A LinkedIn Page for a university or high school is the destination for an organisation to market itself and build a community. It is also the place where large numbers of your enrolling parents and of course your Alumni spend their time and network.
It’s a place to showcase what makes the institution special – academically, socially, and culturally.
Admins of a page can have conversations with the audiences interested in the school, including alumni, current students, parents, prospective students, and even employers, faculty, or donors so it’s critical that it is a good reflection of the schools standing and brand.
In this blog we will cover three key points
1. Setting up your school or university correctly on LinkedIn
2. How to find the class of…
3. How to contact any alumni without using your InMail allocation
Before we dive in, let’s review some common LinkedIn terms schools should know
Company Page: This is the profile for your school, which showcases your information and updates (posts).
Company Details: In this area, you can share information about your school, including your website, location, year founded, company type (so for schools and districts, this would be a category related to the education industry), and company size (aka the number of employees).
Other terms to know:
Mention Just like Facebook and Twitter, you can “mention” others in your LinkedIn updates using @ + name.
Connection: When using LinkedIn as a user and not as a business, this is a term that means you and a person are connected to each other.
Groups: These can be public or private, and can be created by an individual or company. It allows users to come together and talk about a specific subject on one page.
Featured Groups: These are groups that can be spotlighted directly on the homepage of your company page.
Influencers: These are the type of users on LinkedIn that mostly related to your industry and provide relevant content your followers may also be interested in.
LinkedIn Today: A common area on the platform for all of your industry news in one place
Building Your Following on LinkedIn
A great Company Page is just the start! LinkedIn offers significant reach, but you need to build a following to start seeing results.
Note – you need to contact LinkedIn to enable the Alumni Section on your page.
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/solve
Request all of your faculty and staff to list your school as their place of work on their personal LinkedIn profiles.
Like most channels, LinkedIn is first and foremost a peer-to-peer network, and simply adding Company Pages to personal profiles can make all the difference.
Understand that Premium LinkedIn users have access to a number of insights through your company page. Alumni being one of them.
We can also see total employee count, recent hires and Median Tenure
Include featured content from your LinkedIn page as a snippet in your email newsletters
— and provide a “read more” button to bring them to the full piece of content on your LinkedIn page.
Use LinkedIn to Connect with Your Alumni
When an individual creates his or her LinkedIn profile, they have the option to select their education history, which plays a key role in identifying your school’s alumni network on LinkedIn.
School professionals who work specifically with alumni or fundraising efforts can use LinkedIn to connect with these individuals, learn more about what they’re up to, and share the latest happenings at the school itself that alumni may be interested in hearing more about.
I recommend that every student in Year 11 of secondary school create a LinkedIn Profile (this is the year before the final year when exams take a much bigger priority).
That means that if the school has a LinkedIn University/School Profile on LinkedIn, the student will automatically become part of the school alumni when they select the school in the Education Section on their LinkedIn Profile so there is nothing to do ‘after’ they have left school, it is automatically done for you!
We all know that people will change their mobile or cell phone number and their email address throughout their life, but for most of us, we will only have one LinkedIn Profile.
Most schools, colleges and universities have been around for many years and as LinkedIn was only started in 2003, there are a lot of people who have not created the connection with their school, college or university LinkedIn Profile.
If a school, college or university logo does not appear on their LinkedIn Profile, it means they have not selected the school, college or university from the drop down box in their Education section.
This is a great thing to include as a tip for Alumni in newsletters or as a special one off request
Aim to have 80% of their students and staff from the last three years accessible via LinkedIn
Remember that your reason for reaching out to alumni is so much more than receiving philanthropic donations and future enrolments. Many past students have fond memories of their school, college and university and maintaining a longer term relationship can lead to many increased benefits to both the individual and the school.
You will find alumni information including:
where they live (1)
where they work (2)
what they do (3)
You can filter the results of what you see by clicking on the bars under where they live, work or what they do. This will show only those alumni who meet the criteria. You can search by year alumni attended or graduated. Or you can search by company name, title or any other keyword in the search bar with the magnifying glass.
Once you filter by location or any of the other options, you can scroll through and connect with those who have Linked to your school.
By clicking onto the Alumni you want to reach out to.
You can then click the connect button and add a personalised note without using your InMail credits
The most important thing is to have a clear strategy for Student and Alumni engagement so that your numbers on LinkedIn are reflective of your actual standing.
Showcase your Alumni success stories.
Engage with them on a regular basis.
Feature your old scholars groups on LinkedIn.
Link them to your company page to make it easy for Alumni to find and join them.
Make this part of your Year 12 right of passage in finishing school.
