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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

Presidential wisdom in 140 characters

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Babson College President Len Schlesinger extended an invitation to his campus: “Hope to see you tomorrow at 10:30 AM to Meet the Sharks..watch two Babson students pitching their best ideas to Daymond John and Mark Cuban!”

In case you didn’t notice, that invite to a taping of “Shark Tank” is 140 characters long.  It’s a tweet from one of the few college presidents who regularly shares his thoughts via Twitter.  And Lauren Landry, who covers higher education for a Boston news site, can’t figure out why Schlesinger is the exception and not the rule.

“I’m able to follow students, professors, deans and student newspapers, gathering all that I need into 140-character snippets,” she writes.  “The one group missing? College presidents. I follow ...

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Categories: Social Networking, Student Recruiting, Twitter

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

XpertTip No. 164: TargetX Housekeeping

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Calling all clients…

Today I thought I’d share a list that’s meant to help you with preparations for the coming semester.

And while I know the last thing you need is more “to-do,” this list is a little different.  Not everything on it will apply directly to you and your institution.  But that’s ok — feel free to ignore those items;)

This is meant only to suggest some of what you might want to consider to make the most of your efforts with us this year.  Hopefully one or two things will jump out.

As a TargetX client, have you thought about:

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Categories: Twitter

Outstanding Ohio State Admissions Campus Visit Guide

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The Ohio State University has one of the best visit programs we have encountered, yet they’re always looking to improve the experience.

To inspire you, here’s a copy of the new piece:

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The creative folks in admissions worked hard to create a visit brochure that sets the expectation and reveals visit basics, while giving it the feel of a travel brochure. They’ve outlined Four Ways to Discover Ohio State: Sport Enthusiast, Foodie, History Buff and Academic Explorer. The brochure unfolds to reveal places and spaces in these themes complete with photos, insider tips and more.

At the CIVSA conference in Lexington this June, they told us that the majority of families bring the piece ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit Experiences, Communication, Experience Economy Stuff, Twitter, Uncategorized

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

No. 1 in social media

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Higher ed has a reputation for being a couple laps behind the rest of the field when it comes to marketing innovation. One historical rule of thumb is that hospital marketers are about five years behind their corporate brethren, and colleges are about five years behind hospitals.

But that seems to be changing as higher education reacts to tougher times with more aggressive and effective marketing communications, and nowhere is that more evident than in the explosive growth of social media.

A staggering 95 percent of colleges are using at least one form of social media to recruit prospective students, far outpacing the rate of adoption in the corporate world, according to research from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Among the findings:

- ...

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Categories: Blogs, College Recruiting, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter

Changes that work

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Butler University’s deposits are up, and it appears to have less to do with the basketball team’s exhilarating run through March Madness and more to do with an impressive overhaul of the school’s recruiting communications.

Kristen Raves responded to last week’s Recruitment Minute about the common refrain on America’s campuses this year: “Apps are up, deposits are down.” Not at Butler, she said. “We have integrated new ideas into our marketing plan throughout this year and we are up in deposits!”

Here’s a small sampling of some of the things they did:

  • Deciding that fresh content was essential, Kristen told her student bloggers that they must post at least 3 times a week and include 2 links and a photo or video each ...
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Categories: Authenticity, Blogs, Change, College Recruiting, Student Yield, Twitter, Websites

Tweets from the Prez

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Presidential blogging is so yesterday. Make room for the tweeting presidents.

Jack Ohle, head of Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, is known to his Twitter followers as GustiePrez. The 62-year old has joined a still small but growing band of college presidents who are willing to share their thoughts 140 characters at a time.

Ohle hasn’t been at it very long, so he has less than 200 followers. The leader appears to be Gordon Gee, president of the Ohio State University, with 6,100 people following his thoughts. Penn state President Graham Spanier has generated enough interest that he can even boast having a Twitter impersonator — MeanGSpanier.

“Tweeting is a tricky thing,” says Augsburg College’s Paul Pribbenow in a recent article in the ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Parents, Twitter

The problem with Twitter

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Young people are not tweeters, and that has surprised social networking experts who assumed the Millennial generation would flock to the Twitter microblogging tool.

But it comes as no surprise to 16-year-old Daniel Brusilovsky, a regular contributor to the TechCrunch weblog, which covers Internet products and companies.

“If you look at technologies trending with teens right now, it’s Apple devices, smart phones and social networks,” he writes in a recent post. “But why not Twitter?”

For two major reasons, he says — safety and expense.

The way Brusilovsky and his friends see it, Facebook and other social networks are “closed.” These are networks of people and friends they trust to be connected to, and to share information. “You know who’s getting your ...

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Categories: Millennial Generation, Twitter

Don't tweet to teens

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With microblogging site Twitter hogging the headlines, it’s only natural to think about hordes of prospective students following your tweets right to the front door of your school. Don’t bother.

The always-online generation of Millennials hasn’t caught the Twitter bug.

Today’s young people “don’t see value in Twitter, although they spend hours daily texting friends and communicating on social networks,” according to a new study from the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN). The study suggests that only one in five Millennials use Twitter and its 140-character real-time posts. Of those who use it, 85% say they follow friends, 54% follow celebrities, 29% follow family, and 29% follow companies and organizations.

That’s not great news for marketers trying to reach this demographic through the site, ...

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Categories: Twitter

And the winner is…

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It’s hard enough to capture in words the distinctive quality of an institution. But to do it in 140 characters and sprinkle in some personality and humor is really asking a lot.

Nevertheless, that’s what our esteemed panel of judges was looking for as it poured over entries to the TargetX Twitpitch Contest, which drew submissions from all types of colleges throughout the U.S. and Canada.

What they found was a lot of sameness, said Experience Evangelist Jeff Kallay, an expert in authenticity whose unique approach to the campus visit recently landed him on the front page of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Marketing Director Adrienne Bartlett agreed, finding that most schools seemed so intent on being all things to all people, that ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Twitter

EduWeb Conference Twitter Q&A on Monday

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Join me on Twitter this Monday at 10:00am ET for a Q&A session with Rich Vallaster. We’ll be discussing the current situation in higher education and provide a preview of my closing keynote address at the Edu Web Conference coming up in July.

To participate in this free event, ask questions or just hang out and lurk, click here to follow along using the #eduwebconf tag on Twitter.

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Categories: Twitter

What's your Twitpitch?

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…The University of Massachusetts Boston boasts cutting-edge research faculty with a teaching soul – and 14,000 students from across the globe

Notice anything unusual about this attempt to capture the essence of UMass Boston? It’s exactly 140 characters. That’s not accidental. It happens to be the maximum allowed by microblogging superforce Twitter.

It was one of several “Twitpitches” submitted by college admissions and marketing professionals in response to a Recruitment Minute about how the elevator pitch is being supplanted in many circles by the lightning fast twitter pitch.

…Vancouver’s Langara College is Canada’s leader in University Transfer studies and the pathway to the best universities in the country

The venerable elevator pitch was supposed to force organizations to strip away all unnecessary details and ...

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Categories: Twitter

XpertTip No. 94: Yield Better Results

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“This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.” – Bill Murray as Phil Connors in Groundhog Day (1993)

We’re officially into the second month of the new year — and already another Super Bowl is history and the soothsaying rodent has had his moment in the sun (literally).

But regardless of the prediction from Punxsutawney, on campus, the Spring semester is well under way.  And for us admissions folks, that means on to more important things — like yield.

Have you given much thought to your upcoming yield initiatives?

If you’ve been in the field for some time, you already know that around this time of year, prospective students ...

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Categories: Chat, Communication Plans, Email Campaign Ideas, Lists, Student Yield, Twitter

XpertTip No. 91: Get connected in '09

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December always brings a bit of upheaval to my daily routine.

With all of the additional commitments and responsibilities that come with the holidays, it becomes so easy to skip working out, eat and drink too much, sleep way too little and let some of those “non-essential” work tasks fall by the wayside.

I know that for me, one of the things that suffers most is my attention to “research.”  I put off reading articles, blog posts, Twitter, Facebook, etc.; opting to revel in my non-connectedness for as long as possible and enjoy the simple (a.k.a. “offline”) life.

But alas — it’s my job to keep up with all of the craziness and keep you informed — and I do quite enjoy it.  ...

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Categories: Blogs, Summer Projects, Twitter, Uncategorized, Xpert Summit