Choosing where to host your applicant communities in 2022

Building a great community for your applicants in 2022 starts with understanding your people, and what will motivate them to engage and participate. It is a really important point to note at the outset, you can’t begin to choose the right space if you don’t know your members intimately. Once you have a deeper understanding of what drives university applicants to join and engage in online peer communities, it is then time to choose and design the right space(s) for them to come together. This space should be accessible, safe, functional, exciting and of course support the type of community engagement that drives your HEI business goals. To help you navigate through the various options out there, here are three important considerations when choosing where and how to host your applicant communities in 2022.

1. How much control do you have?

Guiding individual applicant connections is key

When building an online community for university applicants you will need to have some level of control over the design and structure of the space. First and foremost you will want to design a space that generates a positive experience for members, while also supporting your business objectives - for recruitment teams this typically relates to applicant conversion. We know from experience that guiding applicant to applicant connectivity around same programme of study has a hugely positive impact on applicant conversion. In other words, students who meet with other students who they will be studying with are more likely to enrol. Therefore, in order to maximise this type of ‘ROI action,’ you will need to design and structure your community in a way that makes it much easier for applicants to find others on the same programme of study.

This approach may seem a little prescriptive and some teams will inevitably lean towards a more organic or emergent approach to the design of their applicant spaces. Creating broad catch all groups where applicants call out for others from their course, region, accommodation etc.. is a very common approach. In our view this is a missed opportunity. It results in a poor community experience for members, and an even worse experience for university teams who are already stretched. This can in fact create additional workload in the longer term because in a poorly structured online community, students can’t find each other and therefore can’t help each other solve problems. The community dynamic quickly shifts requiring more staff input, teams then end up picking up dozens of additional queries. Once the genie is out of the bottle, the whole process can very quickly become unmanageable and extremely resource intensive.

What you are aiming to create is a community structure that combines both broad groups with more niche, intimate spaces where members that are closely matched can come together. In this community dynamic applicants feel part of the broader university community but can find their specific class mates or those from their town/region in smaller spaces with fewer members. It is in these spaces that they solve many of their own issues and really generate a stronger bond with others and your institution. The more niche, the better. These smaller groups will be peer led and won’t require any staff input, provided there is clear escalation path back to the university representative if there is an unresolved issue.

The right structure provides opportunities for tremendous scale, so whatever platform you choose, you should look for the flexibility and control to be able to develop the scaffold and then easily guide applicants into the right community spaces for the magic to happen.

2. How accessible is the community data?

Without applicant community data, you can't link back to business ROI/conversion

Typically and understandably, across the sector universities turn to free, large social networks to host their applicant communities in the first instance. That is, after all, where most of the community members already spend their time, so it is a quick win in many respects. However, the cost of this accessibility is the loss of access to individual member data, and this data is key in tying community engagement back to your business goals.

Applicant conversion, student progression, student experience, ambassador performance, are all central metrics for recruitment and admissions teams whose performance is measured against these business objectives. But without community insight, it’s very difficult to tangibly link types of applicant community participation to the business goals that your community supports. Simply put, if you don’t know what’s working, you are very unlikely to make it any better.

That is not to say there’s no space for open free social communities, as many are created organically by students themselves and they provide value to those who engage. However, post application (and especially at the offer stage), the ability for teams to be able to drill down to individual member data and deliver a more tailored experience provides much greater value for everyone. For most university teams community data is a blind spot in the applicant engagement path and the ultimate goal should be to push specific community data back into their CRM. It provides a clear indication on applicant progression and acts as a push point into other university areas, such as marketing, comms. and student support services.

3. How unique will the experience be for your applicants?

Your applicant community should feel exclusive, a unique home where they can feel safe and open with other members

It is really important to create a sense of uniqueness and exclusivity around your applicant community. Wherever your community is hosted, it should be gated and then made available only to those who you have invited to join - This is a really important step as members then understand that those they share this space with have been similarly vetted and have also met the conditions on entry. The community feels exclusive and this instills a sense of safety, giving members more confidence to be open in what they share with others. The goal after all is to strengthen the relationship between the applicants and facilitate the openness and sharing that happens when people feel confident and secure in thier environment.

As an extension of your university brand, your applicant community should feel like a unique home for your members. You are creating a unique experience and proactively helping applicants develop relationships with each other, find solutions to their problems, and foster that all important sense of belonging.

You want to create a sense of excitement in joining your applicant community, and this is what you will promote when you tell others that it is available and exists for them. For many students this will be one of the first meaningful interactions with your university, so it is important that they feel accepted, seen and heard, and comfortable enough to gradually move from an outsider toward becoming a more active member.

Your community sets you apart, so carefully consider the type of experience you want to deliver, and where you can best maximise value.