Are you holding your webchat events at the right time?

The New York Times recently published an interactive graphic displaying the results from the American Time Use Survey.

On the blog, Boomers vs. Millennials, writer, Carol Phillips, makes this observation on the millennial generation’s time shift, “…that Millennials appear to be ‘nocturnal’, here’s the evidence. They go to bed later and sleep later than any other age group. At 11:11AM, 11% are still sleeping; at 11:10 PM 53% are still awake with 14% watching TV or movies, 6% socializing, and 3% talking on the phone. Interestingly, just 2% are doing homework.”

Use this data to guide your webchat session time schedules. Your attendance rates will increase if you can adapt to the time shift. Try holding webchat sessions after 11am or in the evening to capture a greater audience.

When too many people show up for a chat

Some problems are good to have. If you’ve scheduled a chat event that’s so popular and well-promoted that you’re over capacity, you should congratulate yourself. And then take these steps to make sure everyone gets to participate in your chat.

Leverage your popularity to promote your institution

Before the chat event, it’s a good idea to see how many attendees have registered. If it even looks like you’re getting close to capacity, you may want to reach out to everyone using email, a blog post, or whatever media works best for you.

Your message can start with “Due to the extraordinary level of enthusiasm, we may not be able to accommodate everyone.” From there, you can mention the date and time of a future chat event, offer a transcript of the highlights, or some other benefit.

You could also do this right after the event, apologizing to anyone who was unable to attend. The key is to emphasize that there was a great demand for this event. This popularity makes you look good–and ultimately makes you more popular.

Tweak your message

Using the latest version of University WebChat, anyone who tries to get into a full chat room will see a message that says “chat room full.”

In the near future we’ll be releasing a new version of University WebChat which will allow you to customize this message. You can use this feature to offer future chats and other alternatives for those who didn’t get in, as mentioned above. You can also include a subtle brag about the exceptional turnout for your chats.

Take the easy way out

Most admissions professionals opt for a simpler solution. They upgrade to a package that allows them to have a higher number of chatters. Remember, you can use University WebChat as often and as long as you want. The only limitation is the maximum number of chatters you can have at one time.

But if you need to go over this limit, you can upgrade any time, at very affordable rates. Having more attendees is a great problem to have, but it’s still a problem.

If you haven’t yet set up your own chat room with your institution’s branding and logo, you can create one in minutes with the permanent URL of your choice at https://www.universitywebchat.com/manage/signup/.

Did I mention there’s a free version? You can also upgrade to accommodate more chatters at any time.

oops…I forgot to ask

For some college bound students, the campus visit can result in a lot of missed opportunities. Students often wish that they had done more during their trip; more research on the school, talks with current students and general exploration on foot. A lot of students say they wish that they had gotten to know the admissions office better during their visit. Prospective students often have a lot more questions than answers after returning home.

Focused help web chats can get to those nagging questions that remain after a campus visit. Invite your last campus tour group to chat with an admissions expert. Get ahead of the students, anticipate their questions and concerns and be ready for them. They are now going to be ready to hear detailed information about filling out applications, applying for financial aid, etc.

When a rival university infiltrates your chat

I recently heard a troubling story about some unethical people in our profession. I hope this doesn’t happen very often, but here’s what to do if the situation comes up.

An admissions officer held a webchat for applicants who had been accepted but had not yet decided whether to enroll. Things were going smoothly, but apparently someone from a competing institution decided to crash the party.

Our friend got suspicious when one of the chat participants kept asking leading questions. She would give the chatter a reply, and chatter would say “But at UNIVERSITY XYZ they do it this way.”

It was clearly someone marketing for the other university, trying to steal these ideal prospects.

Fortunately UWC has an elegant “boot” tool to kick such disrupters out of the room. You can also set up a separate room for other chatters when booting isn’t appropriate, as in the case of helicopter parents. And our new WebChat 2.0 has a lot of great new features, free to all our users.

If you haven’t yet set up your own chat room with your institution’s branding and logo, you can create one in minutes with the permanent URL of your choice at https://www.universitywebchat.com/manage/signup/.

Did I mention there’s a free version? You can also upgrade to accommodate more chatters at any time.

Connect the dots from the virtual world to the real world

The college visit is make or break time. It’s really important that your marketing approach prepares potential students for the actual visit, so make sure that all your outreach materials are authentic to your school.

Common college visit turnoffs are issues with the campus atmosphere and the tour guide. Visitors won’t like if the campus feels like a ghost town or is too quiet. A bigger deal breaker is if the tour guide is not personable or worse, students complain of feeling judged or unworthy to be considering the school by their guide.

Students want a campus to feel vibrant and active. Posters and signs of student and political activity are two ways that students get a sense of an engaged campus. The campus visit can also benefit enormously from student guides and speakers that are currently a part of campus life. Students really want to listen to their peers to feel like they are getting the “real” story on the school.

A great way to get visitors prepared for the campus visit is to hold a webchat with your expected visitors a few days prior to the event. Not only will you be able to answer any final questions, you can gain insight on what kind of experience the students are expecting and this can help you prepare and adjust.

To learn about how to use University WebChat to market to Millennials, join us for a free, live webinar tomorrow, July 21st at 1pm PST. Register now!

Infrequently Asked Questions

College applicants share a lot of common concerns over the admissions process, such as deadlines, academic requirements, and how to apply for financial aid. These are easily handled in print. More difficult to address are the infrequently asked questions. “Who picks my roommate?” “Is there a fencing club on campus?” Live webchats can give you an opportunity to answer questions that applicants might otherwise feel are too too silly to ask in person.

Why not compile a list of the most unusual questions (with answers!) that you have fielded? This can create an ice breaker moment in the chat, and open up the field for the sort of off-the-wall questions that can end up making an applicant’s decision.

Avoid attrition with summertime chats

A few months ago, the New York Times ran an article about the many new factors that make it so hard to know just how many students are actually going to register in the fall.

First, there’s the new problem of “stealth applicants” who gather information online, anonymously, before applying. It’s very hard to predict or track these applicants, and once they do apply it’s still difficult to read their level of commitment and interest.

Then there’s the “melting” phenomenon–some who are accepted don’t enroll, and some who enroll just don’t show up in the fall.

How can you address this problem?

Our short answer is to keep the lines of communication open. The corollary is that you should offer a few open lines to begin with.

Online, you can encourage stealth applicants to reveal themselves sooner by offering ways to interact, from surveys to message boards to live chats.

As you get more and more applicants interested in your institution, you can use summertime chats to cement the relationship. Inviting your applicants and enrollees to meet faculty, staff, and each other through live chat is a low-cost way to establish deeper relationships early on.

This will help shorten the time that stealth applicants remain in the shadows. And if it doesn’t positively increase the number of applicants who ultimately register, at least the level of involvment in these chats will give you a rough gauge of the level of genuine interest.

Best of all, these summertime chats will pay dividends over the long term. You’re creating a positive experience for incoming Freshmen that will help build a stronger campus community. You may inspire the newcomers’ younger friends and siblings to apply in the future.

Summer is traditionally a period of downtime in academia, but if you’re willing to liven things up a little bit, you’ll be well rewarded further down the road.

How many moderators do you need for a webchat?

When you’re planning a large webchat, you may be wondering how many of your people need to be present to field all the questions that come up. Here’s the good news.

When a participant asks a question, other people on the chat are probably thinking about the same question, so you’ll almost never have to worry about 15 chatters asking questions at the same time.

It’s our experience that one moderator for every 15 chatters is ideal. 15 chatters may seem like a lot for one person to handle, but there are ways to make this easier.

The best tactic is to make sure that your moderators are in contact with each other, and you can decide who will handle each question as it comes up.

If you’re not in the same room during the chat, a conference call will work. When a new question pops up, Moderator A can say, “I’ll handle Jack’s question. Can you answer Jill’s question, Moderator B?”

Current Students and the Job Market

While surveys suggest that most Millennials aren’t overly concerned about the economy or the job market, reality may paint a bleaker picture.

According to JobWeb.com, employers expect to hire 22 percent fewer college graduates this year than they did in 2008. This has implications and offers an opportunity for admissions professionals.

Your institution probably holds some sort of job fair. You may have alumni visit the campus and talk about their careers. An obvious next step is to hold web chats with currently enrolled students to discuss the job market.

And if this is happening, why not make it a part of the recruiting process. As has been noted on our blog and elsewhere, students today really view their education as an investment. Long before they matriculate, they may be asking themselves what kind of return on their investment they can expect.

Don’t be shy in discussing realities, because the reality is ultimately in your favor. Having an education is the best way to increase one’s chances of employment and to ensure higher earnings from that employment. Few institutions make this a noticeable part of their marketing, for many reasons.

But if you have career counselors discussing the reality in a chat session, and you have alumni chatting about their real-world experiences, your institution will gain a lot of credibility for this transparency.

Research shows that Millennials are keenly aware of “B.S.” They greatly value when someone is “being real,” all the more so when that someone is a college or university they’re thinking about attending.

This is a provocative way to use live web chats. If you have the stomach for it, the rewards could be tremendous.

Helping Your Applicants in a Recession

Students want to know a lot of things before they choose where to enroll, and many of their questions can’t be answered by a website or a college catalog.

In-person campus visits have long been the way to learn first-hand about an institution and to meet students, faculty and staff. But even in good economic times some families can’t afford to travel.

In today’s economy, you need to find ways to make up the lost connections that a campus visit normally provides. There may not be a single answer, but a combination of online and offline resources can help bridge the gap.

Live chat sessions should be a key ingredient in the mix. They’re the only way you can offer spontaneous, instant interaction between multiple people. If you have a scheduled chat event, or regular “office hours” when there’s an open chat room, be sure to explain this to applicants who live out of state, and certainly to international students.

If your website has a page about campus visits, this would be a good place to post information about your chats.