The Web Chat Guide

We put together this Web Chat Guide to share some tips that we have learned over the years on how best to conduct a web chat. You will also find more tips on our blog Recruiting Millennials.

Transcript publishing guidelines

Sometimes it's helpful to post a transcript of a chat event you run on your homepage. If you plan on making the chat transcript public, start the chat event with a message that makes this clear to the chatters. Here is one sample:

Thanks for attending today's chat. Please be advised that we will be posting a transcript of this chat to our public website at the conclusion of our event today.

Moderator guidelines

We have a simple rule for determining the number of moderators to invite to a web chat:
1 moderator per 10 expected students.

For example, if you are expecting 25-30 students, plan on having three moderators.

Higher than expected turnout

Having a higher than expected turnout to a web chat is a good thing. But handling overflow capacity gracefully just takes a little planning. To handle cases like this we recommend having several admissions counselors on standby for the event. Standby moderators don't need to attend the chat unless needed, but they should already have practiced logging in so they can rapidly join the chat event.

Sample web chat invitation email

This is our recommended email template for sending web chat invites to prospects and inquirers.

Subject: Please Join [School Name] For A Web Chat

Dear [Student Name],

Greetings from the [School Name]! We know that you are working on your application for our [Degree name] program and you probably have many questions for us. We plan to have frequent web chats for you to chat online with an admissions advisor and a current student. Below are the dates and times of [one/several/regular] upcoming Web chats. If you would like to join us, save this email and simply click on the link at the appropriate time.

Thursday, February 12th, at 12pm PDT / 1pm MDT / 2pm CDT / 3pm EDT [Milo Web Chat Web Address]

Tuesday, February 17th, at 7pm PDT / 8pm MDT / 9pm CDT / 10pm EDT [Milo Web Chat Web Address]

Please email us at [your email address] to let us know which Web Chat session you will be joining. We are excited to meet you online!

Thank you,

[Full contact information]

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You will also find more tips on our blog Recruiting Millennials.

Need more help? Feel free to give us a call. We are here to help!