11ish Takeaways from the 2014 Higher Education Summit

I had the opportunity to attend the SalesForce Foundation’s 2014 Higher Education Summit in Tempe, AZ earlier this month – my first higher education conference after becoming a “higher education professional” this year. It was a great learning experience with nearly 600 attendees who were very willing to connect and share ideas with each other. In that same spirit I wanted to share some of my takeaways from the conference as well, so here goes:

1) The lack of interdepartmental sharing in HigherEd prevents progress.

Often times the tools, resources and technology exists within a university, but it’s too compartmentalized. Many of your undergraduate students will eventually be good candidates for your graduate school. How much do your undergraduate alumni know about your graduate programs? Did your undergraduate office share information with your graduate school? If the student info isn’t in the same database, then it will difficult to continue cohesive communication.

2) Let students, alumni and faculty post on your social media accounts.

When the same person or people are posting on your Twitter, Facebook and Instagram the content may become boring, causing your students and audience to lose interest. Students that are given the reigns of your accounts understand the responsibility. They don’t want to ruin their own reputation either. The risk is lower than you think.

3) Sharing with the “competition” is okay.

Coming from the promotional products industry, this wasn’t entirely foreign to me, but it was refreshing to see how collaborative everyone is in #HigherEd. The reason why was the cool part about it though: there was a genuine interest in making the educational experience better for students. In the end it’s all about them and the future.

4) Fail quickly and fail often.

The only way to improve is to test the status quo against other ideas. You used this subject line last year for the same email? That’s nice. Try two more this year and compare the results (such as open rate and click through rate). Use data to tell you which one performed best.

Someone on your team thinks a newsletter is a great idea? Give it a shot as long as you can track if people are reading them. Try different layouts, number of articles, images, call-to-actions. If your students aren’t reading it, then you’ll have data to support you in the meeting where you recommend that you stop publishing it. Data > Hunches. Learn from the failure and try a different form of communication until you figure out what your students want to hear from you – and how often.

5) Cleveland fans will gladly accept LeBron James back onto the Cavs if he wishes to return

Three different Cleveland, Ohio residents at the conference who were cheering against the Heat stated that they would like to have James back (as long as he helps them win). I just felt like this is important information that is relevant right now that James has decided to enter free agency again. #Love+Melo2DaBulls!

6) Students are used to a more personalized and intimate level of marketing than universities use

Our students are Amazon.com shoppers, Yelp reviewers, and multi-device aficionados. They are used to their online behavior being tracked and used to receive personalized recommendations. They want to read others’ input and want to be able to offers theirs. They are always connected via smartphone, tablet or PC.

Why can’t your school offer course-recommendations (especially electives) based on students’ backgrounds, class performance and preferences? Why not let students rate courses publicly to keep them engaged with your school? They’re going to do so on RateMyProfessor anyways. Make an app for students and alumni that greets them when they return to campus, sends them information about the building they just entered or notifies them of school events that are happening this week. There is a lot of opportunity to improve our marketing to match what retail and other marketing companies are doing.

7) Our digital identity really matters, both at the personal level and at the university level

Just last year, Kansas made its social media policy much stricter than before because of a professor’s inflammatory tweet after a school shooting (pictured below).

Then, just earlier this year UIUC students spewed hate over Twitter because they didn’t get a day off in cold weather. Believe me I know how the kids must have felt. I too went to U of I and walked down a frozen quad to get to class, but fortunately I am not on Buzzfeed’s list of Tweeters from that day. The fact that social media posts stay with you forever needs to be relayed better to students.

8) HigherEd has not changed with the times, but it will need to sooner rather than later.

One of the speakers talked about how we are no longer buying physical CD’s, we rent or stream books and movies, we don’t even have to own a car because of services such as Zipcar, yet we treat education as a one-time transaction – or as one tweeter quoted: “a capital asset that depreciates over the decades.” Education should be life-long. We should be encouraging our students to think about education this way, but how can we if we don’t practice it ourselves?

Think of your relationships with your students as a life-long commitment, and not just so they’ll donate – but because you want to continue adding real value to their lives besides networking events and homecoming games. Online education is one way many universities are doing this by making learning more accessible. I’m fortunate to be attending and to be working for a program that is on the cutting edge of online education – Kelley Direct.

9) Live-tweeting at conferences is a great way to boost your visibility and online brand.

By tweeting information tagged with the speakers’ Twitter handles and conference hashtag (#hesummit14) you are helping the speakers and the conference organizers reach a broader audience than they would have otherwise. It also helps them understand what resonate well from their presentations. Live-tweeting from a conference with the same hashtag also helps its attendees find each other, makes it easy for them to see what other attendees find important, and in situations where there are multiple sessions going on at once (which was the case at this conference), it lets them easily see what they missed from the speakers next door.

So you’re wondering how this helps you right? I gained over 20 relevant Twitter followers in just those 2 days, and a free book (see above) just by proactively tweeting things that the speakers were saying and conversing with other attendees via social media.

10) You can view your LinkedIn network as a really cool color-coded web map that shows you who is connected to who.

It makes it really easy to see your college network, high school network, friend network, work network, etc. It helped me see how intertwined my college and religious group connections are, and how separate my grad school network is (which is good – I wouldn’t have met these people had I not stepped outside of a Chicago school to pursue my MBA).

This is mine:

Thank you to the people that were sharing this cool feature at the summit! Here’s how to get yours: http://bit.ly/TkJk6F

11) Having a photo of a girl sitting under a tree with books is a crucial part of your college or university’s marketing material.

One of the speakers called out this fact during his speech to much laughter and praise. It’s funny how true it is though. I just searched several university sites and was able to compile this collection of images very quickly:

His point was that we shouldn’t be afraid to think outside the campus quad when we portray ourselves to our students and prospects. You’ll just blend in if you do what everyone else is doing. We spend a lot of time learning about and discussing disruptive innovation in my MBA program because it is critical to surviving in the marketplace.

Ending takeaway: I would love to stay involved in this conversation about improving the relationships we have with students. You can find a list of the active tweeters from the conference here thanks to @SplashEffectCA. Follow people on the list and stay in touch!

What else did you learn at the #hesummit14? Share in the comments below!

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.