Speed, Authenticity, and the Future of Higher Ed Marketing

Gjergj Dollani: Welcome to the newest episode of the enrollment clinic. I have two very special guests here today. So I'm going to. introduce each one of them. So two decades ago, ⁓ Rob Clark was doing ministry work in rural Saskatchewan. And then Chris was on content management systems for higher ed. ⁓ they've co-written a book arguing schools are invisible ⁓ and sector's response to the problem is, I shouldn't say generally wrong, but it's ⁓ something they to reconsider. ⁓ Rob and Chris, welcome to the enrollment clinic.

Chris Rapozo: Good to be here. Thank you.

Rob Clark: Thank you.

Gjergj Dollani: Awesome, so I'll start with you, Rob. Now, ⁓ sure everybody's interested to know how does a family from Saskatchewan, that is word, end up with over five billion views on social media.

Rob Clark: It is hard. Yeah, no, and just all fairness, not that my wife watches podcasts, but ⁓ city that she grew up in, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, has 300,000 people. And so she's like, she would say she's not rural and so, but it's debatable. ⁓ ⁓ no, it's fine. No, leave it in, leave it in. No, no, it's all good. We joke about that. We love Canada, but we live here in the US. So obviously we love the US just a little bit more.

Gjergj Dollani: I you know, I'll take that word out.

Rob Clark: And so honestly, this is a very simple answer. How do you get into it? Well, it's something that I've been interested in when I started reading about marketing and I just got hooked. so early on I was actually working in insurance and I was overseeing like billboards and radio ads and they were expensive and they were slow. And so when YouTube came out like 20 years ago, like within a few months, I did my first video for the insurance brokerage. and it got a couple thousand views and it was free. was immediate, quick feedback. And so that was, I was hooked. Now we didn't actually start a brand until five years ago, but I would say for the last 20 years, I knew I was locked in that social media was something special. And so it just took me a long time to figure out how to do it very well. And so eventually it worked out. that's, that's how we got into it.

Gjergj Dollani: Chris, I'd to hear about your experience higher ed and what led you ⁓ the book that going to talk about today.

Chris Rapozo: Sure. Yeah. First of all, I want to mention 300,000 people. ⁓ is about how many people are going to watch this podcast after we launch it. So you're good company, everybody. ⁓ yeah, so I fell into higher education like a lot of people do that I speak to. I worked in legal before ⁓ after graduating as an adult learner from the University of Florida online, I made a career change and I ⁓ states. I moved from Tampa, Florida to Atlanta. thought about staying in but I couldn't get a job. So I applied to this tech company out of the Atlanta tech village in Buckhead, Georgia. And they were hand in hill makers of Cascade CMS. And they happened to ⁓ serve higher education. That's how I got into higher education. So I into higher education, fell in love with it ⁓ after a working there. felt I was a solar marketer. felt like, I need to figure out. What does the audience want? What, what's the beat of higher education? So I started listening to various podcasts, ⁓ but I didn't have anybody that could learn from. So I figured, Hey, maybe I'll just start my own podcast and ask the people the questions that I have for my job on an interview. And instead of saying, Hey, can I have 30 minutes of your time to have a virtual phone chat?

Gjergj Dollani: Mmm.

Chris Rapozo: And them getting nothing out of it. said, okay, what can I give them as a return as a thank you? So that's how the education market meter podcast was born. And I've been doing that for three years. Last year, I started a book club. Again, I'm getting higher education marketers together because I was reading all the books anyway. So I figured, Hey, why not have a couple of people join me so we can discuss it. Right. Because you know what I do, you have a book, you read it, you put it on a shelf, you forget about it. But why not get the authors in, have a Q &A with the authors community and get a little bit more insights and, you know, feedback from what other people learn from a particular book. that's what we've been doing there. And then Rob and I will talk about this a little bit more. Decided to write a book about it.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. mean, ⁓ again, you know, your, your story of growth in higher ed is definitely inspirational. You and I have spoken about it offline as well. ⁓ and I, and I, I know when you were talking about your podcast, Rob was smiling a little bit. And I think, ⁓ I'd like to think it was because of the ⁓ we're having prior to the recording about how this podcast started. ⁓ I gave the example of kind of being in ocean on a boat. by yourself, not really knowing which direction to go and the best way to do it is let's see who else has the same problem I do and let's kind of talk it out, right? And it's kind of interesting that higher ed has this problem. What do you think that is?

Chris Rapozo: this problem as in what?

Gjergj Dollani: As in ⁓ guide, no one to kind of share your issues with and kind of help you ⁓ the process, right?

Chris Rapozo: Yeah. Yeah. So for my perspective, I mean, it's small teams, lean teams. Maybe it's a little bit of a, you know, especially with the enrollment cliff, it's getting a bit more tighter, a little bit more harder to get people to, to, get those enrollments that they need, especially if they're smaller schools. So the competition is a little bit higher, right? Like 10, 20 years ago, it was a little bit more open to share what works and what doesn't work. And now it's kind of like, okay, I better hold onto my cards, you know, make sure that I fill my seats, but Then again, when you show up at higher ed conferences, everybody is so willing to share what works for them. But then again, how do you get to that higher ed conference? Because that's like 1500 bucks just for the ticket to get in. And then you have to about travel. You have to think about the lodging, right? And the food. So like you said, budgets are tight and sometimes people don't have the ability to go to these, to these conference. then is hierarchy piece too, right? If you send somebody to a conference,

Gjergj Dollani: Mmm.

Chris Rapozo: You send your directors or your VPs make sure that the leadership gets, gets that professional development. what about the people that are in the lower, at the mid management or there are the specialists that just got in, how are they going to learn? Right. And then I think that podcast is one of those mediums that will really, really help them grow and get to the next level. ⁓ and then I thought, you know, Robin, I thought, Hey, Maybe we put condensed all this knowledge that we have accumulated over the years and put it into a book and make it even more consumable for the people that are on the rise.

Rob Clark: No, that's perfect. That's perfect.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, you kind of preempted my next question I was going to talk about, kind of bring it back to the book. ⁓ One of the interesting things about the book is a lot of the attention books are about the attention economy, right? Like where everybody's attention is, but yours ⁓ because of your different perspectives ⁓ coming from within, from within the industry or from within the attention.

Chris Rapozo: Hmm.

Gjergj Dollani: economy in and of itself. And it's interesting that you brought up the fact that it needed to be a book because I was going to think about, you know, why wouldn't this be a podcast episode or a podcast series but a book?

Chris Rapozo: Yeah, I'll let Rob go ahead first. have a story about this, but I don't want to hog the...

Rob Clark: Yeah. No, I think this is very simple. You look at higher ed and we realize that all about learning. And so for of us, we learn in different ways. ⁓ And I'm much better. And I love audiobooks. ⁓ I podcasts because there's just something when I can, when I hear it and locks in more than when I read it. But I know that there's a lot of people that reading ⁓ and still love books and I still get a lot of other books. And so there was a little bit of like, okay, so Chris has done this for a long time. And so it would take you a long time to listen to all of the podcasts that he's done. I mean, it'd be amazing. And, know, so someone might be stumbling across it for the first time. And so they're not going to spend literally hundreds of hours doing that where they may spend five hours on this book. And so this book isn't as good as the hundreds of podcasts together, but it's going to give you a piece. And so. It's just another way of learning and it's a starting point, right? Like most books, it's a starting point. then especially in higher ed, as it's always changing, some stuff is really good. You can apply right now. Some of it's going to ebb and flow. I think all of us, right, we're in the education space and about learning. so wouldn't you? And I do the same thing with social media. If you have something of value, how do you share it in the most places? And so I say put it on every platform. So the same is true of education. So yes, you want a book, you want an audio book, you do want the podcast, you want a YouTube video, you want it all. And so for a lot of us, especially in the education world, books are still like, I would say we treat books as kings, rightfully so. And so that's why the book needed to happen.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, I love books because I love making notes on them and just kind of referring back to whatever page it is. It's an easy resource. ⁓ Going back to the book, one of the things that me about this is that it's really about reps, it's about speed, ⁓ And it's about being real and authenticity, right? Which is something that...

Chris Rapozo: Yeah. Yes.

Gjergj Dollani: You know, schools have a really hard time doing, right? One because it's structural, the other one because it's, worry so much about your brand that the idea of something being not highly polished, it's almost kind of like off brand. ⁓ there a school ⁓ of you can think of that does it right?

Chris Rapozo: Yeah, you mentioned Bowling Green University in the book, Brianna Blackburn, she leads the social media at Bowling Green and they were ranked top 10 nationally for social media engagement, number one in the state of Ohio. They outperformed the Ohio State ⁓ University there. So that's credit to her and the way she approached things. And it was about ⁓ having to go through committee that much ⁓ being on the beat of what people wanted. And then just knowing how to have the right hope that's Rob always talks about, know, the three second rule. got to catch the attention of the people that you're ⁓ to or speaking to within the first three seconds or in the next three seconds to earn the whole time that they have and then even, you know, earn the ⁓ ⁓ your audience and, you know, go that way. But Rob, what do you have there? ⁓

Rob Clark: Yeah, no, I agree with that 100%. And so let me flip it the other way a little bit like the, you know, it's not a negative, but you talk about the polished and, and I would say we, we always talk about the generation of students, right? And so, and I have kids right now that are right in it from 22 down to 14. So I hit all of them. And one of the things that I'm noticing in my kids and as their friends come over is that And what's really good about that generation is they want real. They don't want the polished as much. And so, and I've seen this, like I worked at a school where they spent $10,000, which isn't really that much money for a video that what they made, but it's still a good chunk of money for a crew to come in and they, and they took a weekend, put together this video looks really great. The lighting, the sound, you know, the voiceovers, everything is polished. ⁓ It's been sitting on YouTube right now for two years and it's at 2000 views. Where the same college where I spent five minutes and created a video with the volleyball team that has over five million views. so it's just knowing, and it's just knowing what works well. And so the polished is still needed, ⁓ ⁓ it's both and. ⁓ where I think colleges, where often colleges and universities, they think we only need the polished.

Gjergj Dollani: Mmm. Mm.

Rob Clark: because it makes us look a certain way. makes us feel like, ⁓ we really have it together. Whereas they know we need both hands. So that's, that's good. But the reality is whether we like it or not, that the quick, real, authentic and almost unpolished is going to get more attention. That's going to lead people to say, okay, let me really see what this university is about. Maybe I'll watch this longer video now, but without the kind of the quick raw and the speed, the daily, you're not going to get to the other. So you need both hands.

Gjergj Dollani: Gotcha. And is it more of a logarithm kind of question that's pushing the unpolished one or is it more a demand from a kind of personal authenticity, if you will?

Rob Clark: Yeah, I'll hit this real quick and then Chris, you can jump into. the algorithm and what I've heard it said this way, and I think it's really good that when we use the word algorithm, it would be better if we just said people, meaning the algorithm, the only job of the algorithm is to keep you on the platform as long as possible. That's its only job. So if you make content that people want to watch, the algorithm is going to reward you. And so there's no secret formula. It's like, what are people watching right now?

Gjergj Dollani: future.

Rob Clark: That's the algorithm. So if you make content that is interesting to the people that are on the platform, then you're going to win. So all that to say is that there is just something about, because we hear ads all day long, we're bombarded. And so when we see the polish and in the university world, it's like, we got to get the right picture. a tree, ⁓ very diverse, there's three students and they're different colors. It's the reality of the world. We see it and we know instantly it's an ad where there's a video that we see that just feels, even if it is a little bit scripted, if it feels more natural, then it's almost like we're going to watch it without even knowing that we're trying to promote our brand or our university.

Chris Rapozo: Right. Exactly. it also depends, when it comes to the algorithm, right? This is like the algorithm or the platform feeds a certain amount of people, maybe a hundred people, your video to see how they react to it. And then if they're there longer, the algorithm keeps pushing it to other people. It's not like with Rob's videos that they're going to be served to 4 million people at once, right? It's a gradual increase the video progresses and as people like it, share it and engage with it and stay on that. on that video. if they're staying more than 10 seconds, you know, and watching the whole video or watching a repeat that gives the algorithm that indicated, this is something good for the audience kids keep pushing it out. But then it's also depends on the platform to right. Polish versus raw video. So if I'm top of funnel and I'm scrolling through or Tik Tok, and I'm used to seeing these, these, ⁓ raw videos on polished videos. And all of a sudden something that looks like an ad shows up, I'm probably gonna scroll past it. So you have to remember what are you using the video for and what platform. Because when I'm going to the bottom of the funnel, I'm really considering a university and I'm seriously spending some time on the website, I wanna horizontal, well-polished video on the website because now I'm ready to put my money down and I wanna make sure that I'm...

Gjergj Dollani: see you later.

Chris Rapozo: committing to something very reputable. Now, the polished is one thing, but it's the delivery is the other thing. Now, if you start a video with a drone shot that takes five, 10 seconds and your logo shows up first, I probably want to push past it and not watch it. But then we talk about the hook again, right? You want to be engaging, even with the polished long form videos on the website, it has to be engaging. It has to hook the people in who want to stay there like they are on YouTube. So we've to make sure that, yes. Raw, unpolished is one thing, but also the delivery of the storytelling is another thing, whether it's polished or not on the websites.

Gjergj Dollani: The brand manager in me wait, what do you mean once you see the brand you move past the video?

Chris Rapozo: the logo, right? Because it's not interesting to me. I want to know what I can get out of it first. You can't push the brand at the end once you earn my attention. I'm cool with that. But at the beginning, I'm there to get a task accomplished. Like, what can I get out of this school, right? Because can you deliver on what I need for the future in five years? I might be able to get a job. I might be able to support my family and grow my career. Or is it just to bolster your pride and make sure that you're

Gjergj Dollani: Right. Gotcha.

Chris Rapozo: cabinet feels seen on the website, which that is a problem for a conversation for another day, right? Sometimes you can see the hierarchy of the institution thrown on the website, but the website should always be student focused.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, that's definitely an episode in and of itself, the idea of kind of advertising to your own staff and your own leadership and not really speaking to prospective students. I want to go back to basically the book itself. One thing that drew my attention is speed as strategy. And this is something that you guys had written the book. traditional market operates on institutional timelines. Campaigns are planned.

Chris Rapozo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Gjergj Dollani: quarters in advance. ⁓ Content calendars are developed at the start of the year. Major initiatives require months of development. This pace made sense when media moved slowly and trends lasted long enough to plan around. Today, the pace is a serious liability. I was talking to Rob about a little bit about this specific concept of speed before we start recording. ⁓

Chris Rapozo: Mm-hmm.

Gjergj Dollani: What do you say to somebody at an institution where upper management needs to approve every single thing? Right? how, what, what do they do the next day after reading this?

Rob Clark: Yeah, yeah, so let me, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. So a lot of places we can go with this. ⁓ from my vantage point of the couple of universities I've worked with, that hasn't been the case. Meaning that the president just ⁓ almost didn't right? Like ⁓ didn't want see the social media. Now that may not be true for all places. But then as you get down a little bit, when it comes to even the schools I worked at, the ⁓ marketing department didn't necessarily had to sign off on anything. And so the speed wasn't necessarily a bottleneck of getting approvals. Now, I think at bigger universities, maybe that's an issue. I've primarily worked with smaller universities. But what I would say ⁓ that ⁓ mindset really matters. And I talk about it like this, like ⁓ ⁓ I played NCAA Division III basketball. And one we played against a Division I school and we were just as good as shooters as them, right? But the one thing that I noticed and why they beat us by 50 points, they were the same size, but they were so much faster. And so, and like it changed everything. Like they could get to the spot before we could, they can get to the lane before we could just, changed the game entirely. Now, assumption is that's probably true. When I look at the best NFL players, it's like that guy's fast. When we look at the best players in the world, when it comes to soccer, their speeds of matter. And I think that's true with business as well and definitely with universities as well. So this is where the mind shift needs to happen. So for example, that tall family, we have 5 billion views. This is the way it looks like people are like, ⁓ man, you must spend so much time on social media. it's like literally it's like, okay, we need to post a video today. right, give me five minutes. Let me come up with an idea. I got an idea. Okay, give me two minutes. We film it. Give me 30 minutes. Then I'm going to edit it perfectly. And so with like literally 30 minutes from start to finish, it's I work with companies now and that's the first thing I tell them is like the speed matters. You have to get it out there because perfect is often the reason why the idea of perfect, which we also would say polish is the reason why you're probably not going to post enough content ⁓ not posting enough content is going to be the reason why you don't get discovered. And so last, let me wrap it up with this analogy. It's a dart board. And so if your goal is to hit this, hit the

Gjergj Dollani: Mmm.

Rob Clark: then the more darts you throw, the better chance you have at hitting a bullseye. so it comes to social media especially, it's like, okay, because it's free and it's consumable quickly. So we could be posting just throwing a lot of darts. If we throw a lot of darts, one or two of them is gonna hit the bullseye. And in social media, that makes a big, big difference where most departments, most marketing, they think like, okay, we need to have this perfect script. It has to be this perfect idea. And because of that, it wastes too much time and you don't get enough quantity out. So I would say that's the biggest issue when it comes to speed is that if you've got to get to a place the mindset is we need to get more content out because more is going to get you to a place where you figure out what the quality is.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Chris Rapozo: Yeah. Talking about the analogy with the dartboard real quick, you know, I always say if you, if you, if you don't have a goal, you never hit it. So that's one thing. So you want to have that campaign. You want to think long-term, right? And if you want to be a leader in a particular field. So example for my company, last one year we worked heavily in a campaign, on a campaign for web accessibility because there were two mandates that we're going to hit in April and in, ⁓ in, in May. So we worked on this the entire year. This today. ⁓ the ADA Title II Web Accessibility mandate was supposed to go into effect. Last Friday, the Department of Justice extended it by a year. Now, we were the thought leaders on this particular topic for a entire year. I had everything planned out. get the news at three o'clock on a Friday afternoon that this mandate was extended by one year. I tell my boss, she said, hey, that's big news. I said, let's post about it. 30 minutes later, I had a LinkedIn out and a LinkedIn post out. An hour and a half later, I had a YouTube short out because we wanted to be the first one on the beat talking about this to our audiences. And then my boss says they send emails to our clients because we established ourselves as a thought leader in this particular niche. We better adjust quickly when things go a different way. And that's what I always say with higher education too. If I would have gone through three different committee members, I would still sit here today waiting on this poster approve. And that's not the, you know, by that time, the news is old news.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. And I mean, the over a hundred podcast episodes, Chris, that you've done ⁓ with ⁓ marketing and leader, is this the structural issue to the attention gap? Meaning this approval process, this kind of, ⁓ you

Chris Rapozo: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the things, I mean, I interviewed institutional leaders from different aspects, big, huge schools and small schools, obviously smaller ones are a bit more nimble and have the ability to move things around. But I also learned that the creativity gets lost and the bravery and the marketer, right? If you're put into a box and they say, have to stay in these confounds and I have to stay in this little lane, you no longer think about the outside the box of the creativity and then the creeps in and thus the turnover happens. We see that all the time in higher education to say, hey, we're understaffed, we're losing teams, we build them up and now they're gone, what are we gonna do next, right? So I think that when you have a creative, ⁓ in the marketing fields and communications, these people, they ⁓ thinking about the ⁓ box. They like to push the boundaries a little bit, but if you have the leadership and institutional... operators that say, no, you got to stay within these barriers, you know, you're not going to get the best out of them.

Gjergj Dollani: One of the things that I always kind of kept going back to when I was kind of reviewing the book is you about the attention gap and you look at the current student funnel, right? A lot of before they even get to see your video on social media, college search doesn't start there, right? Like if you go way, way down college, start search starts at the dinner table and you're five and your parents are arguing with each other, like how are they going to save money for college? At that point, you as a kid kind of go, well, that's the direction I'm going to take. And then that shapes your, your, your view of whether you're going to go to the college in your town, you're going somewhere else and things like that. So before they even get to, you know, the social media posts of Bowling Green University, right? Like they're. on chat GPT or they're search trying to figure out best college near me. And if that's the path, ⁓ there a way to ensure that you funnel prospective attention from where the starts to your content that you're posting at speed ⁓ and ⁓

Rob Clark: Yeah, no, I think this is a great point because I think what sometimes we forget is when we talk about marketing that we think it's the solution when really what it if it's done well, ⁓ just highlighting what you are. So what I mean by that is that sometimes that we think that marketing will solve all the problems when it's only going to highlight the product. So if the product's ⁓ working, if the product's broken, then ⁓

Gjergj Dollani: Mmm.

Rob Clark: then it's not going to solve that problem. what happens, and it's a great point that you're bringing up, is that every school has something that they should be great at. And if you're just a mediocre school and you're not great at anything, then ⁓ would say, why do you deserve students? So you can't be all things to all people, right? And so colleges do need to pick. And I think, again, with smaller colleges, I think the trap they can get into is they want to be all things to all people when they can't be that. So figure out what you are. So like one of the schools, the school that I went to and the school that I worked with a little bit, I heard over and over again that the problem was that we were located in a small town an hour outside of St. Louis. And that was a problem why students weren't coming. And I said, well, we should market that because that's a reason why a lot of students would come. You could come like it is like Mayberry is like it's like a Hallmark movie. It's got a town square. You can walk everywhere. We move there. My kids are riding a bike to Dairy Queen. Like it's 1980. I was like, you know, for some people, they're not going to come here. Right. So let's not try to trick them to say like, we're only an hour from the city. No, let's lean into what we were because there's a lot of students that want to go to a small town where it's safe. They can walk at night. Like they're looking for that. So let's highlight that. Let's Let's elevate that. And so that's what I would say is that the marketing, when done well, you got to highlight what you are. And so when someone's searching for something, now if they want to do music, okay, this school should pop up. If they want to do something with horses, because that's an area that my school is getting into, then yeah, then we should do a lot of content about that because there are students out there that this matters to them. And so when they search, they got to be able to find it. So that's why you got to a lot of content. So basically you just wanna tell the story of your school, what makes it different and unique and so good, then just highlight that as much as you can, and then the right students will find you.

Gjergj Dollani: Is there a difference? Is there a difference in what parents are looking for in content style versus students? Meaning, does of authenticity and repetition works the same for the parent as it does for the prospective student? Cause at the end of the day, it's the parent who gets to pay for college, right? It's the parent who is biggest influencer in terms of what that

Chris Rapozo: I got another one.

Gjergj Dollani: end result is going to be, you know, where you're going to be sitting in class.

Chris Rapozo: Yeah, I think Rob has a good story there because he's a parent of college students. But for me, when I spoke with Melissa Grainer from Campus ESP on parent communication, parents want to be involved. They want to be seen. They want to have that information. And they're probably the ones, but if you send them an email, if you send a student an email with the information, chances are the student is going to ignore it. Other, on the other hand, the parents probably going to read it because they heavily invested in, you said, finance is a big key there, right? And I'm going to have to put out a second mortgage to get my kids to school. So want to address the objections like we talked earlier about with Rob schools with the small town. ⁓ know that a reason for somebody not going to your school is it's in a small town, it's rural, or ⁓ too expensive. the forefront should be answering or answering his objections or at least give him an option and tell him, we have financial aid available. These are the scholarships you qualify for and this is how you can save some money. And here is a success story of other people that went through it and they thought it was one thing, but it's with a discount, it was actually that.

Gjergj Dollani: Let's get a little bit to the actionable part of book and some of the kind of key takeaways. ⁓ If I'm my and I'm a ⁓ one person team and now I know which ⁓ most colleges 3000 students is usually like ⁓ one or marketing people. And I'm sitting there, I've just finished your book and I know now I need to... ⁓ post as much content as possible, right? So much is enough for a one or two member team and how ⁓ we do that at scale? This is, ⁓ start with you, Rob, on this one.

Rob Clark: Yeah, I think it needs to match to your goals, right? Meaning if a college wants to kind of stay, just stay alive, right? It's different than, you know, some colleges are saying, well, we want to grow by 20%. I was like, if you want to grow by 20%, which is ambitious, then there has to be things that you're doing now that are different than what you've been doing to get where you're at. Right. And so that's the big thing when it comes to social media. So for example, in

Gjergj Dollani: Hmm.

Rob Clark: And I talk to people all the time that too often, let me just say it this way. If it's a small team, in some ways I would say that's even better because you can move fast. And again, speed matters more than anything. And so if you give me a small team, know, when I worked with a university, was like, because they were in a position where they were doing zero, like almost zero social media. And the marketing department actually said to the president, we don't have bandwidth to do social media.

Gjergj Dollani: Mmm.

Rob Clark: And so, and I just happened to live nearby, sort of like, hey, can you help us out? And just me alone, and just me, just one single person, as I was also doing that tall family, my main business, then we increased the social media presence by thousands of percent, right? And so, it could be done. One person can do a lot of damage on social media if it's done well. Now, here's the real issue. is that most colleges from my experience, now this may not be true, but from my experience is you have a VP of marketing, a little bit older, not really well versed in social media, usually more traditional marketing. And so they hire some students to do social media because we just assume that if you're young and you're on your phone all the time, you're good at social media. Now, what's true is they're good at consuming social media, but it's like, it's a skill like anything else. And so, It just, is a little bit mind blowing to me that, that we turn our marketing over, which at the end of the day, social media and, and all of, if we could do all the studies in the world, we know this to be true. That social media right now is how most students are going to discover your school for the first time. And we turn it over to kids and you know, they're students and they're trying to do a good job, but at the end of the day, that's not their skill set. They consume media, but they're not marketing the college, but we turn it over to them. So. At the end of the day, I mean, the real answer, and I just want to be very clear on this, and I have empathy in this, but if you're not going to invest in doing social media well for your school, when you know for sure, like this is the thing, we know, like if we took a step back as human beings, like we know social media. How many times have we bought something because of social media? I mean, like you turn on the news right now, like how much of the news is dictated by social media? I mean, we were told the election was stolen.

Gjergj Dollani: Mmm.

Rob Clark: because of social media. And we know that billion dollar brands are built off of the back of social media. So we know this. And yet when universities are like, students here, can you just market the school for us? I have a little bit of empathy, but at the same time, I'm like, this is an area if you're not willing to invest in, then you shouldn't expect your school to grow by leaps and bounds if you're not marketing the school well. That's my take on it. And so ⁓ again, I'm empathetic because I realize schools right now it's tough. Budgets are shrinking, staff are shrinking. But this is an area that I think we got to be careful that we don't invest properly in.

Gjergj Dollani: there. So Chris, you to a lot of higher ups higher ed. Is ⁓ budgets and kind of like the biggest problem ⁓ in closing attention gap for these universities?

Chris Rapozo: Thank mean budget is in having a staff. When I asked somebody, what would you invest in at a recent conference? Everybody went back to staff. I would have more staff. And I'm thinking to myself, you have a $20 jet GPT chat bot who can do a lot of that for you. Okay. So I get it. I get it. Staff is one thing, right? But when we talk about small teams and not being able to push out the content or not be able to create content, we want to make sure.

Gjergj Dollani: Mmm.

Chris Rapozo: that we get the most out of the content that we already have, the long form content. We can turn this into social media posts, into carousels. Go to gamma.com, get a $20 subscription a month, put in a long form blog post, and it creates carousels for you. I recently downloaded the Teleprompter app. If I have a long form article, I put it in there and say, give me a 60 second script from this, thought leadership script. I'm reading it off. That's why I'm pumping out so many videos now. So it doesn't take that much. just takes a little bit of, you know, ⁓ adaptability and moving away from the things that we've always done it that way. Not everything has to be done from scratch. You have a long form video can slice it into five, six, seven different videos, put some nice background music behind it, turn it from ⁓ a vertical to a horizontal, and then push it out that way with some captions on it. And if you feel like you need to put money behind it, or you want to put money behind it because you have the budget for it, Make sure you post it organically first, see what the audience likes, then put money behind that content that already performs organically. That's what Rob always says on his social media posts. Isn't that right, Rob?

Rob Clark: Yeah, that's right. the reality is there's so much free stuff out there if people willing and Chris is posting unlimited stuff on his you LinkedIn and his other platforms as well You know, I post a lot and there's other great guys I mean we could list 20 guys right in this space this podcast for example There's so much great information out there. And and so I think when they talk about small teams, I do think it's an excuse Where it's not about having more people. It's about having the right people

Gjergj Dollani: approaching the ⁓ ⁓ this episode and one question that I like to ⁓ ⁓ everybody a lot is ⁓ is ⁓ thing we're not talking

Rob Clark: ⁓ just from my standpoint that again, cause I do have college age, ⁓ kids in the house and, in our houses, ⁓ love it. This is the best thing that I love about our kids are very social and they bring people. And I always just have a house full of young adults. ⁓ one thing that I see over and over again ⁓ that this generation right now ⁓ ⁓ can see through, kind of the fluff and they want to know, okay, what's real. What value am I getting here? And so I think in a lot of schools do provide value. I just don't think we do a good job of describing what that value is. And of course, the classrooms, the degree is a piece of that, but we need to be honest. that's that may not be the number one reason. It's not the number one reason that most students go to a college, right? There's all the other things. And so we need to wrap that in because it is about whole experience. And so I would say. We need to focus more on what value we're providing and to be honest, because there's some areas that we hype up that aren't providing the value anymore, right? And so it's okay to say this school is not for everybody. This is who it's for. still enough students that want to go to school that the schools that are willing to be brave enough to say, we're not for you, we're for you, and this is the value we provide. ⁓ marketing becomes easy, because then you just tell that story all day long.

Chris Rapozo: Mm-hmm.

Rob Clark: and the right students are gonna find you.

Chris Rapozo: Yeah, from my perspective, what we don't talk about much or put enough emphasis on it is that I heard this quote once. says everyone has an invisible sign hanging around their neck that says make me feel important. Now, when it comes to social media, if you have somebody that takes the time to comment on your post, the least you can do is engage with it or comment back to make them feel seen. If they feel seen. There is so much more of a connection there online of if you just, know, we've all done this before, right? We engage with people, they never responded. They act like we're invisible. And then you have the other people that actually engage with your stuff. You're like, hey, I like them. Now I trust them.

Gjergj Dollani: Hmm. Hmm. All right. Well, thank you Chris Rob. The book is the attention gap Where do people find it and where do they find you?

Chris Rapozo: Well, you can get the book on Amazon, hardcover, softcover, paperback, and audiobook. I actually listened to the audiobook yesterday. It's a quick read of about four and a half hours. It's wonderful. It's a great resource and people can connect with me on LinkedIn. Chris Raposo, connect with me and maybe you'll end up on my podcast.

Rob Clark: Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. And your podcast is great. And that's how we, you know, obviously I jumped on his podcast, we became friends. and so same with me, find me on LinkedIn. And, and this is, you know, good point, Chris, and this is what, and Chris practices his own advice ⁓ you know, when I reach out, ⁓ Chris always responds. He's quick. Yeah. You see on LinkedIn, he's always engaged. ⁓ and so, and I try to do the same, right? And so if you reach out to either of us on LinkedIn, ⁓ promise you that we're going to get back to you.

Gjergj Dollani: Awesome. Thank you so much, gentlemen.

Chris Rapozo: Yeah. Thank you.

Rob Clark: Thank you.