After our October webinar “Social Media Ambassadors: Everything You Need to Know to Launch a Successful Program at Your Community College”, we received numerous emails from attendees asking for advice on pitching the social ambassador program to their leadership.
Below are our suggestions for gaining support and the steps you can take to convince your leadership.
Step 1: Research and Develop a Strong Proposal
The first step in convincing community college leadership to support a social media ambassador program is to research and develop a strong proposal. This proposal should include:
a. Statistics supporting the importance of social media marketing. Such as:
- According to Statista Research Department, more than 80% of people in the United States have a social networking profile and on average, those users spend more than two hours a day on social media.
- Younger generations prefer to get their information from social platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and many are using these social platforms as search engines. (NPR)
- Prospective students browse college’s profiles on social media before applying.
b. An overview of the program.
Describe how many students you would like to participate in the program, how you plan to find them, train, and manage. Explain how this program fits with our social media strategy and college’s overall goals.
c. The benefits it will bring to the college. Benefits include but are not limited to:
- Humanizing the brand by showcasing real students and experiences to help stand out among more than 4,000 advertisements that an average person is exposed a day,
- Publishing authentic content can help reinforce trust and be more effective than traditional ads.
- Increasing the college’s visibility and helping attract prospective students, increasing engagement with current students, and fostering a sense of community.
- Augmenting internal social media staff by working with students on content creation. Creating fresh and meaningful daily content for each audience and each channels takes a lot of consistent effort, time, and creativity… often humanly impossible for one or “half a person” to accomplish.
d. Resources required to launch and maintain it.
Explain which type of arrangement you will be implementing and highlight how the ambassador program is a lot more budget friendly than additional staff or outsourcing to external agencies: Internship (paid and for credit); Federal student worker program; Student employee; Student ambassadors (volunteer).
e. Statistics and testimonials on the effectiveness of a similar program at other colleges.
Examples of colleges running successful programs include: Cape Fear, Carroll, TMCC Nevada.
f. Provide examples of the content you’ve created.
Include link to the reels, TikTok videos, or stories you have created using current students and highlight performance compared to generic content.
Step 2: Identify Key Stakeholders and Build Support
It’s important to identify key stakeholders who will be impacted by the launch of a social media ambassador program. These stakeholders can include current students, faculty, prospective students, alumni, members of the community, as well as staff from departments such as Admissions, Advising, Academic Services, and Student Engagement. Share your proposal with them to better understand their needs and concerns as well as collect feedback and building a coalition of supporters who can advocate for the program.
Step 3: Make a Formal Presentation
The final step in convincing community college leadership to support a social media ambassador program is to make a formal presentation to the college’s administration. The most important point to highlight is how this program can help not only your department achieve the goals but also support the strategic initiatives of the college.
To make all of the above even easier, College Crusader has launched a Student Ambassador Training program with resources for managers and students. Reach out to us if you want to be the first to know about the program launch.