We told you to get out there and get involved on campus and the community, we mentioned taking advantage of campus opportunities to table and attend events. Today, we’ll talk about getting out there in cyberspace! This day and age, having a presence is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity! With the proliferation of high speed internet, when we want to learn more about just about anything, the first thing we do is fire up our laptops. An interesting shift the past few years has been the wide spread of social media, and the expectation that instant communication with companies and organizations is expected.

Let’s talk about what this means to you, and your organization. People are talking, sometimes about your frat or sorority. You need to be a part of that conversation. Managing the message and how your organization is represented online is invaluable. Let’s talk about some of the places where you need to have a profile or presence.

Home Page
Have a clean, well designed and user friendly website. Talk about your history, your pillars, and other important organizational facts. Include pictures, testimonials, FAQ’s, and make sure you have contact information to your nationals, as well as easy links to your local undergraduate chapters. Also, encouraging your chapters to maintain sites themselves.

Facebook
Facebook is one of the most visited sites on the internet. Think of it as a companion to your homepage. It’s your organizations virtual yearbook. Allowing you share pictures, blogs, video, and connect with brothers and sisters through out. It’s a great and easy way for those interested to learn about your organization and ask questions if they need to. It’s a great way for you to interact and control the message there too.

Twitter
The social media phenomenon that is twitter has spread like wild fire. You can catch it on almost all news casts and a myriad of television shows. More importantly, it’s found on the laptops and smart phones of most college age students. It’s 140 burst of immediate information. You can disseminate information that is important to your organization, and respond to, when need be, when your organization is being spoken about.

You’re already online visiting our blog, so make sure you have a great web presence yourself!

So far this week while talking recruitment tips, we mentioned that you should encourage your members to get involved on campus and the community. Today, we’ll talk about having a presence on campus and tabling and attending events. Just like it is important to be involved in organizations, it is also crucial to attend varying events on campus. From their inception, greek organizations have been a phenomenal tool in retention of students. So most campuses invest lots of resources to help greek have successful, fruitful, organized, and safe recruitment sessions. Not only do they have campus entities to supervise and offer assistance through out the year, but most campus put together welcoming ceremonies and other events where students can come out and learn more the different organizations on campus, including all the undergraduate sorority and fraternity chapters on campus. Be sure to have a good presence there. Be prepared to answer lots of questions and to put your best foot forward.

Another great tool that universities allow is tabling. Most campuses have hot spots. Highly congregated areas like the student unions or the center of campus where you are allowed to set up tables and display para and hand out information for you upcoming events, advertise your organization, and again, get free exposure on campus.

So get out there, be social, table, and make sure to attend events!! Stay tuned for more recruitment tips!

This week on the blog, we will be tackling a hot topic for greeks during the summer months: Recruitment! Like any other form of marketing, recruitment greatly benefits from word of mouth. Being involved on campus and in the surrounding community will spread work about your fraternity or sorority and help leaps and bounds in boosting your reputation. You should be doing community service and and helping out around town. Planning benefits and making a difference, leaving campus and your new town or city better than you found it. There is no shortage of causes to get involved with. So there is really no excuse to not get involved.

Encouraging your membership to get involved on campus is imperative for every greek letter organization. First, it helps give your membership a balance and the opportunity to pursue other passions and interests. Secondly, it also permits them to not only have another outlet to foster their creativity and leadership skills, but their involvement gives them the opportunity to meet a lot of new people. Who with the frame of reference of previous interactions in other organizations could explore the possibility of joining your frat or sorority.