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Real stories of change

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Each month, the TargetX Campus Visit Consulting team has been featuring stories of change from current clients, tips we have learned on campus and/or trends we have seen that impact higher education.

These posts (the “Three T’s: Talks, Tips and Trends”) are designed to illustrate that change takes time and change faces challenges. Campus visit tips can take all forms and the trends we see in our everyday lives impact the visit and the students we are trying to recruit.

When you read the posts, we want you to think about the experiences you have had that shaped the way you approach recruiting students at your school.

This month, Jennifer McLendon of the University of North Texas talks about how ...

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Categories: Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Campus Visit Talk, Campus Visit Three T's, Change, Storytelling, Student Workers

Campus Visit Talk: Jennifer McLendon and University of North Texas

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Each month the Experience Team from TargetX will share with you a Campus Visit Tip or Trend and Talk. All of the “three T’s” are designed to give you a bit of insight into the work we do, the people we work with and the places we pull our inspiration from. Here is this month’s “Talk”.

This month’s featured Talk is with:
Jennifer McLendon
Visitor Experience Manager
University of North Texas, Campus Visit Client since 2008

Q: How did you work to create change within your campus visit?

I’ve been the Visitor Experience Manager for my alma mater, the University of North Texas, for over 11 years now. During that ...

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Categories: Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Campus Visit Talk, Campus Visit Three T's, Campus Visit Tip, Campus Visit Trend, Change, Storytelling, Student Workers, Uncategorized

Campus Visit Talk: Brittney Joyce and Furman University

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Each month the Experience Team from TargetX will share with you a Campus Visit Tip, Trend and Talk. All of the “three T’s” are designed to give you a bit of insight into the work we do, the people we work with, and the places we pull our inspiration from. Here is this month’s “Talk”.

This month’s featured Talk is with:
Brittney Joyce, M.Ed.
Campus Visit Manager
Furman University, Campus Visit Client since 2009

Q: How did you work to create change within your campus visit?
If I can pinpoint one single thing that I helped to orchestrate that created change for our campus visit, it would be the ...

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Categories: Blogs, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Talk, Campus Visit Three T's, Change, College Recruiting, Student Workers

10 Lessons from Starbucks

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My TargetX colleague, Scott Parks, sent a great blog post link that I’d like to share with you. It’s 10 Lessons from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul.

The blog post challenges radio broadcasters, who like college administrators are facing challenges, to “think how these lessons apply to you.”  The guts of the post are quoted below. Let me throw out the same challenge: Think how these lessons apply to you.

1.  Don’t Lose Sight of what Matters

“Our strategy was to do more of what worked in the past.  But we were not pushing ourselves to do things better or differently. ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Customer Service, Storytelling, Student Workers

Waiting for the Dead Poets Society Moment

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They come in all different sizes and all different levels of content.  Some give a specific route, others just a mandate on what to show.  Some give facts and figures (there are 1,314,649 books in the library), others read like a Hollywood script.  I am talking about the beloved tour guide training manual.

I wonder what the norm is for this manual?

After searching high and low, and talking to several schools, I have found one that is challenging the norm: Alfred University. They aren’t even calling it a manual, but rather a Reference Guide. Only a few pages long, it has information for the guides to reference – expectations, the tour route, a brief history of the buildings, list ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Storytelling, Student Workers

What should I wear?

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I get asked some of the same “hot topic” questions about the campus visit from many of our campus visit clients and during the countless campus visit presentations that we do.  One question that keeps coming up:  “What should our tour guides wear?”

I ask a question or two in return.

“What do the students wear on campus to go to class?”
“What is most real and authentic to the student experience?”

In a recent issue of BusinessWeek (Let me disclose. Jeff Kallay forwards along the important articles) about the rise of Millennials in the workplace, I saw this cartoon and just had to share as we discuss the tour guide uniform.

etcequetteschool1

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Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Audits Sidebar, Campus Visit Experiences, Generations, Millennial Generation, Millennials, Student Workers

Alfred Conference Bike a lesson in authenticity and change

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Chances are you’ve read about the Alfred University Campus Tour Conference Bike in various higher education press resources or in my colleague Ray Ulmer’s Recruitment Minute.

But let me give you the inside story.

Alfred University and their Director of Marketing, Jodi Bailey, are the kind of clients all services providers love to work with. They embrace change (even though they face internal hurdles) and are fun to work with.

Back in the winter of 2008 when I first toured Alfred’s beautiful mountainside campus in Western New York, I told them, “Your admissions office in Alumni Hall is on one far end of campus, and you’re walking tours about the full length (about 1/2 mile) to the other end ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Parents, Student Workers

XpertTip No. 98: Great minds

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You know the saying: “Great minds think alike.”

I consider it an honor that in preparation for today’s tip, I ended up thinking just like Brian Niles. We both came away from the closing “Conversation on Yield” at this year’s Xpert Summit with the same nugget to share.

The idea? Allow students groups like your ambassadors or bloggers to register for classes early as an incentive (if you can’t afford to pay them much — or at all;)  Brian did a great post about it here on the iThink Online blog over the weekend.

Hey, we all know that bloggers, tour guides, telecounselors and other student workers are important kids. As the voice of your current students, they’re out ...

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Categories: Blogs, Campus Visit, Student Workers, Xpert Summit

XpertTip No. 67: 7 strategies to keep bloggers posting

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“How the heck do we keep them interested and posting regularly!?”

It’s the question I get most often about student bloggers.

It was also a popular topic of conversation last week at our Boston workshop. More than a few clients told me they have trouble keeping their bloggers…uh…regular;)

If you’re dealing with blasé bloggers, here are 7 strategies that could help spark a renewed interest:

1. Reinforce that brevity is ok.

  • Hey, it’s a blog, not a book. A three-sentence post is fine! If students feel like they have to write something long and drawn out, they’ll put it off. Plus most readers prefer short posts.

2. Meet with them regularly.

  • You should treat your bloggers like any other student organization — and that includes meeting ...
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Categories: Blogs, Lists, Student Workers, Uncategorized

XpertTip No.13: Top 10 Tips for Student Bloggers

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As TargetX’s Client Concierge, it’s my job to keep up with the latest research and trends in higher ed so I can save you, our beloved clients, a little precious time and effort.

True to that spirit, I’ve followed student blogs for years now. This week, I thought I would offer help in the form of a little document I call my “Top 10 (Xpert)Tips for Student Bloggers.” (aka, “How to write a blog that doesn’t suck”)

While I’m certainly no David Letterman, I tried to write these tips with your bloggers and their questions in mind.

So read them, print them, pass them on. Just don’t miss them.

Straight from the desk of your Client Concierge, here they are:

(drum-roll, please…)

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Lists, Student Workers

XpertTip No. 10: Summer projects for student workers

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For most schools, commencement has culminated and the quads are void of that special life-force that students bring to campus.

Though ample parking and a little peace and quiet can console us for awhile, if you’re like me, it won’t be long till you’re craving that energy on campus again. Thankfully, we have our student workers and interns to keep us company for the next few months. If you’re sitting in the supervisor’s seat, no doubt you are thinking of how to keep them busy in the coming weeks.

Allow your concierge to be of some assistance. Here’s a list of great projects, prepared with your summer staff in mind:

  • Go through the Email Message Library and update/edit text and dates for the ...
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Categories: Campaign Intelligence, Lists, Millennials, Student Workers, Summer Projects