I recently met Jen Milikien, the Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Saint Mary’s Hall, a co-educational, private college preparatory school in San Antonio, Texas. Jen and I attended the New Marketing Summit, after which I posted key quotes on new marketing.
Jen shared an anecdote that recently occurred at the Upper School’s annual alumni phonathon. Kids, aged 15-18, in grades 9 to 12 were recruited to make phone calls for their annual fund…
We discovered early on in the process that many of the students weren’t familiar with making calls on land lines. There was some confusion with the fact that the student had to dial “9” before making the call, but they seemed to learn and accept that fairly easily.
The issue was that they could not seem to remember that they had to dial “1” before making a long-distance call. They were so used to making long distance calls on their cell phones (where a “1” isn’t required) that they were trying the same method on our land-line phones during the phonathon.
We finally resolved it by taping instructions on or above each phone with instructions on how to make local, long-distance and international calls. They still had some problems if they tried to dial too fast or simply didn’t read or pay attention to the instructions. But, for the most part, they did fine.
While some of the kids had no problems using the land-line phones, a brief training was held each evening before the calling began. In this way, nobody picked up a handset without receiving instructions beforehand.
Takeaways from this experience
Extracting bits from her email to me, here are some points that every school administrator and teacher should note:
- Respect students to make them more aware, confident, and familiar with the school.
- Recognize younger millennials are true digital natives and don’t have much experience with analog phones and other pieces of older technology.
- Instruct high school kids on terms like “social media” and “social networking,” which are new to their vocabulary. Many use Facebook or MySpace to keep in touch with their friends, but that’s it.
- Consider blocking access to social networking sites, due to the inappropriate content online. But recognize many have iPhones and other mobile devices and can access online sites through mobile applications.
- Inform parents — and collaborate with them. Hold social media presentations for parents and kids.
Do you have any questions for Jen or me? If so, you may connect with Jen on Twitter at @CalamityJen or add a comment below.
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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