Tweeting College Scholarship Information to Students and Parents

In this Principal Leadership article, Brian Cook, social media manager and language arts teacher in the Dorchester County (MD) schools, says that for years, the district’s guidance department was failing to get the word to high-school students about college scholarships. “Money – in the form of a scholarship application – is sitting there for the taking,” says Cook, “…but too often the paper gets pitched into a recycling bin because students, for a variety of reasons, are not picking up the applications.” Most guidance departments, he says, “continue existence in passivity and isolation.” 

Then counselors started using Twitter to disseminate scholarship information to students and parents and everything changed. “Reading a tweet from my guidance department was weird at first,” said one student, “but it became normal after a while. Twitter is available at all hours of the night, which helped a lot since I was heavily involved in athletic practices after school…” In addition, guidance counselors used Google Drive to store students’ scholarship applications and help them complete the process electronically.

But this will not happen by itself, says Cook: “If your organization chooses to use social media, the person chosen to manage it must have a passion, appreciation, and understanding of it and also understand the goals you are trying to accomplish. The social media manager has to like interacting with people… The 24-hour cycle of getting back to someone is passé. You have to have someone who will reply to tweets quickly and thoroughly and, within reason, at a moment’s notice.” He or she also has to be adept at collecting data on the number of clicks, re-tweets, favorites, and direct messages that users interact with on Twitter.

The effect of these changes? In the first year the guidance department used Twitter, total scholarship awards were $2.9 million higher than the previous year, significantly improving students’ ability to go to the college of their choice. 

In a sidebar to this article, Cook has the following step-by-step advice for school districts that want to use social media:

• Set up a Twitter account, which takes just a few minutes.
• Educate school administrators about effective ways to use Twitter to communicate with students.
• Define a goal, whether it’s increasing awareness of scholarships or engaging students in discussions.
• Choose a name carefully, making sure it has a professional sound to it – for example, @UnionLocalScholarshipHub. 
• Maintain credibility; correct spelling and grammar are essential. 
• Send meaningful messages. The 140-character Twitter maximum is restrictive, but it keeps messages crisp and you can include links to more-detailed information.
• Don’t obsess on the number of followers at first. An effective Twitter account will pick up steam over time.

“Find Education Dollars on Social Media” by Brian Cook in Principal Leadership, February 2014 (Vol. 14, #6, p. 56-58), www.nassp.org; Cook can be reached at @DCPS_Scholar.

From the Marshall Memo #525