Admissions Marketing: Out with the Old in with the New?
The world of marketing and communications has grown to be quite complex over the past two decades, especially due to divergent communications technologies. Because of this, higher ed. marketers are faced with a tough job keeping up with all the new channels as well as completing a never-ending to-do list. Add in a shrinking budget and [...]
Dear Canada: Better Recruitment This Year, Better Data Next Year
“We are excited to integrate our higher education research expertise into Inigral’s innovative and highly successful social community product and add thoughtful research data and analysis to Inigral’s product,” said Philip Bliss, Chief Innovation Officer at Academica Group.
The Ivy League Bubble
Small colleges have a good reason to like Peter Thiel’s attack on higher ed. There’s lots of debate this week about Peter Thiel’s push to get undergrads to “stop out” of school. Thiel, who is the founder of PayPal, the first outside investor in Facebook and an investor in Inigral through Founders Fund, thinks more [...]
Social Media and College Admissions Usage
We found some great research from Dr. Nora Barnes and Eric Mattson from The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth that provides some insights into the higher-ed social media landscape. Their study, mining surveys and interviews from 478 schools, has shown that social media has solidified a prominent position in the toolkit of admissions and enrollment [...]
Five Impressive First-Year Experience Websites
My last blog post was about FYE Department websites and some criteria I thought these sites should meet. From a list of 50 of the best FYE programs in the nation, I decided to visit each page and came up with a Top 5 of my favorite ones that seem to have a great balance of look and feel, social media usage, and resourcefulness. This post provides a brief look into each of the Top 5 websites.
Taking an Objective Look at Social Media in the First Year Experience
The first year of college is when students determine how they fit within their school and ultimately whether or not they will continue to attend that school. Higher ed is also figuring out how to fit social media not only into their institution, but additionally to specific departments like First Year Experience. Despite FYE’s importance, resources and guidance using social media in this area is still scarce and remains untapped.
Why I Was Wrong About Location-Based Services
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about why higher ed can forget about location-based services. Since then, I’ve discovered the service Double Dutch and have to say they’ve changed my mind. Watch the video below to hear my public apology, and why I think Double Dutch is the future of location-based marketing.
Schools on Facebook and The Big Decision
After months of talking to my parents in depth, as well as advisors and mentors, the decision was pretty clear — my only option was to go to college, and so here I am, ready to go to College of San Mateo in the fall. Now that I know where I’m going to school, I wish I knew more then twenty people that will be attending the same school as me, and would love to find entrepreneurial people like me to meet, and share ideas with.
Admitted Student Social Networks: 8 Questions to Ask
An up-and-coming trend in college admissions is to adopt an Accepted Student Social Network. An Accepted Student Social Network, for those of you just getting on the bandwagon, is a private web community, often white-label, that accepted students enter in hopes of further connecting to their peers and, hopefully, to your institution.
Accepted and Enrolled Student Communities using Ning: No Longer Free, Never Was Good
Ning just announced they’re killing the free version of their niche social networks.
In the battle of Ning vs. Facebook, Facebook won bigtime. People are more interested in connecting with their friends than with niche communities…. Or, are they? Kind of….
Social Media for College Admissions Professionals
Social Media is one of the most popular trends in higher education today. How much time should we be spending on social media? What types of presens should we have? How will we measure success?
Scale your Communications using Social Networking
In the past, you were limited by the amount of paper you could afford. Publications could only hold so much. Brochures and newsletters could only cover aspects of your institution that would be of interest to a large number of individuals.
Facebook for Enrollment Marketing: Where Email and Facebook Intertwine
According to a poll recently conducted by Intelliworks, Facebook is the most preferred method to receive College Admissions communications from an institution. This probably won’t come as a surprise to most with Facebook surpassing the 350 million user mark last before the end of 2009.
Facebook in Higher Ed: Problems, Needs
Frustrations can be summarized by the following argument: Facebook has one goal – to increase the number of their users and the money they make from ads per user; thus, Facebook Pages & Groups is not a “whole product” – a product with a set of capabilities that solve for an interrelated set of needs for a particular customer type – in Higher Education.
Accepted Student Social Networks: 9 Questions to Ask
An up and coming trend in Admissions is to adopt an Accepted Student Social Network. If you’re looking at one now, here’s some things to consider:
Facebook Pages for Schools: Customers vs. Community Members
The organizations that are satisfied with Facebook Pages are brands with a uniform audience, not a multi-faceted community.
Facebook for Yield: An Annotated Bibliography
Facebook is a very popular social networking for prospective students, so it offers many options for schools to market themselves to and connect with their audience in order to improve yield. This is a collection of resources on the topic of using Facebook in Admissions and Enrollment.
Students Equal Authenticity, Says M.I.T. Admissions
A recent study by the Association of American Medical Colleges finds that most medical school deans were aware of students posting unprofessional content online, including photos of drug paraphernalia and violations of patient privacy. “Some infractions resulted in warnings, others in being expelled,” says an ABC News reporter.
Are Schools Ready to Live With Social Media? A Resounding Yes!
This morning, the Baltimore Sun declared that colleges and universities are finally ready to live with social media. The article focused on the use of social networking sites – mostly Facebook – throughout the process of admissions and enrollment. The fact is that 86% of college-age students have profiles on Facebook, and they expect schools [...]
Facebook Profiles as Acceptance Criteria
Since Facebook opened user profiles to the public in 2006, there has been much debate around whether Facebook profiles are an appropriate face for college students to show to admissions counselors and potential employers.
7 Things You Didn’t Know About NACAC 2009
As a result, we were very excited to attend the 65th annual NACAC conference this year. And yet again, it proved to be a great opportunity to learn, share, and connect with familiar and new faces. Here are seven things that caught our attention as a re-cap of this year’s admissions powwow.
Social Media in Higher Ed, a How To
I recently undertook the task of coming up with the simplest possible Social Media Strategy for Higher Ed. Easy to memorize and implement, it consists of finding conversations, hosting conversations, and participating.
Of course, for most that wasn’t really a manual they could sink their teeth into, so after having a lot of conversations I came up with a more robust set…
NACAC on Social Media in Admissions
This week, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) reported it’s findings on the use of social networking in college admission processes. As expected, the report displayed a blanket increase of the use of social media within the college admission process.
Facebook While Admissions’ Back was Turned
Brad J. Ward recently discovered that marketers from a company interested in reaching incoming freshman was out disingenuously making hundreds of X University Class of 2013 groups on Facebook. The perspectives from both Ward and his commenters are worthy of some deep consideration.
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