How Will Facebook’s New Page Changes Affect Higher Ed?
According to Ad Age, Facebook will bring Timeline to Brand Pages by the end of this month. These changes will mimic the profile change announced at the F8 conference and although Facebook won’t comment on specific details, a spokesperson confirmed they plan on making Pages more consistent with Timeline by the end of February.
How High-School Students Use Mobile in Their College Search
Earlier this week Noel-Levitz released their series of e-expectation reports this one titlted “Mobile Browsing Behaviors and Expectations of College-Bound High School Students.” I thought I’d give a summary and some personal commentary on their key findings in regards to mobile/social behaviors. Mobile Browsing Behaviors Only 4% of high-school students report using a tablet device such [...]
What’s happening with Facebook in College Admissions? (infographic)
We talk a lot about Facebook in the admissions process. Whether we’re covering how prospective students use it, how institutions are measuring it, or common complaints about it, I’ve learned that all the blogging in the world doesn’t always clearly articulate how we view current state of Facebook in admissions marketing. Fortunately we have a [...]
5 Downsides to Facebook Pages and Groups
Since joining Inigral last summer, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with dozens of schools on how they prefer to engage with students on Facebook. Although there are many success stories, some folks in higher ed have expressed major complaints with Facebook’s current functionality. The general attitude towards them is still mostly positive, but some recent statistics [...]
Tufts University Social Admissions Tips
Last week I had the opportunity to conduct a design interview with Daniel Greyson from Tufts university. Tufts has received national coverage in the past for their innovative use of social media in their admissions process. USA Today named Tufts as one of 20 colleges making best use of social media and in 2010 the New York Times covered [...]
Making Social Media work for International Student Recruitment
Global Campus just released a whitepaper showing some surprising survey results for international student recruitment, and social media. Although conclusive results are up in the air, it shows more and more administrators are interested in leveraging social media to court and welcome international students. One of the benefits form the report states that social media can [...]
Is Your College Measuring What Matters in Social Media?
It’s not easy managing the growing number of online social outlets today. With limited time and shrinking budgets it’s important now more than ever for universities to be smart with their social media strategy. Prioritizing social media efforts begins with measuring activity and deciding what outlets have the best return on investment. In the fall [...]
Do prospective students use Facebook in their college search?
Last month, some students from Ohio University (who we’d been working with on a few social media related projects) gathered a group of high-schoolers for a focus group to learn more about the role social media played in their college search. The students asked a dozen high school juniors and seniors from Ohio the following [...]
Correlation vs. Causation in Social Enrollment Management
It is likely correlation for everyone and causation for more than a handful of students: students who are more likely to enroll are also more likely to join the app AND the app is likely to have an effect on enrollment.
Using Social Networking to Increase Student Retention
Selected Research on Social Networking from Emily Dalton Smith (Director of Student Engagement at ASU Online), and Michael Staton (CEO and Co-Founder of Inigral, Inc.). This was derived from a poster presentation that ASU and Inigral presented at Educause 2009.
10 Things to Ask Before Creating Another Facebook Page for Your University
Do you ever search for your school name on Facebook and get surprised at the number of search results that come back? I’m always amazed at the number of pages different universities have. From a Facebook Page for the Class of 2016 parents to a page for “parking and transportation offices” (who would like that?), [...]
Top 5 Reasons Why Students Join the Schools App (and why they don’t)
I love Facebook. Ever since my senior year of high-school when I received my .edu address from Ohio University, I was hooked on the connections and ideas that came from the social web. After working with colleges on social media strategy for the past few years, one of my biggest gripes is how they focus [...]
Is Facebook Spam Ruining your School’s Page or Group?
Recently (as you may or may not have seen) the Facebook news feeds have become filled with pornographic images, dead animals, and other disturbing images. Although phishing spam (links that entice you with catchy headlines and photos) are nothing new, the rate at which they are increasing has been making headlines this week.
The Missing Link – Social Networks and Enrollment Modeling
Last week I attended the 21st annual ACCRAO SEM conference in San Diego, where I had the chance to mingle with the university administrators and higher education thought leaders who are part of the emerging field of enrollment management. My main goal was to learn more about predictive enrollment modeling, but I also had a colorful [...]
3 Social Media Lessons from San Jacinto College
“We live in a real-time world and social media takes real effort from real people.” Earlier this week I had the privilege of speaking with two real people on the San Jacinto marketing team, who recently launched our product, the Schools App, last month at their college. Alyssa Webb is the Social Media Coordinator and Amanda [...]
Collaborative Social Media session at HighEdWeb 2011
UPDATE: Live voting is now open! Please follow the links below to choose the top social media wins, fails and wants in Higher Ed! Social Media Wins Social Media Fails Social Media Wants Original Blog Post continued below… Ever wonder how much collective time people have spent sitting through social media presentations the past few [...]
Secrets from the Inigral Design Team
I’ve worked at a lot of companies, but none that have impressed me more than the team at Inigral. I wanted to share with the higher ed. community an insider’s view on our design team’s process. Howard Kao is one of our lead product designers and Mike Petroff is an amazing client who acts as [...]
Facebook Developer Conference Three Key Takeaways
For the first time ever (last month) Facebook had 500 million users in one day. 1. Facebook is launching a redesigned profile called Timeline. The marketing is around “All your stories. All your apps. Express who you are.” The original profile focused on basic stats, but it was really only the first five minutes of [...]
Recruiting International Students with Social Media
Early this morning I saw an article from The Times Higher Education UK that had quite a catchy title. International students ‘do not use Facebook to choose their university‘ It was a bold statement, although I’m not sure where/how the survey was conducted it makes for some interesting dialogue. The main statistic that led to [...]
Does Social Media Affect Student Diversity?
“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.” – Mark Twain In the fall of 2011 there was a New York Times Editorial bashing Roommate Matching technology (like RoomSync) as one of the many new technologies that take the randomness [...]
5 Reasons Colleges Can Do Social Media Themselves
Last week I was on a call with the director of marketing at a college where he explained the trouble he was having managing the school’s “social media.” He stated he was interested in hiring a consultant or agency to help him manage the admissions/marketing presence and was thinking about drafting an RFP to pay someone [...]
EduWeb Recap: Lessons Learned from Texas A&M’s Social Media Scavenger Hunt
Texas A&M set out to bring divergent social media platforms together to build a brand through their Scavenger Hunt.
Social Media Adoption Research in Higher Ed.
In order to stay up to date with the latest research in higher ed. marketing, we’ve been diving into industry and academic reports to gather consensus around the current state of social media in higher ed. Yesterday, Nora Barns and Ava Lescault from The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, published their longitudinal study [...]
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 [...]
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