SocialSphere, Inc.

I am looking forward to spending some time Monday with my friends from Harvard's Communications office as they welcome their colleagues from the Ivy Plus schools for a conference, focusing on use of digital technology and media on campus.  To help me prepare for my talk, Laura and Jesse from SocialSphere conducted ethnographic research and some in-depth interviews with both Millennials and parents.  While I will post my presentation Monday afternoon, here are three of the observations they will help me make:

• Millennials are the biggest, baddest generation in the history of the world.  They represent 1/3 of the world's population, account for or influence $200 Billion in US economic activity, elected a President and are in the process of changing the course of Iran's history. 
• Millennials love their parents -- and unlike most other generations -- find ways to stay connected with them most every day.  Although most every college and university in America (compared to 45% 10 years ago) host Family Days/Weekends -- most of the college websites I reviewed get failing grades in the way in which they connect with parents.  Tons of opportunity here for Communications Directors to help enrollment managers, fundraisers and alumni relations departments get more out of their current efforts.
• If colleges don't engage parents and help foster relationships with this important community, they will go to plan B (start or join outside groups and networks), do it themselves and get information that may or many nor be accurate.  Depending on what college you represent or are connected to, College Confidential, the site that has averaged more than 400,000 unique visitors (Source: Compete.com) may have more parent activity than your "official" .edu website.

I will hit the Millennial/parent of Millennial theme hard tomorrow.  The logic of fostering connections seems fairly obvious but under-appreciated.  And more than that -- parents are begging for more as evidenced by this quote from one of our interviews:

“I would encourage colleges to send information to parents... Just an email about this is the stuff that’s happening on campus because they’re talking points. If you have a kid who isn’t willing to share a lot, it gives you an opportunity to ask questions...In order to find out information about what was going on on campus if [our son] wasn’t willing to share it, we would have had to search it out.”  

If colleges use Web 2.0 technologies to keep Millennials engaged and smart, and parents in the loop, everyone should be happy.  And when everyone is happy -- students get good grades, find great jobs, become active, successful alumni -- and student and parents are much more likely to write checks and build buildings.

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