The Social Side of College Admissions

We want it to be easy. We want our first YouTube video to go viral. We want our blog to have hundreds if not thousands of followers within a couple months. We want our tweeps (and subsequently their tweeps) re-tweeting our Twitter posts, creating a giant echo chamber for our messages.

Unfortunately, for 99.999% of us, it just doesn't work like that. For every social media overnight success story, there are thousands of folks inching forward, building an online following for their social media presence a handful of users at a time. But maybe being the tortoise in this race isn't so bad. We may not all be able to catch lightning in a bottle like UQAM did with their LipDub video. But maybe we can build meaningful, ongoing relationships with our target audience (prospects, admits, current students alumni, sports fans, and more) through our social media efforts.

Keep the (Relevant) Content Coming

Focus less time trying to come up with a single Silver Bullet that you hope will knock the socks off users and more time providing them with a constant stream of good content. The more content you provide, the more opportunities your audience has to engage with your school.

This doesn't mean distributing the same content on every social media outlet to every audience. Also, don't feel like everything you post has to be an official news release. One of my favorite social media campaigns is the Ohio State O-H-I-O picture campaign. It literally involves them sharing the best pictures of people forming the letter O-H-I-O in fun, interesting, exotic, and unusual locations.

Create a Strategy for Maintaining Momentum

Trust me, I know this is not an easy task. I started this blog with hopes of producing a post every week or two. Unfortunately, they've become a little less frequent. I should've been more honest with myself up front setting up a more manageable timetable for posts.

Try and figure out what are realistic expectations up front. That means determining who will be responsible for creating and curating content, for responding to user comments, for actually posting the content, and for measuring the results of your social media efforts. It also means figuring out how many resources you can reasonably devote to these efforts, not just for the initial launch but on an ongoing basis.

If you have a small team with minimal time available, that may mean that being on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, while publishing your own blog is not really an option.

Again, be realistic about what you can achieve and what sort of effort you can maintain.

Let Your Audience Do Some of the Heavy Lifting

Effective social media efforts are two-way dialogues. Encourage your audience to participate. Make it easy for them to contribute content. You may openly solicit their feedback and opinions ("What's your favorite memory from college?" for alumni, "What's your favorite class?" for current students). You may create contests with prizes for the top submissions ("Take a picture of yourself in the college's sweatshirt. The most creative picture wins a $100 book scholarship" for admitted students).

First off, these efforts can help make your job easier since you won't have to be the one trying to generate all the content. Secondly, it'll provide you with some great feedback on what sorts of content your users may want more of.

The most effective social media efforts are able to harness the power of the audience and enlist their help in building an engaging community. Back to that that UQAM LipDub video I mentioned at the beginning of the post. This was not an official school video. It was shot, directed, and choreographed by students. While the school's marketing department did not have any hand in the video, it's probably one of the best social media campaigns they could have asked for.

Labels: Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Twitter, YouTube

Social media doesn't necessarily lend itself to easily tracking performance like your website or e-mail campaigns do. It's not always possible to figure out how effective a status update on your Facebook Fan Page or a Tweet from a university Twitter account is.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't try. We offer a number of ideas for determining the success of your social media efforts.

Capitalize on Existing Metrics Offered

Take advantage of the existing metrics offered and track changes over time. For Facebook, that might be monitoring the number of fans and wall posts for your Facebook Page. For Twitter, you might keep tabs on the number of followers for your account.

Don't just peek at these numbers on occasion. You might want to create a spreadsheet where you record these numbers over time. This will allow you to better understand what caused significant increases. Was it a blog post, a mention in your alumni newsletter, a big athletic event? Did you post a status update or tweet that was especially engaging?

Determine the Effectiveness of Calls to Action

Utilizing these existing metrics is just the start. We assume getting a Facebook Fan or a Twitter follower is not the end goal. You are typically going to want these fans and followers to take some sort of action. For alumni, you may want them to donate money or return to campus for homecoming. For prospects, you may want them to apply to your school or accept your admissions offer. For current students, you may want them to buy tickets to Saturday's football game. Asking your fans or followers to act on one of your messages is referred to as a Call to Action.

When you post a Call to Action via social media, try and do so in a way that you can measure the responses. An easy way to do this is via tracking links. With tools like Google Analytics, you can incorporate special codes into links, allowing you to determine how many people got to your website via a given link and which pages they viewed. So you can find out how many people donated money after clicking on a link from your Twitter account. Or how many prospects completed an application form after you posted an Apply Now link to your Facebook Page.

By measuring the performance of these Calls to Action, you will not only start to understand the value of a Facebook Fan or Twitter follower, but you will also get a better understanding on what types of Calls to Action work best on each of your social media outlets. What works on Facebook might not work on Twitter and vice versa.

Survey Your Users

Get information directly from your Facebook Fans and followers. Find out what constituency they are a part of. Are they alumni? Prospective students? Current students? Parents of students? Fans of your sports teams?

You might ask them what sorts of information they want to receive. Do they want sports scores? Information on upcoming campus events? Alumni news? Admissions tips? The more engaged they are, the more likely they are to respond to your Calls to Action.

Find Benchmarks

It's hard to understand how you are doing if you only focus on your own efforts. See what colleges and universities in your peer group are doing. How does your performance stack up against their performance? For schools that seem to be doing a better job attracting Facebook Fans or Twitter followers, what are they doing differently? Are they posting more pictures on their Facebook Page? Is the tone of their Twitter account serious or more light-hearted? Are they running contests?

We've built a resource that will hopefully help you with some of this benchmarking. Our Facebook Page Directory can help find data on hundreds of college and university Facebook Pages.

None of these methods for measuring performance should be considered as one-off initiatives. These should be ongoing efforts that help you hone and refine your social media strategy, helping you better understand who your audience is, what types of information they want, and what types of actions they are likely to perform.

Labels: Facebook, Metrics, Strategy, Twitter

We've given dozens of demonstrations of our Facebook Application for college admission and marketing offices. All but a handful have gotten great responses from colleges, most of whom are looking to do more with social networks, specifically Facebook. The biggest reason folks pass on the opportunity is budget concerns. We've heard some variation of "We just don't have the money for this. Our budget has been cut this year" more than any other reason. We've only heard "We just don't see the value" once.

This got me thinking, are social media efforts primarily considered an additional expense and new responsibility or can they be viewed as an alternative to an existing initiative? As I started to think about this question, I started to realize the implications of the answer.

Social Media Is an Additional Expense and a New Responsibility

If your school views social media as one more thing it needs to do or one more product it needs to buy, you're probably facing an uphill battle, especially in these economic times. There are unlikely additional funds for these "new, non-traditional" approaches. Not only that, many universities are paring down administrative staff, increasing everyone's workload. That likely means any new initiatives only add more to someone's plate, a plate that is already overflowing with responsibilities.

It's easy to see how a school that approached social media from this perspective is going to choose the path of least resistance, requiring the fewest resources, both financial and human. That probably means a Twitter account that pulls directly from the school's news feed, a Facebook Page that regurgitates press releases, and a YouTube account populated entirely with the school's 30-second TV commercials. All content that does very little to play to the strengths of social media and social networking.

Social Media as an Alternative to Existing Practices

Colleges and universities that view social media as a new way to interact with prospective students, current students, and alumni are much better able to take full advantage of the opportunity. This might mean admissions counselors spend more time crafting status updates for your Facebook Page, fun Tweets for your Twitter account, or intersting blog posts that give an insider's view of the admissions process. And less time each week sending off e-mails or manning a booth at a college fair. These schools may choose to invest money from their limited budget in a Facebook Application or private social network rather than in a beautifully designed brochure.

For these schools, a down economy does not mean that social media goes by the wayside. These schools may find that social media actually offers a way to more cost-effectively reach students. A Facebook Page and Twitter account are free to set up, as is a blog if you use a site like Google's Blogger. Expensive viewbooks could be replaced by a lively Facebook presence that helps prospective and admitted students interact with real people in a two-way dialogue. You may choose to create a series of fun 1-minute YouTube videos about life on your school's campus rather than buy an ad in a magazine.

How does your school view social media?

Labels: Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks

We're heading to the NACAC Conference in Baltimore next week. We're looking forward to exhibiting at this great event. We'll be at Booth #604 so stop on by and say hello if you're going to be there.

Raffle for Free Year of Our Facebook Application

We're going to be raffling off a free year of our Facebook Application at the conference. Don't miss your chance to win. Just come visit us and drop a business card in our raffle bowl to enter.

Can't make it to the NACAC Conference this year? Don't worry about it. You still have a chance to win the free year of our Facebook Application. Just submit our online Raffle Entry Form by September 25 and you'll be entered to win.

Give us a shout out on Twitter (@VarsityOutreach)if you are going to be at the NACAC Conference. We'd love to meet you in person.

Labels: Facebook, NACAC

Varsity Outreach will be hosting a webinar on September 15 at 2pm ET on how colleges can use Facebook to promote themselves. We will combine useful statistics and an overview of your options with practical, actionable advice regarding Facebook.

We plan on covering all the options you have for getting involved in Facebook, including Profiles, Groups, Pages, and Applications. We will highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each. Additionally, we will provide tips on how to get the most out of your Facebook experience and a roadmap for a successful Facebook presence.

So come join us next Tuesday, September 15, at 2pm ET. You can watch the webinar from your computer. If you want to participate and ask questions, there will be a chat room (registration on UStream required). We will also be monitoring the Twitter hashtag #VOWebinar

The webinar will be on our UStream channel:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/facebook-tutorial-for-colleges

You will also be able to watch on the Varsity Outreach website at:
http://www.varsityoutreach.com/VideoPresentation.aspx

We hope you can make it!

Labels: Facebook, Marketing, Strategy, Webinar

It's hard to miss all the hype about social media. Stories about Twitter and Facebook are in the news almost daily. Several schools have attracted headlines for launching iPhone applications. The New York Times' The Choice blog just had a story about a site that aggregates and categorizes college-related twitter accounts called GlobalQuad.

So you may be thinking, our school needs to have a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, a YouTube channel, and more. It almost feels like blogs are a thing of the past (they're not).

But wait, take a deep breath, and relax. Just throwing something up and forgetting about it on these sites is unlikely to produce the sorts of results that you would hope for given the hype.

Social Media Is an Avenue to Get Your Message Out, Not the Message Itself

I think people sometimes forget that social media is a tool. It's not the end goal. In many cases, it can be an extremely effective tool to build and foster relationships, but, in the end, it is just a tool. Just like the telephone, e-mail, postcards, and other marketing outlets are just tools at your disposal. It's the content and people that really make the difference. Social media offers an opportunity to accelerate the distribution process, to create stronger feedback loops so you can more quickly react to what's working and what's not, and to let your community (which may be current students, alumni, prospects, admits, staff, and more) have a voice.

Social Media Is Not Fairy Dust

Free Can Be a Hard Price to Pass Up

I think one of the biggest advantages of social media is that it can be an incredibly cost-effective way to reach an audience. You don't have to pay for postage or printing. If you post your video on YouTube, you don't have to foot the bill for bandwidth and video hosting. It's free to create a Facebook Page or a Twitter account. However, the $0 price tag may also be the siren's call of social media.

Just because it's free doesn't mean you should be doing it. Creating a Facebook page that has no pictures, no wall posts, and only an address may not do you any good. In fact, it may be harmful. If I were a prospective student and I posted a question your wall, but never got a response, that may not leave a good impression.

I am a huge advocate for the potential of social media. I would encourage colleges to engage prospective and admitted students using tools they embrace like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. I believe providing a more personal touchpoint for interested students is a powerful selling point.

Content Is Still King

But you have to remember it's the underlying message you are trying to sell... the value of a college education at your school, the richness of the experience on your campus. It's unlikely that a student is going to pick your school just because you have a Facebook page, but they may pick your school because of the relationship they developed through interactions on that Facebook page.

Labels: Facebook, Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy

On the Mashable website, there was an interesting article about the friendly Facebook rivalry developing between Texas A&M and LSU for the top spot among college Facebook pages. In the article, there was a great quote that got at the heart of two of the biggest selling points of social media... access and convenience.

Kathryn Greenwade, VP of communications for the Texas A&M alumni association was quoted saying that the university's social media strategy is "to go where the people are rather than creating our own network."

Don't Re-Create the Wheel

Are you going to build a better social network than Facebook? Unlikely. Are you going to be able to keep up with the innovations that Facebook is making on a monthly basis? Also unlikely. Are 250 million people going to have easy access to your social network from day one? Pretty much impossible. Through tools like Groups, Pages, and Applications, Facebook gives colleges and universities a number of options to reach prospects, admits, current students, and alumni on one site. Is it worth devoting your scarce resources to building and maintaining your own Facebook-like site and to driving users to that site?

Minimize Barriers to Participation

If anything, the Internet has made people expect more information and functionality easier, faster, and more adapted to their specific preferences. You can get stock quotes streamed to your Yahoo or Google homepage. You can update your Twitter account and Facebook status at once. You can pay bills with the click of a mouse. Basically, we've been conditioned to expect more while doing less.

A large percentage of your target audience is already on Facebook. Why make them sign up for a completely new social network? Why make them maintain a whole new set of online relationships? Why make them log in to another website to participate?

Convenience is one of the most powerful tools you have to encourage engagement with your school. If it is easy to join and easy to participate, people will do just that... they'll become fans of your Facebook Pages, join your Facebook Groups, and add your Facebook Applications. They'll post on your walls, upload photos, and watch videos. Ultimately, they will build stronger relationships with your school.

Labels: Facebook, Marketing, Pages, Social Networks, Strategy