Quick summary of below: We’re seeing unprecedented usage of Conduit, amazing content and events. Below are some items that will hopefully have a positive impact on your team and your student audience! One thing we have been committed to doing is passing key learnings on to you throughout the recruitment cycle so we can adapt and evolve together with the latest insights. If you’d like, click here to schedule a 30 minute strategy call with a member of our senior leadership team to discuss the details below as well as your individual plans.
I’m sure this fall has not been easy for you or your staff. With the industry facing challenges never experienced during a traditional fall recruitment cycle before, here are some lessons, best practices, and enhanced services requests as we head in to the home stretch.
- Event Attendance: We’re experiencing highly variable attendance at live and pre-recorded/simulive presentations this cycle. This, of course, is attributed to “zoom fatigue” and a fragmentation in approaches (i.e. virtual fairs and 1:1 virtual visits creating a lot of noise). With this in mind, pre-recording content and broadcasting as a simulated live event sees the same attendance results as a live event with much greater flexibility for your team. We highly encourage revisiting live event plans and seeing where you can pre-record and host a live chat instead.
- Booking early. Waiting until the week before an event to confirm the date and time is a recipe for rushing and human error. The earlier your events are confirmed means more time for content planning and most importantly event marketing. While we require confirmation the Wednesday before each week, I’d highly encourage locking in as much of your calendar as possible now so we can support you best.
- Closed Captions: There is a national shortage of certified live closed captioning transcribers due to unprecedented demand for live virtual content. With that in mind, the earlier the better when booking live virtual events. While 2 weeks is the minimum, 3-4 weeks has better results. We highly recommend confirming remaining fall and spring virtual yield events ASAP to ensure coverage. Additionally, we can append pre-recorded content with closed captioning at no charge in lieu of a live captioner.
- Election Day: A quick reminder that November 3 is Election Day in the United States. If you are planning a webcast on this date you may consider moving it to accommodate other global priorities your student audience may be focusing on.
- Less is more. One of the reasons why event attendance is so unpredictable is the sheer volume of opportunities being offered to students this cycle. We encourage you to look at your plans and consider breaking longer-form events into a content series progressively throughout the rest of the fall, winter and spring.
We’re seeing such amazing content being produced on the Conduit platform this cycle at engagement levels unseen before. I hope that the above will help you get the most out of your time and resources dedicated to your virtual event strategies.
If helpful, here is a link to my leadership team’s calendar to set up some time to discuss your plans 1:1. We’re happy to hop on and support!
Please never hesitate to reach out if we can be of any support.
Gil Rogers is the Executive Vice President at PlatformQ Education. Gil holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and master’s degree in business administration from the Barney School of Business (CT).