1. Recruitment & Retention
Graduate and
Postdoctoral Studies
Recruitment & Retention
Social Media
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Recruitment & Retention: Social Media

2. Main Objective
To engage future and current graduate students in dialogue, while promoting graduate education and specific graduate programs at McGill among top quality prospective students.
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Recruitment & Retention: Social Media

3.  Our Facebook page, McGill University – Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, is used to post useful links, news stories, generate discussion, and to respond to student inquiries.
Currently have over 300 fans
Started this in late march, 2010
Time investment: spend approx ½ an hour/day searching for relevant content to post, posting content, and responding to inquiries
Being proactive rather than reactive.
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Recruitment & Retention: Social Media

4. As our number of followers grows, we are beginning to receive more inquiries about graduate programs offered, program requirements, etc.
Our practice is to empower them to find the information themselves by directing them to the appropriate websites at McGill, but not to give them the full answers. To give detailed information would take away from the general information theme of the page. Also, information about graduate programs is so specific depending on the program that it really is best to direct inquiries to the units, the subject matter experts.
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Recruitment & Retention: Social Media

5.  Started in late march, 2010
Currently have just over 100 followers (slower growth than facebook)
Twitter has two primary functions for us:
monitoring discussion on related topics (e.g. McGill, grad school, Montreal) using tools such as
posting or “tweeting” about those same topics to our followers. It’s sort of like conversation at a cocktail party: listen, then respond.
Time investment: spend approx ½ an hour/day searching for relevant content to post, or tweets to retweet
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Recruitment & Retention: Social Media

6. GRAD LIFE BLOG This blog is hosted on the blogs. mcgill
GRAD LIFE BLOG This blog is hosted on the blogs.mcgill.ca group, using the Wordpress platform. Its setup was facilitated by Content and Collaboration Solutions (CCS).
Grad Life will feature 15 graduate students who will write about their experiences here at McGill. They will be encouraged to post about their research, field work, travels, life on campus, and life in the city. In these posts, we’d like them to share their aspirations and triumphs, as well as their frustrations and challenges.
What we’re aiming for with this blog is a collection of authentic accounts of graduate experiences at McGill. This blog is a recruitment tool and will also inform and support a positive student journey.
The Future Graduate Students website ( provides all the essential information to inform prospects’ decision of whether McGill has the program they’re looking for. The goal of this blog is to complement the Future Graduate Students site by helping them decide if the McGill graduate experience is what they’re seeking.
Time investment: approximately 1-2 hours/week reviewing posts for formatting and objectionable content, filtering comments, promoting new posts and responding to bloggers’ questions or concerns.
We don’t pre-screen posts, we pre-screen bloggers. We choose good people and give them freedom to express themselves
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Recruitment & Retention: Social Media

7. We are making every effort to showcase the personalities and diverse research interests of the bloggers so that their readers can get to know them.
Goal is to look like this is completely run by grad students, not administrators.
Emphasis on the visual
We urge them to use photos and we provided headshots for those who didn’t have good quality ones.
In the training sessions, we described this blog as their “Scrapbook” for the year and encouraged them to upload photos of themselves, their messy desks, their muddy boots after a hike, their movie stubs, etc.
We also encouraged them to post pictures, videos, and other cool elements related to their researc
E.g. the Opera student will post links to performances; the geography student will post maps and geotagged elements
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Recruitment & Retention: Social Media

8. Started it in late march, 2010
Flickr will be the home to high-resolution versions of all our best photos from special events (e.g. Orientation, Open House etc) and from publications (e.g. photos of students for the viewbook, website, etc). We can also grow our community by adding other McGill photos by other users as our favourites, adding other users as Contacts, and commenting on McGill-related photos. This will help:
Store and organize all our best photos
Build a community with photographers interested in Montreal and McGill
Develop a bank of photos for the Virtual Tour Project (in development)
Increase visibility of McGill and its graduate programs
Time investment: spend a 1-2 hours sorting, editing, posting, and organizing photos when we have a specific event.
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | Recruitment & Retention: Social Media

9. Future Graduate Students website
Cross Promotion
Blog
Twitter
Future Graduate Students website
We cross-promote content on all of our platforms
e.g. we add a new feature to our website  promote it on twitter and facebook
e.g. New post on grad life blog  promote it on Twitter and Facebook
e.g. New video posted on Facebook  promote it on Twitter
e.g. Launch Grad Life blog  post blogger photos on Flickr
e.g. Tweets from twitter displayed on our Grad Life blog
The purpose of this is to develop awareness of our different platforms, and to ultimately disseminate our information to as wide an audience as possible
Flickr
Facebook