Amplifying the Student Decision
May 1st is here, which marks the national deposit deadline for US colleges and universities. As admissions offices are anxiously awaiting to hear how their Class of 2017 is shaping up, we decided to try an experiment to see if students would share their admissions decision from the Schools App.
Social Media and Student Trends – Where are they headed?
Did you know you have thousands of secret admirers? They are your prospective students and they are stalking you and anyone who goes to your college to see whether or not it is a good fit. While the digital college search is “old news” for some, many admissions and marketing offices are still trying to [...]
Looking Beyond the Campus Visit: How Online Behavior is Changing Predictive Enrollment
Many admissions directors I’ve spoken with explain that of all the predictive indicators they track, a campus visit is the most telling of whether an admitted student will actually enroll. Indeed, a student’s behavior, such as a campus visit, is typically a much stronger predictor for enrollment than geographic or demographic data, such as whether [...]
4 Ways to Maximize ‘Early Action’ Student Engagement
As the winter holiday approaches, high school seniors all across the country will learn whether they have been accepted early-action to their preferred schools. Early-action applicants have been a growing pool over the past ten years. According to NACAC’s ‘2012 State of College Admissions Report’, 31 percent of all four-year institutions currently offer an early-action [...]
How Important are Friendships in Creating Successful Student Outcomes?
Happiness, health, and wealth are all contagious, at least that’s what Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler claim in Connected – The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. One of my favorite facts from this book is that people 3-degrees removed from us (most of whom we do not know) [...]
Introducing the 2012 Social Admissions Report
Observe any fifteen to twenty-one year old for more than a few minutes and you’ll undoubtedly see them “connected” via their phone, texting, tweeting or Facebooking with their friends. While it’s no news that social media is here and here to stay, the jury is still out whether students use social media to research colleges [...]
How to Welcome Transfer Students with Social Media
The school year is starting, and the much anticipated “Class of 2016” have been recruited and are off having a successful first quarter or semester. While admissions departments are ready to pack their travel suitcases and start looking onto next year’s crop of students, some folks are still sitting uneasy. I recently spoke with a Director of [...]
Hey Higher Ed: Has Your Social Media Gone Gremlins or Gangbusters?
I love to turn to movies to explain the order of the universe. Even the goofy, really bad ones some of us secretly loved, like the campy 1984 horror comedy “Gremlins.” For those of you who missed out, here’s the synopsis: There’s this guy, Billy, whose dad buys him a Mogwai, this weird yet adorable “Precious-Moments” [...]
5 Social Media Campaign Ideas from Public Universities
For schools operating in the current marketing environment where Facebook is “in” and paper brochures are “out”, creative ways to not only approach students, but also create buzz and engagement are popping up. This article focuses on public universities and the widely used attempt to get students more engaged with the school’s social media presence: [...]
Social Media CAN Increase Student Engagement, But Is It?
Earlier this week, Eric Stoller proclaimed that “Social Media Increases Student Engagement” on Inside Higher Ed . He went on to describe how we have adopted all these new tools, but questions whether these tools are actually providing revolutionary results. “Social Media are only as good as we make them. The tools themselves do not build houses nor do they [...]
Top Social Media Mashups from Private Universities
Here at Inigral, we look through a lot of different social media campaigns to see what our friends in Higher Ed are doing to drive social media engagement. Lately, colleges have been trying to manage the plethora of social media content in an easy to digest page which we call the Social Media Mashup Dashboard. [...]
For Higher Ed Marketers, Klout Should Not Count
For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you may have heard my disgust at the social media metric known as “Klout”. To be fair, I have nothing against Klout or the folks working there, but I do have a problem with institutions using it as a benchmark for social media success. Fortunately there are [...]
Are Liberal Arts Colleges and Students More or Less Social? (New Research)
The Liberal Arts. According to Wikipedia, the “liberal arts are those subjects that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts.” While some may say the liberal arts needs an upgrade for the 21st century (I’m looking at you Michael Staton) others would argue in this time of hyper-digital-social-mobile-media-extravenganza there [...]
Right Message, Right Medium, Right Now – Introducing “Announcements”
“With so many communication technologies available today, how can university administrators keep up?” This was a question asked yesterday by Katherine Mangan from the Chronicle. We were talking about how institutions can manage the unprecedented changes resulting from new social, mobile and digital technologies. While research is mixed on which medium is most effective to reach admitted and current [...]
What’s Happening With Schools App on Facebook? [INFOGRAPHIC]
![What’s Happening With Schools App on Facebook? [INFOGRAPHIC]](http://blog.inigral.com/wp-content/uploads/schools_app_info-150x150.png)
A few months back we presented an infographic titled What’s Happening With Facebook in College Admissions to the higher ed community, which was one of our most popular posts of all time. After the word got out, some folks asked to see an infographic about our own Schools App on Facebook. We dove into our app [...]
Managing Pages on the Go? There’s an App for that
In preparation for their IPO Facebook has been releasing a variety of updates and changes to boost the market’s confidence in their offering and product direction. One of the biggest concerns about Facebook’s future surounds their ability to engage and monetize on mobile platforms. As a user, I’m not particularly fond of Facebook’s iPhone experience and I definitely [...]
What Prospective Students Think About Your College Facebook Page
Last month I had the opportunity to hear from a variety of higher ed heavy hitters at the CASE Social Media and Community conference in Chicago. Although the presentation topics were varied, my biggest takeaway was that institutions love their Facebook Page like their first born child. The School-wide Facebook page was often described as “our [...]
Should Colleges Use Social Media to Engage Non-traditional Students?
One of the questions we’ve been hearing a lot lately from schools, “do non-traditional students use social media the same as traditional students?” This is a great question, since non-traditional students are one of the fastest growing segments in higher ed. For those of you not familiar with the concept, the most commonly-used definition of [...]
Facebook Introduces New Preferred Marketing Developer Program
Facebook has announced they’ve merged two of their programs, the Preferred Developer Consultant (PDC) program and the Marketing API (MAP) program. The two have now become one – the Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program. Since joining the PDC program in 2010, Inigral has had access to Facebook’s leadership and engineering teams with some knowledge of [...]
How Are You Welcoming the Class of 2016?
There’s nothing new about colleges and college students creating Class of 20XX Pages and Groups before school start. These groups offer an engaging medium for students to meet one another and discuss life before they arrive on campus. While this is a best practice for institutions looking to build community and improve yield, rarely do [...]
Facebook Announces Groups for Schools – Good, Bad, or ‘Meh’ for Higher Ed?
Facebook has released their newest feature – “Groups for Schools” – this week in an effort to increase their reach into university communities. While a handful of universities have already launched this year, the expansion of these “group networks” has rightfully caused a stir within the Higher Ed community. We’ve been in touch with Facebook’s product [...]
Tumblr for Arts Schools Admissions – Tips from University of the Arts
Before I dive into the post I have to say my biggest pet peeves in marketing are: 1. Marketers try to join every social network under the sun and 2. Marketers disregard their unique brand and business situation when evaluating which platforms “make sense” to participate in. Although Tumblr has been around for a few years it [...]
5 Hidden Costs of “Free” Social Media Marketing
social media is a bit more like a free puppy rather than getting a free lunch.
