for premium services, or contest entry for prizes and scholarships.
You also need for them to opt-in to the idea of frequently returning to your site. The primary way to do this is to drive revisitation through the mailing list, and to update often.
Step 4: Develop Trust
This is the bread and butter of the site's content, as showcased in the news, blog, and Grad 101 sections. Here, through message and frequency you develop a relationship with your visitors to establish a credible history and reduce barriers to commitment.
Pique visitor interest through scannable, sharable content such as stories, quotes, top 10 lists, or blog posts from students going through the application process. Foster a community by adding ratings, reviews, forums, and story submissions. Provide helpful resources such as books, links, and guides. Establish credibility with success stories, referrals and recommendations.
Step 5: Engage Customer
By this point you've established a connection with your reader base from your free content, this is where you encourage them to commit to your premium offerings and upgrade their accounts.
Premium offerings could include one-to-one chats, personal consulting, mentorship, application and resume review, and test and interview preparation.
Step 6: Reward Referral
Now that you've taken the time to create a customer, you need to encourage and reward them for spreading the word to create a buzz. This is in addition to all the previous activities that will naturally create buzz-worthy news that people want to share.
Referral programs should include nominate-a-mentor, refer-a-friend, and blog linkbacks.
