Here’s a nifty little Gen Y recruiting tactic

From a lofty mountain peak in Colorado, Timothy Wihera offers a recruiting tool on Brazen Careerist that you could probably apply to your recruiting efforts.

He talks about a company called Which Wich that gives you a free sandwich if you bring in a picture of yourself and a Which Wich bag on one of Colorado’s highest peaks.

Timothy Wihera suggests ways that management could adapt this to a type of “Employee of the Month” program, honoring employees who bring in photos of themselves doing something awesome. It’s a win-win, because employees get some recognition and appreciation for something that really matters to them, and management gets to really know the employees better.

I can see lots of ways you could make this work as a recruiter. Collect photos and videos of your students doing interesting things while wearing an official campus jersey or hoodie. Offer free lunch to applicants who send in pictures, videos or stories about applying to your institution.

In fact, you could offer a really good prize for the best applicant photo, and stimulate a wave of interest in your campus. Anyone who enters the contest is clearly a good lead, so this can be a really practical tactic.

You’re going to get a wealth of creative content when you start doing this. Be sure to share it on your blog, website, FaceBook and…you get the picture, I hope.

By the way, send us a picture of you or your colleagues successfully doing this, and we’ll give you a free webchat account.

Now that you’ve got social media, make it work!

I would have missed out on this excellent article if Gen Y blogger Crystal Olig hadn’t brought it to my attention. (We’re trying to get her to post something on our blog, so stay tuned!).

About two weeks ago, Advergirl cited some interesting stats on social media use by colleges, but she went a step further and noted four institutions that got some tangible success out of their use of social media.

The secret isn’t just to get the maximum number of fans on your FaceBook page.  The winners got there by “understanding the needs of their audience, setting clear objectives and then picking the tactic that makes the most sense to deliver results.”

Obvious stuff, perhaps, but not always easy to put into practice. Advergirl gives four very different examples of campuses that did it.

Teen-written report disses Twitter, gives Millennial take on other media

When media mogul Rupert Murdoch was recently asked if he planned to buy Twitter, he said “no.” When asked if he planned to sell MySpace, he replied, “Hell, no!”

This simple formula of “social media-good, Twitter-bad” has been confirmed by 15-year-old Matthew Robson, who wrote a report for Morgan Stanley, “How Teenagers Consume Media.”

Click on the link above for the complete text of the report. Or read on, for some of the highlights:

• The two problems with Twitter are that complete strangers can follow you, and frequent texting can quickly become an unwanted expense that’s better spent on friends.
• Long-lasting batteries, touch screens, and devices that can connect with the internet are “in.”
• Black and white screens, or anything with wires, are “out.”
• Video games are highly popular,  and offer a lot of potential for marketers.

I don’t know exactly how you’ll apply this to recruiting Millennials in higher education, but it’s worth some thought. The type of information you produce and the ways you disseminate it should be determined by the devices young Millennials are using, and the media they enjoy.

Generation Y to researchers: Don’t get all atwitter over Twitter data

At University WebChat we’re ahead of our time. We’ve been talking about Twitter since as far back as the fall of 2008, when we discussed it in detail in our white paper and only a few million people knew what it was.

Now everybody’s climbing over their keyboards to get on Twitter. Even Oprah. “Celebrity Twitterer” is the new buzzword.

Then the quicksand began to ooze. At the beginning of this week, the Participatory Marketing network set the blogosphere on fire by citing some of the latest research, suggesting that Twitter is the stomping ground of Gen Xers like me. Millennials don’t do it, don’t get it, don’t like it, don’t want it.

Okay, so social media is good for marketing to and recruiting Millennials, except for Twitter, right?

Not so fast. There has been a battle all over the blogosphere and the Twittersphere between people who jump on the bandwagon and praise Twitter (often citing the research to promote their own agenda) and those who denounce the study. And then there’s a hopelessly convoluted mess of pundits who deftly grab a few valid points from each side.

I made a few halfhearted attempts to follow and understand the debate, and ultimately chose to ignore it. But just this afternoon I read another post on the matter that reminded me of what’s really important here.

Guest blogger Joe Flowers, a Millennial who apparently also qualifies as a 26-year-old Gen Xer, applies a light saber to the Gordian Knot of the Twitter debate. He basically points out the flaws of both sides in an intelligent yet laugh-out-loud sarcastic way.

If you’ve got five minutes to spare, you really should read his post, just for the entertainment value. Every graduate school should be wanting people like him to enroll.

What he doesn’t flat out talk about, although it’s implied in almost every word, is the importance of authenticity. These crazy, time-wasting debates usually come up because someone puts self-promotion ahead of simply being honest and sincere. Whenever this happens, bureaucracies respond by dumping a bunch of  money into the non-issues that emerge, everyone else jumps in to give their two-cents’ worth, and it’s all downhill from there.

So what should we do?

Lindsay Schutte offers some good, actionable advice in her post: Don’t chase latest technology.

This isn’t about Twitter. It’s about being real. Millennials know when you’re not.

What could happen when you give up a bit of control to Millennials?

Earlier this month Doritos finished up an 11-week campaign in Canada for a new tortilla chip flavor. This wasn’t your usual string of “professional” ads, either. Not only did they target Millennials in the campaign, they gave it to the Millennials.

The campaign essentially was a contest for a new flavor and a 30-second advertisement. What’s really cool is that participants submitted their entries through a special interactive website. More than 30,000 people became “fans” of the Doritos Guru FaceBook page, and sales went up 22% during the campaign.

The most impressive part of the story, however, was an observation made by Calvin Leung in an article in Canadian Business Magazine.  He pointed out that the contest “handed control of its image over to kids — a dare that doesn’t always have pleasant results.”

This is probably a big concern for marketers in any industry, including that of higher learning, where a certain image must be maintained.  Any time you give that kind of control over to a younger generation, there’s a risk that some of them will mock you or insult you.

But consider the end result. In the Doritos case, they had a dramatic upsurge in sales and brand recognition, while the downside was a perhaps a few off-color comments on their FaceBook wall. Wouldn’t you like to make a comparable trade-off for your institution?

Campus recruiters should follow what companies are doing

A few days ago, Dan schawbel did a post on IgniteBLOG about the use of Social Media to recruit Millennials. He was talking about businesses looking for Millennial employees, but the parallels are astounding.

You could easily replace the word “companies” with “universities” and the word “employees” with “students.” The advice would be sound. The core of the whole post is about halfway down, where he says,

Companies should be building Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that bring their companies to life, including videos of employees talking about their experiences and pictures from their offices. They need to be proactive in connecting with Gen Yers by engaging in conversations that are already happening online.

I think there is a shortcoming that many institutions of higher education can easily fix. If a Millennial comes to your website, there’s a good chance they’ll find a blog, videos, valuable comments from current students and other important content.

What’s missing is that many Millennials who would be a great fit at your institution will never see your website. That’s where it pays to go where the Millennials are hanging out. On FaceBook. Simply transferring your school’s best content to a few social media sites could make a difference in the number of qualified applicants you get next year.

And you might even change a kid’s destiny.