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Put the emphasis on social

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Building an arsenal of social media to reach prospective students? Got your Facebook page, Twitter handle, YouTube channel? Maybe Pinterest and Instagram accounts and Tumblr too?

It certainly makes sense, since research indicates that two-thirds of high school students use social media to research colleges and more than a third of those students use the sites to help decide where to enroll.

But a recent article in Inside Higher Ed offers this advice: “The number of social media accounts might not be nearly as important as what colleges and universities do with the technology.”

Reporter Alexandra Tilsley talks to some of the people behind the research, and they recommend that you delve into the findings and perhaps reconsider your social media strategy. While ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Facebook, Online Experiences, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter

Social helps relieve summer melt

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School’s out for summer — but the work is far from done. Colleges are often concerned with summer melt — fearful that their enrolled class (and hard work over the year) will slip away. So what’s an admissions staff to do?

That’s where social engagement comes in.

Social sites aren’t your magic bullet, but they can certainly help you to stay connected. And if you do it right — you might just keep those incoming students engaged right on through til move-in day.

Business writer Courtney Rubin blogs about “The Secret to a Perfect Facebook Post,” and shares some insights from a recent Buddy Media report for businesses using Facebook to interact with consumers. And guess what? They just so happen ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Facebook, Social Media, Summer Projects

Ready for your Facebook facelift?

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SUNY Cortland believes in looking at the big picture. At least when it comes to Facebook.

So the central New York campus is inviting students, faculty, staff and alums to submit photos for the new cover image that will dominate its Facebook page starting on March 30th. That’s the day the social goliath has set for its worldwide switch to “Timeline,” a redesigned interface that emphasizes photos, especially the one that spans the top of the page.

Many colleges have already converted to the new design, posting everything from breathtaking campus vistas, to inspirational taglines, to depictions of their athletic mascots. Others — like SUNY Cortland — have at least a strategy in place, if not an actual image. But there are ...

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Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Facebook, Social Networking

In pursuit of the best-fit student

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Numbers no longer have the same appeal for admissions officers at the University of Tennessee. They’re moving away from the SAT, ACT and grade-point average in favor of a more complete view of their prospective students, according to reporter Joan Garrett.

It’s a familiar goal among the nation’s colleges — go beyond test scores and other statistics to get a fuller picture of a prospect to help determine if he or she will be a best-fit student. Increasingly, Facebook and other social networks are serving as allies in the search.

The number of admissions offices using Facebook to learn more about an applicant has quadrupled in the past year, reports Garrett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. While schools are sensitive to ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, CRM, Facebook, Social Media, Social Networking

Making email mobile

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If you’re like most marketers, you work hard to understand good email design. Then everything changes.

A few years ago, email design needed to adjust to the increasing use of preview panes and to images being blocked by default, says marketing researcher Chad White. Now you have to adjust again — to the wave of HTML-friendly smartphones and the exploding popularity of tablet computers.

“Sales of smartphones that render HTML email well are booming thanks to the iPhone and a mega-slew of Android-powered phones,” he writes in MediaPost’s Email Insider. And contrary to the common belief that email readership is languishing, these smartphones are driving increased use of email — especially among teens.

White offers several recommendations for adjusting your email design to ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Email Recruiting, Facebook, Millennial Generation, Mobile Marketing

Yield from all angles

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As you focus on yield this spring, hopefully you are keeping students engaged in every way possible: in print, in person, over the phone and online.

In his most recent blog post, Michael Fauscette explains the importance of engaging customers on Facebook. “Moving from a transactional relationship to one of trust and engagement is fundamentally about the customer experience. Positive or negative — experience trumps everything else.”

Fauscette developed a best practice list for companies that can be easily translated to help build relationships with your accepted (and excited) students.

Some of his tips include:

Make your page interactive. Ask questions, post frequently and make it a place students want to go.

Personal connections are powerful; personalize posts with “real” humans. Videos or posts from ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Facebook, Social Media, Student Yield, Yield

Forget Facebook, if you want to yield students you should be on YouTube

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Any dyed-in-the-wool Gen Xer can tell you that the first video MTV played when it launched on August 8, 1981 was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. Not as many can tell you the second video played on MTV. Do you know?

Video facts you need to know:
-43% of current prime time internet traffic is real time entertainment ( 12.2.2010)
-Netflix streaming accounts for 20% of internet traffic on any given evening (BusinessWeek 12.2.2010)
-Cisco predicts that by 2013 video will be 90% of consumer internet traffic (TechCrunch 7.9.2009)
-YouTube is a top “search engine” accounting for 28% of Google searches (Google 1.31.2011)
-There are 500 million monthly YouTube ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Did You Know?, Facebook, Free on Friday Webcasts, Social Media, Social Networking, Storytelling, Student Yield, Videos, Web Traffic, Webcast, Your Website

Demystifing the Application Process

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If you work on a college campus, you are an educator.  You may not teach a class as an admission professional, but you should take ownership to educate the school’s applicant pool.

Often we assume that people understand the process, but they don’t. We need to take time (either while on campus during a visit or via the web) to explain the process.

A recent email that went viral around the TargetX offices was this video from Centre College in Danville, KY. This is one way they educate their applicants.

Sure, it is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it is entertaining and it does educate their applicants on the process at Centre.

How ...

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Categories: Applicants, Campus Visit Experiences, Communication, Facebook, Videos

Millennial myths

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You know all those social media-obsessed students you’re chasing on Facebook? You might want to hold off for awhile and consider a new study by a company that researches online experiences.

The Nielsen Norman Group suggests that you reconsider the recruiting efforts you’re putting into social networking sites, including the ubiquitous Facebook.

“While it’s no surprise that organizations targeting students try to reach them on the web, they’re mistaken if they think the best path is through social networking sites,” according to the firm’s Jakob Nielsen. Students are enraptured by social media, he added, but they reserve them for private conversations. When Millennials want information about an organization, they turn to search engines rather than company-built fan pages.

The study addressed several other ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Facebook, Millennials, Social Networking, Websites

The future of the internet – we seem to get it wrong

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Working for TargetX, college administrators seem to think that we have a crystal ball into the future of the internet and everyone is always asking us what’s next. Be it Facebook, MySpace, twitter, or ning. it seems that our industry and society has a BSOS (Bright Shiny Object Syndrome) pandemic.

I recently heard a report on NPR’s Morning Edition about the Google/Verizon “Net Neutrality” proposal. Correspondent Alex Bloomberg’s closing line of the report rang so true, “What we know though, when it comes the internet most of our predictions about its future are wrong.”

Just six or seven years ago, while working at Mindpower, I’d go to college campuses to do discovery for branding or publications ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Facebook, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Videos

Monitor your social media presence

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Talk to anyone in college admissions and they would say social media is important to any recruitment strategy. Ask them how much time they are spending monitoring their social media tools and they may not be as confident with their answer. You know social media is important and you should dedicate more time to it, but it’s difficult to find the time and staff to assess and monitor your social media strategy. Find the time to review your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other tools now.

Hubspot.com offers up five ways to monitor your social media presence in 10 minutes a day. Most people find social media monitoring a burden, and cannot find an easy way to tackle the job, especially leaving ...

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Categories: Facebook, Free on Friday Webcasts, Social Media, Twitter

Take control of Facebook Events

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While colleges continue to look for ways to use the power of Facebook to attract students, one UCLA junior shakes his head in wonder at a lost opportunity.

Schools spend enormous amounts of money and effort on campus events that appeal to prospective students, writes Nate Villegas, so why do they overlook the Facebook tool that so many young people use to help plan their activities?

“When it comes to finding something to do at a school,” writes Villegas, “I’m going to check my Facebook Events page.” The problem, he says, is that most of the college event listings are created by students and not by the staff responsible for organizing the events. And this means that the information is often incorrect. ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Facebook, Invitations and Reminders, Websites