.eduGuru

College Reviews on Third-Party Sites: Are You Paying Attention?

Kyle James — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:30:44 +0000

If hindsight is 20/20, then college reviews from your school’s alumni are worth big pots of magical gold to your prospective students. Put yourself in their shoes (or their parents’): Back when you were looking at colleges wouldn’t you have given anything to learn more about the schools you were interested in from the students themselves?

Before parents and students are setting foot on your campus for a tour, you can bet that they’re searching for reviews of your college online. Sure, you may have tons of awesome case studies, interviews, or testimonials from recent grads and current students on your website. But here’s the kicker: parents and students don’t always trust them!

Between being bombarded by glossy viewbooks and flashy admissions websites, your potential applicants are Googling for reviews of your college to sort out fact from fiction in their own minds. Just like using Yelp! to see what people are saying about the new restaurant in town, they’re going on third-party college review sites to get that coveted unbiased perspective.

So what can you do?

Google Shows More Reviews of Notre Dame

Do your homework first.

Search for college reviews on popular college search sites to see what people are saying about your school. You might even want to check your school’s Google places page by seeing what external review sites are automatically being aggregated. If you’re not seeing any reviews for your college on these sites that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it means that there’s ample opportunity to start encouraging your students and alumni to leave their feedback and opinions.

Work with your alumni office.

If your admissions and marketing departments don’t communicate with your alumni office you’re missing out on tons of excellent collaborative opportunities. Suggest that in your next alumni newsletter that you include a recommendation and a link to leave a school review one of the third-party sites you’ve discovered. If your alumni office is active on social media (like they should be) you can request that they spread the word that way as well.

Don’t be shy to leave reviews yourself!

In some cases you don’t necessarily have to be a student or alumni to write a school review. For instance, StudentAdvisor accepts reviews from school faculty and staff members in addition to students and grads. Don’t just limit to your reviews to college review-specific sites either: Why not share what you love about working at your school on Glassdoor, Yahoo Local! or Google Places?

Make it a yearly effort.

A lot can change at a college in just a few years. Parents and students searching for information will often put in the current year when searching to make sure they’re getting the most recent reviews. For example on our site we get plenty of search engine hits for “X name college reviews 2011″ or “University of Y reviews 2012″. If you notice that there haven’t been any new reviews on third-party sites of your college in over a year or so, it’s time to encourage your community to write some fresh ones.

Dear John…

Michael Fienen — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:00:51 +0000

Dear John,

It’s not you, it’s me. At the same time, it almost seems oddly fitting that I tell you all this just before my birthday. 2011 was a somewhat complicated year for me, professionally. I released my book, dotCMS From the Ground Up, spoke at more events than I can remember, did about 25,000 miles in travel, accomplished some great research, and did the most consulting work of my career with other schools. It’s been an enormous amount of fun, but I’m also just very, very tired. Unlike Seth Odell, I like to sleep once in a while.

I started off 2012 with a plan. It was a grand plan, and one that seemed staged to really focus my work and help declutterfy my brain. We’re just a month into the year and that plan lie in ruins at my feet. It was not my intention, but when opportunity knocks, you need to at least open the door and have a chat. Which brings me to the point. Near the end of February, one month shy of six years, I will be leaving my current position as Director of Web Marketing of Pittsburg State University. It wasn’t an easy decision. The very opposite, actually. It was damn hard. And it was made all the harder because the company I will be going to work for is not related to higher ed. I have accepted a position with the marketing and design staffing firm Aquent, where I will be their senior interactive developer (translation: I’m gonna be doing some crazy cool things with dotCMS). While this means my contributions to higher ed may begin to wane, this affords me the opportunity to substantially increase my role within the dotCMS user community. On the flip side, I’m extremely interested to see if there’s some way I can connect Aquent’s unique ability for channeling talent with higher ed’s need to be more flexible and nimble in web design and marketing. We shall see.

Though I may have a new boyfriend, believe me when I say I am far from gone. I plan to still occasionally contribute, albeit in a somewhat more editorial fashion, to .eduGuru (I have a couple posts in the queue as we speak that still need to come out). I’ll also retain my role at nuCloud, which you’ll undoubtedly see me peddling the wares of at some of the standard higher ed conferences. Finally, I also plan to remain active on UWebD. You can take me out of higher ed, but you can’t take higher ed out of me. For now, it looks like my adventure is just going to lead me down another path for a while, and I’m looking forward to a lot of new and different challenges. In the mean time, PSU is going to have a need for a talented web person, and I’d love to see one of you take that on. It’s a great place to work, and a fantastic opportunity for someone that wants to really leave a mark on an organization. For the record, at least for now I will be staying in the area, and I anticipate keeping myself available in case the school needs any support with some of the more technical, harder to replace components of the job. So you wouldn’t be without a sounding board if you had questions about how things were set up. Think about it, and if you’re curious about the position, feel free to shoot me some questions and I’ll answer them best I can. I’ll share out the job listing once it’s posted.

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last to say that this community of people is something I’m damn proud to be a part of. I’ve made a hell of a lot of good friends here, and I plan to make a lot more still. In the mean time, stay in touch. You know where to find me: Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Don’t ever stop being awesome. Ever.

Yours in respect, yours in friendship,

Michael Fienen

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Social #UNH – How the University of New Hampshire Manages Social Media

Kyle James — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:00:25 +0000

Jason was recently telling us about the launch of their “Connect with UNH” page. Managing multiple social media channels across campus that many of you face daily. Their approach is very ambitious and I asked him to share it with our readers. Enjoy! –@kylejames

The University of New Hampshire offers over 100 majors across multiple campuses and enrolls over 14,500 students who engage in daily discovery … including the use of social media. Research shows that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to grow. By using these new communication tools, we can better reach out as a higher education institution and give our school a louder voice by creating engagement between the school and the student body, staff, alumni, and surrounding community. Because social media is so powerful and enormous, UNH recently hired me to coordinate and monitor all its social networks and to evaluate the tools that work best.

UNH has many social media outlets, both official and unofficial. Currently, there are more than 30 affiliated Twitter handles, 120 affiliated Facebook pages and groups, 12 affiliated YouTube channels, not to mention our official Foursquare, Google+, Flickr, and LinkedIn Alumni pages. There is also a growing collection of both departmental and student-run blogs. There was no central place to find all these social pages, which led to our new webpage, “Connect With UNH.” By creating this page, we’ve connected all our social networks tab by tab and ask that any program, department, club, or student organization that is not listed send us their information, which gets added to the appropriate spot on the index. It’s categorized and well-ordered, making it easy to navigate and find just what social page you’re looking for at UNH. “Connect With UNH” is evolving. We receive updates and requests everyday, so our social media list continues to grow.

Visit the Connect with UNH page to check it out

Just because social media is easily available, you cannot assume everyone at your institution uses it or is using it properly. Since I began my new position as social media coordinator at UNH, I have met individually with various departments and organizations looking for tips and tricks when creating a Twitter account or promoting an event through Facebook or Foursquare. I spend a lot of my time monitoring our social networks, creating content, and trying to engage our audience, but I also make time to discuss social media around campus, offering advice through tutorials and on-site training.

If I can offer any advice for monitoring social media in higher education, I would invest in one of the many social media monitoring tools like Hootsuite, Radian6, Sprout Social, Meltwater Buzz, or Tweetdeck. Most of these platforms offer a free trial, which can simply be downloaded from the respective websites. Trust me, these tools make it easier to stay organized and allow you to integrate many of your social media channels for easier monitoring, engagement, and messaging.

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So, you think you know content? Prove it.

Karlyn Borysenko — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:52:28 +0000

Not a day goes by when I don’t read a blog post by someone in higher ed pontificating on how we all should be utilizing content strategy on our websites, many times accompanied by a list of reasons why one simply can’t fight through all of the politics and slow moving pace (or a million other excuses) to actually implement these things at their school.

Time to stop making excuses and start doing awesome work.

Here’s your chance to do everything you’ve ever wanted to do with content: Southern New Hampshire University is looking for a Content Director. You will join and amazing marketing and communications team at one of the most innovative colleges in the world (and you’ll get to work with Seth Odell and I. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing). You get the best of both worlds – you get to work at a college but we operate like a start up. We are mission driven, and when our campaigns work, we change lives. We move quickly, we work incredibly hard, we take risks, we measure things, we make data driven decisions. And we have nerf guns.

Best of all, this position will be yours to build from scratch. We’ve got ideas but we’re looking for this person to come in and take the reins and make something the likes of which haven’t been seen in higher ed before. This is a place where good ideas are listened to and funded. The only obstacle you will encounter are the ones you put in your own way.

Lots of people talk. Very few people do. Are you a talker or a doer? Head over to our website to apply. And if you have any questions, you can find me on Twitter, @KarlynMB.

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It Looks Like College Students are the Majority of Google+ Users

Kyle James — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:40:50 +0000

It wasn’t that long ago that Mike Petroff wrote this blog post about Google+ Pages Launch. Some new data about Google+ demographics pointed out some interesting trends that I couldn’t help but share. With a sample size of 45 million crawled public profiles I feel pretty good that the sample data is accurate. Google+ is estimated at 90 million total profiles. I definitely recommend looking at the report but here are a couple of things that stood out to me.

Read the Google+ Demographics Global Report

Male vs Female Ratio

Google+ is 70% male. This is especially weird when you consider that Twitter, Facebook and even MySpace have a larger female than male population. The world as a whole has a larger male population, but the US has an estimated 4 million more females than males. Why would Google+ have such a high ratio of males? Keep reading for my guess.

Age and Employer Breakdown

50.4% of all users on Google+ are between the ages of 18-24 and over 20% of all users list Student as their occupation. The occupation shouldn’t be all that surprising if 50% of all users are in that age bracket. Google+ is either going very strongly for the younger demographic or this age group just happens to flock to the service. I imagine a lot of this is because of Google’s strength with their Gmail service among individuals in that demographic.

Do People Actually Use Google+?

So I think this is the real question. I’ll admit to not being the power social media user that I was a few years ago, but I never use the Google+ profile that I created in the launch phase. When I log into my account it doesn’t look like many of my friends spend a lot of time there either. Do we really need or want another social media presence or do we just keep a profile there because we know the power of Google’s search engine?

I just asked my fiancé, who is one of the biggest Facebook power users I know, if she uses Google+. Her response was, “Nope, but I got a profile there just to have one.” I imagine that probably says a lot about why the female adoption is so low. Females are some of the most active users on Facebook and from the early days have spent hours looking through friends’ photos and keeping up with relationship statuses. The network effects that Facebook has already created and the, dare I say, dependence that many females in their 20’s have on the service will keep it relevant where something like Google+ will be something that early adopters “try out.”

Who Cares About User Account Totals?

The one piece of data that this report doesn’t share is user engagement with the service. Facebook claims more than 800 million “active” users with more than 50% of these active users logging in on any given day. Google+ has 90 million user accounts, but how many of them are actually active? The real value of a network isn’t in how many accounts you have but what people do with their account. The one interesting thing about this is that Google might be the one company on the planet that could care less how active their 90 million users are as long as their account information is up to date. Think about it for a second. As long as they have all the most up to date information on us and know what accounts we are active on then they can collect all the information that they need from us. I’m not saying that active users wouldn’t be nice, but Google is in a unique position and does not need activity to declare their service a success.

Final Thoughts

When you look at the engagement data published I can’t help but get a little freaked that Google is using Google+ to amass a digital footprint of their users across the web. With 96% of Google revenue coming from advertising this enhanced data about us helps them deliver better and more specific advertising. Maybe that isn’t a totally bad thing but as I’ve said before how much do you really want Google to know about you?

I’m actually happy to see that the percentage of connected profiles, such as Facebook and Twitter, to Google+ isn’t higher. With both of those sites being much larger and assuming they share much of the same user base it means that everyone isn’t comfortable with Google knowing everything about them. Of course in the interest of full disclosure I do have my Google+ account linked to all my other accounts on the web. I’m also very cautious about what I share and how it could be perceived. I hope that everyone else is as informed.

So what do you think of the data? What does it tell you?

FollowEDU Launches: Searchable Directory of Twitter Users in Higher Ed

Mike Petroff — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:00:30 +0000

I (@mikepetroff) am very pleased to announce the launch of my new website FollowEDU! It is a searchable directory of Twitter users in Higher Ed. FollowEDU allows users to sign in with Twitter and create an account, list their profile under Interests within higher ed, schools, companies, and more.

I invite you to add your Twitter profile today. It’s very easy to create your account. Just visit FollowEDU.com and click the Join button, then follow the steps to connect your Twitter account.

Join FollowEDU »

During registration, you can add Interests to your profile. FollowEDU organizes users under Interest lists, making it easy to find others in specific areas of higher ed. Or, find Twitter users to follow by browsing some Interests that may be new to you.

You can also read more about FollowEDU and find information about our Terms of Service and Privacy information.

I welcome your feedback on the site. Please tweet @WhoToFollow with questions or comments. If you find any bugs or errors in the site, please include #FollowEDUbug in your tweet. If you have a suggestion for a new Interest to add into FollowEDU, please use #FollowEDUinterest.

I hope you find FollowEDU to be a resource for connecting, networking and sharing!

Why you should ask your vendors for an ROI analysis breakdown

Kyle James — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:00:40 +0000

All educational institutions work with vendors in one way or another. Some like to bring lots of their services in-house and have almost internal agencies who do the work where others tend to outsource quite a few projects. Either way, when you are preparing a new project you have to factor in an ROI (Return on Investment) analysis in the discussions.

For a college or university it still comes down to money and this almost always comes from one of three sources: student tuition, donations or government spending. Because of our audience here I’m going to strictly focus on web marketing projects and those are almost always for increasing enrollment or giving.

Whether you’re going through a website redesign, bringing on a new email marketing system or outsourcing video you always need to take a step back and factor in how this is going to help you increase revenue from one of these sources. The great thing about the web is we can test and get analytics on almost everything. Because of this, not measuring the ROI of a project is basically irresponsible and lazy.

Here are some reasons why you should be asking vendors for an ROI analysis.

First step in setting up solid project expectations

When we first start on a new project there are a lot of unknowns and things to figure out. Before we get too far into the details, establishing the ROI can help us figure out how much of a budget we need for the project because we will have a better understanding of everything that we can get out of it.

For a vendor only a bad sales rep doesn’t present the case of how your service/product is going to impact and significantly help the bottom line of your prospective customer.

As the customer if you have a boss from whom you need sign off or approval in the first place very few things are as compelling as an ROI analysis. This analysis can greatly speed up the decision and approval process for everyone.

Aligning your goals with the original objectives

If we are thinking about the ROI in financial terms then we are also probably thinking about the costs that go into it. You are going to be much more cautious of the timeline and resources that go into something when you also know the expected output.

I know all of us have been caught in projects that die in committee meetings. What is the cost of having one of those committees in the first place? Seriously, if you have 12 people in a room that are getting paid on average $25/hour then you just spent $300 for that hour-long meeting where nothing was accomplished. Was that really worth the time? Were there not more valuable things that half of those people could have been doing? If the meeting was about a project that will cost $1,000 for a vendor then you have to step back and realize that the project costs just went up 30% for that meeting alone. Can you tell I’m not a big fan of committees?

Dealing with scope creep

When a project gets blown out of proportion, and they almost always do, having a baseline ROI understanding helps you quickly grasp if the added tasks are really worth it or not. Do you really need 12 people’s input on a decision or can a single person sign off on it?

Sometimes scope creep is a great thing too though. If something comes up that can have a greater impact on the project then it can quickly be justified as worth it because you prepared your ROI analysis ahead of time.

Once again for vendors this is in your best interest too because scope creep is one of your worst nightmares if you are getting paid on a per project basis instead of a per hour basis.

Final Thoughts

If you are going to need one anyway to get a big project off the ground, why not make vendors do the work for you? One of the great skills I learned while in sales was to quickly learn from the prospect if your service/product is a “nice to have or a need to have”. If you are in a nice to have you are better off just moving on.

Also as a vendor you should really be thinking about the value proposition that you provide and why your customers need your services. For example at nuCloud we have created an Interactive Campus Map ROI calculator to help show the value of our solution specifically to enrollment because that is usually the main reason that our customers are looking for our product.

Photo Credit: Money by 401K

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Why You Should Ignore Pinterest (for now)

Michael Fienen — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:19:52 +0000

Blame Travis over at EMG for this article – he pulled me into this question on Facebook about what higher ed should be doing about Pinterest. It was something that shouldn’t have riled me up, and yet it did. It doesn’t help that many of you may have also caught the article over on the CASE blog about Pinterest as well, and are now wondering: “Is that for us?” It was written to showcase the work Oberlin is putting in to their Pinterest account - which I applaud their effort, if not their methods. Warning: This is a rant. You can jump to the end if you’d like to read the Storify I put together to summarize the discussion several of us had this morning on this topic.

Back around 2008 or so, I made fun of Twitter. Why the hell would people want to “microblog,” I asked. But, the idea of Twitter was pretty new and I’m nothing if not even handed (usually), so I set up an account to at least try it out before writing it off. Nearly 28,000 tweets later, I think the results of that are clear. I’m doing the same thing to Pinterest now (in criticizing its purpose and usefulness), and yes, I recognize the hypocracy in that. Pinterest is novel, sure. But I definitely think that higher ed should not be himming and hawing about whether or not to use it (to be specific, I’m talking about usage institution-wide, as a marketing and community engagement tool – as a classroom tool, that’s another discussion). Pinterest has been compared as a more visual alternative to Tumblr by some. I think for current examples, that’s a relatively fair comparison. In that light, consider this:

Twitter:Plurk::Tumblr:Pinterest

Remember Plurk? Do you recall how it was going to revolutionize the Twitter audience and experience, and instead mostly faded into obscurity and instead became the MySpace of microblogging? And in their defense, I do feel like Plurk was ultimately a better tool than Twitter – sometimes it’s just hard to fight the power of first-to-market. Imagine then if we’d all ran out and set up our walled gardens in Plurk, how much could have been wasted. And imagine if you’d invested time and effort into Plurk without doing the same for Twitter. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t try new things. As Dylan Wilbanks pointed out:

But also feel that there is a fundamental difference between the mentality of “We should do this because we think we can do something new and awesome” and “I wonder if we should do this new thing because it seems cool and trendy and might be popular later.” Much of higher ed falls in to the latter group, in my experience. Being a pioneer is hard. I like hard, but it’s a rare place that can always innovate, and always try new things, and be successful enough at it to keep it up (*cough*Google*cough*). The other thing to consider is that we’re just now really settling in to our social media properties. For most institutions this is Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, with a few branching out into LinkedIn, Google+ and Tumblr as well. In the case of Plurk/Twitter above, how wise do you think it would be to invest effort into Pinterest without first having gotten the hang of Tumblr? I know that’s a fragile discussion, as first-to-market is no guarantee (just ask Friendster and MySpace), but it’s certainly a good place to start and ride it out until the community at large tires of it in some cases.

And that brings me to the core issue.

Do less better.

If you can’t sit there and tell me that you’re at all the “common” spots, and that you’re doing great at them, then why would you consider branching out even farther? I won’t fault you for name reserving an account just in case, but if you are investing time and effort into setting up a presence there, are you prepared to break down what that investment is worth? In the case of Pinterest, the largest part of the audience is currently women between the ages of 25 and 34. Is that your target audience? Is that time more valuable than other methods of sharing user generated content through existing networks and tools? If you are established on Facebook and Twitter, we now have the resources to really dig in to the value and opportunity in those channels. That gives you the luxury of being able to wait a bit on Pinterest and see just where it is six to twelve months from now. That’s not being overly cautious or lazy, that’s being strategic. That’s showing that you know you have limited resources for community engagement, and that you’d much rather put them to use where it’s worth the most. As Krisna put it:

Think about your core questions: who, what, when, where, why, how. In the long run, some brands will likely find successful ways of using it. But you must remember that the more specific your audience and community is, the more specific your strategy for them should be. For us, consider:

WHO do you plan to reach on the site? WHO will be your voice on the site?
WHAT do you expect to share, produce, or facilitate? WHAT does the audience expect to get?
WHEN are you going to plug it into your workflow/editorial cycles?
WHERE are you going to get or find content at? WHERE will this fit into other existing strategies.
WHY are you investing the time here, instead of at X, Y, or Z?
HOW will you promote and create value in your new property? HOW will you add value to the channel?

One of the best uses I could see for Pinterest would be at a school that has highly visual arts or similar programs. Pinterest is a visual medium, and certain programs on an individual basis could find promotional success there. If you want to jump in, that’s where to start. Be strategic about your use, and pioneer creative marketing techniques tailored to the items you’re selling. Institution wide? No. Have a plan, have KPIs (key performance indicators), define how it fits your marketing and customer service strategy. Yes, you can curate and share other user generated content about the school too, but Pinterest is hardly unique in enabling that kind of functionality. How do you plan on adding value to the channel? Bottom line, if you feel like you must do it, be smart about it. It’s hard to learn from a failure when you didn’t have a plan to begin with. If you at least go in with some kind of strategy, come success or failure you can learn from the situation and do better next time.

It’s almost like higher ed is developing ADHD. So many were slow or late to the social media game, that there is now a panic that we’ll miss a boat (hint: you will miss boats. It’s going to happen. It’s not the end of the world). It’s like our immune system responded to Web 2.0 by overreacting. It’s okay to pace yourself and move slowly, as long as you’re also smart about it, and not putting it off just because you want to wait for waiting’s sake. In the end, if you’re asking “Should I be on service X,” then the answer is likely no, because it means that you already don’t have any idea what you’d do there (in the case of Pinterest, you’re going to mainly be sharing and promoting community generated content. Why do you need Pinterest to do that?). Instead, focus your efforts on being successful with The Big Three (FB, Twitter, YT), and wait until you’re comfortable enough to be smart and agile within the bigger sandbox.

I know this sounds like the “Twitter? Why Would I Want That?” conversation all over again. But I personally believe it’s much closer to the lessons learned from services like Plurk. We need to get used to the fact that new services will quickly become a dime a dozen, and it will be much more important to be smart about our resource investments rather than putting a hand into every single basket that comes up. Several of these points and a lot more are discussed in the Storify below. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by optikfluffel

Why now is a great time to do an OAuth audit

Nick DeNardis — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:00:34 +0000

The beginning of the year is a great opportunity to start fresh and look at everything with a new set of eyes. Something that is easily overlooked is who (or what) has access to your social media accounts. It’s easy to change your password and revoke access from co-workers but it isn’t as easy to identify which websites and services have access to your accounts.

What is OAuth?

OAuth (Open Authorization) is an open standard for authorization. It allows users to share their private resources (e.g., photos, videos, contact lists) stored on one site with another site without having to hand out their credentials, typically username and password. – Wikipedia

How OAuth can be useful

For some, OAuth is a life saver, allowing you to share social media accounts across campus without having to give away the password. I know I am guilty of this with our Flickr account, we allow multiple departments to upload photos through their Uploadr tool. We just have to visit their computer, login, and they are all set to use the account as if they knew the password. We can change the password at any time without disturbing their work.

How OAuth can be harmful

Increasingly sites are using OAuth as their primary method of account creation. This is great for users since they only have to remember a single login, fill out one bio and upload one profile photo. But over time, without proper maintenance, the amount of website that have access to your accounts can reach in to the hundreds. These services can often use your account as if they were you, reading all your content, sometimes even private messages without your knowledge.

Twitter in the last year made some changes to protect direct messages by implementing a granular permissions model. But not all services use a permission model like this. It is important to read what and how each service will be using and doing with your data. Especially on your main institutions accounts, it can be concerning if a service has free reign without your oversight.

Lastly, OAuth is independent of your password, so even if you change it the services you have authorized will still have access to your account.

Time to audit who has access to your accounts

Below I go through the steps to view who (or which services) have access to your social media accounts for the more popular sites. Start the year out right and make only the services you trust have access to your data.

If you use a site that isn’t on my list, please feel free to add it in the comments.

Twitter

Facebook

Each of the applications on the list can read your account information in various forms, click the “Edit” button to see what each app is using. In addition there is a “Manage my pages” section which shows which pages that app also has access to. This is the important area for Facebook since most institutions use pages as their primary source of communication.

Tumblr

http://tumblr.com/
Login
Preferences
“Applications” at the bottom

Flickr

http://linkedin.com/
Login
Settings
Groups, Companies & Applications
View your Applications
External Websites

YouTube

Formspring

http://formspring.me
Login
Settings
Application List (looks like they removed it)

Monthly cleanup

The services that have access to your accounts are probably essencial to your social media productivity. Don’t go removing all of them because they could be accessing your data without your knowledge, most are probably legitimate. What you want to look out for are services that you don’t recognize or you know you won’t be using anymore.

It is a good practice to setup a re-occurring reminder each month to log in and audit your accounts.

[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage Survey, 2011

Michael Fienen — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:00:20 +0000

The time has come. After a month of data collection, we are ready to release unto you the results of our largest survey to date. When the dust settled, nearly 500 schools had responded to this year’s CMS survey, more than triple what we had last time. The great part about that is the data is certainly good for those of you researching for yourselves. And in that regard, as always, all the research data is available to you under a Creative Commons license for you to use, recut, or combine with other information. And be sure to join me in an hour as I take part in an open Q&A with Converge Consulting at Friday After Class about the results.

Additionally, for the first time, over the next couple weeks we’ll be cutting this data up into platform specific reports and sending it on to the vendors that we can reach (easy for enterprise systems, less so for open source). This is to provide them with your pros and cons, as well as suggestions, ratings, and comments about the systems (all anonymously, of course). The hope is that we can help them make better systems for you as they go into 2012. Obviously these reports won’t have any data that’s not available as of today, but it’s our hopes that by providing the vendors with the customized report, we can help affect a little bit of change out there on your behalf.

Now, with this much information, there’s almost no end to the number of ways that we could slice and dice it. Instead, I want to hit a few of the highlights to give you some idea of just what we’ve learned. For instance, if you’re here because you’re trying to decide on your first CMS, you’re in the overwhelming minority. Most folks have already selected a CMS:

Schools Using a CMS Currently

Honestly, that’s not too unexpected. Crunching the results, the average school has been using their current CMS for 3.3 years as well. Some folks, largely ones with homegrown systems, tend to be using their systems a lot longer. Again, this makes sense given how the CMS market has matured since about 2005.

School's CMS Age in Years

The grass is always greener on the other side. If possible, visit an actual school that is using the CMS you are interested in, and watch them do their job to see how truly easy it is to use.
- Survey Comment

Despite the increase in this year’s responses, we discovered that the number of schools that report using more than one CMS on campus remains unchanged, at just under 54%. I’m somewhat surprised that we haven’t seen this increase, if for no other reason than to tailor tools to different jobs, like using WordPress for news or magazine sites.

Schools Using More Than One CMS

That also makes me wonder if we aren’t trying to make our primary CMS be a tool for too many things. For instance, the top complaint about the CMSs was their calendar features (or lack thereof). Perhaps it would be better to focus on best of breed solutions for things like that, rather than look to bolt on functionality in your CMS. Calendars were followed by social networking and multimedia functionality as disappointments. Otherwise, given available options, discontent was fairly evenly spread out.

CMS Feature Discontent

There were a couple interesting notes in the selection findings as well. Closed source/commercial products dominate higher ed currently. This disappoints me on an academic level, as I feel, philosophically, like higher ed could play a huge role in the open source realm – we just choose not to. And while cost is a major factor for nearly half of you, we’re apparently opting to go with the expensive upfront cost of the vendor, rather than the aggregate cost over time of open source. Open source isn’t necessarily free, never forget that, but it can help you spread out costs.

CMS License Breakdown

Cost Factors in Selecting a CMS

And having a system is only half the battle. What you do with it is important too. Most modern CMSs have some kind of functionality to let you pull and reuse content on a site so that you aren’t fragmenting information. Yet, only about 19% of you said you have an actual strategy in place to put that to use. This is problematic because fragmented data is often bad data. People forget to update it, it gets out of sync, or becomes misleading. If you use your tools right, you can ensure things stay consistent across your system. To further complicate things, there’s a very mixed bag in how folks feel about content reuse taking place within their CMS, with more than a quarter that either don’t care or don’t trust users to do it. I went down this trail in the survey to see just how well we were putting these powerful tools to use, after all, it’s call content management for a reason. I hope this is an area folks will consider more – think about cost tables, program descriptions, class listings, directory information – all these things that might need to be presented in different places, but should be managed from a single point.

Schools with a Content Reuse Strategy

Thoughts on Content Reuse

Of course, all of this gets in the way of the bottom line, right? What system should you use? Obviously, no amount of survey data replaces real world requirements research on your part. Pick the system that’s right for you. That said, you’ll find some that stand out more than others. Once again, OmniUpdate leads the pack based on sheer volume. However, the field is not nearly as close as last time, and we see strong representation this time from some new systems like TERMINALFOUR (the folks of conference notepad fame) and Ingeniux.

CMS Usage Breakdown (5 or more votes)

Do your research. Check vendors open bugs system and how fast those bugs are solved. Also look at the documentation. Very important. One last one, deploy it and beta test it before buying.
~ Survey Comment

Satisfaction numbers also tell an interesting story. Most systems landed reasonably close to the averages (Satisfaction was 7.1, Usability was 6.7). The open source platform Reason stood out relatively well on both counts. OmniUpdate and WordPress also followed with strong numbers in both fields, though TERMINALFOUR won the usability battle. Keep in mind, these are qualitative scores and totally subject to the survey respondents’ opinions on the systems. In this case, we limited scores to only the platforms with five or more entries. The question breaks down as basically “how happy with the system are you as a person that has to run it,” and “how easy is it for your users to get in and get using it?” With more votes this year, there’s definitely been some change in the satisfaction scores for the systems that were listed last year.

CMS Satisfaction and Usability Scores

Obviously, the point of this research isn’t to tell you what system to go with. I could fill this page with another two dozen charts and graphs, and it wouldn’t necessarily get you any closer to the answer of which system you should choose. As mentioned, there are different reasons to choose different systems, and just because a platform isn’t right for one group, doesn’t mean that it might not fit your needs to the letter. It’s so important to plan properly and identify your real needs, and pick a system based on the right problems. Be sure to download the full results, as they contain a ton of great comments and suggestions, both about specific systems, as well as thoughts in general about picking a CMS. It’s great stuff, and may help you think about things that haven’t come up yet.

Admission Office Uses Twitter Promoted Tweets

Mike Petroff — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:55:15 +0000

Just before Halloween, I noticed an interesting Promoted Tweet show up in my Tweetdeck search column for “Emerson College”. It was from @LoyolaAdmission, the Twitter account for Loyola University of Chicago’s Director of Undergraduate Admission, Lori Greene.

Screenshot of Promoted Tweet in search column for "Emerson College"

I shared this finding on Twitter and quickly found that I wasn’t alone. Mallory Wood also saw the Promoted Tweet in her search column that includes “Saint Michaels College” and Rob Engelsman saw the same tweet in a search for “Ithaca College”.

From first glance, it looked like the Promoted Tweet was showing up in searches including the term “College”. I reached out to Lori Greene and Loyola University Chicago’s Admission Office to find our more about their use of Twitter’s Promoted Tweets.

Please note: Due to some of the restrictions Twitter places on sharing information about Promoted Tweets, Lori was not able to share specific information about their Twitter contract details or keywords used.

Q&A with Lori Greene, Director of Undergraduate Admission at Loyola University Chicago

In general, how does the Undergraduate Admission Office at Loyola use social media to attract prospective students?

Lori: We use a variety of social media channels to help to reach students at different stages of the funnel. For example, our Class of 2016 Facebook page is for students who’ve been admitted to that class. The purpose of the page it to promote more engagement and interactions among the students, as well as to provide another method of passing along information about academic programs and different areas of interest. We have other Facebook pages for different audiences as well (prospective students, parents, transfers, etc.). Our YouTube channel has also provided us with a great platform to share information of what’s going on around campus via video highlights. We’re also becoming more active on Twitter and Flickr. Blogging has also been a great tool that’s starting to appeal to our various audiences as well.

When did you start using Twitter as a communication platform for Undergraduate Admission? How is the account maintained?

Lori: Our Undergraduate Admission Office has had a Twitter feed (@LoyolaUAO) for several years, which is mainly event-focused. I started my Twitter feed (@LoyolaAdmission) in early 2011 as a supplement to my college admission blog. I manage these accounts and also receive assistance from Loyola’s Enrollment Management Marketing team.

How have you been using Twitter to attract and engage prospective students? How did you develop your ‘voice’ for Twitter?

Lori: I think Twitter actually allows us to reach a larger audience than prospective students alone. I enjoy connecting with current and future students on Twitter, but it’s also been great to network with parents and other members of the higher education community. I try to tweet about topics that are relevant to all of these multiple audiences. I also make an effort to use Twitter as another way of sharing the information I write about in my blog.

How was the decision made to use Twitter Promoted Tweets to market to prospective students? What were your goals with this campaign?

Lori: Our marketing team has had some success with Facebook advertisements, and we thought it was a natural next step to try something similar with Twitter. I like how the platform allows you to both expand your network and also lets you target important messaging through promoted tweets. Ultimately, it’s seen as another way of enhancing Loyola’s social media presence.

What was the process like in working with Twitter? How long did it take to get set up and launch Promoted Tweets?

Lori: Twitter asks that we keep details like this under wraps, so I can’t really comment. Sorry!

What Twitter users did you target for the campaign? Or, what keywords did you use in targeting Twitter searches?

Lori: Again, we have a variety of audiences on Twitter, so we try to push out information that is relevant to each of them. Keywords vary and are determined by audience.

Can you give some examples of successes / failures you’ve experienced after launching Promoted Tweets? Was there an increase in @ replies? New followers? RT’s? Things you didn’t expect?

Lori: We’ve definitely seen a higher level of engagement on Twitter as a result of this promoted account. The most obvious success is that our list of followers keeps growing every day. Perhaps more importantly, though, is that I’ve received so many more retweets, DMs, and @ replies as a result of this campaign. It’s helped me connect with people more easily and start building relationships on Twitter.

If another school was thinking about using Promoted Tweets, what advice would you give them?

Lori: Remember to think about who your audience is, and make sure you’re tweeting information that’s relevant to them. Also, make use of the analytics information Twitter provides as part of this service. It will help you see what’s working and what isn’t, so you can fine-tune your campaign. Finally, remember that Twitter is all about engagement, and promoting your tweets alone isn’t going to help you build those relationships. You need to spend time on Twitter, commenting and connecting with people. That’s what social media is all about.

I want to thank Lori for providing some great insight on the use of Twitter and Promoted Tweets to reach out to prospective students. Are you aware of other schools doing this? What are your thoughts on the use of Promoted Tweets by higher education? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Why Everyone is Wrong About Text Messaging

Karlyn Borysenko — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:12:25 +0000

As an admissions tool, text message marketing has a bad rap – a really bad rap. Each new recruitment season brings articles like this recent New York Times piece that dismiss text messaging as either ineffective or unwanted by prospectives. As someone who has worked directly with text message campaigns in higher ed admissions for years, I can’t help but wince when reading coverage like that. Not because the truth hurts, but rather because it’s not true at all.

Contrary to popular opinion, text messaging can be an incredibly successful admissions tool – and I have the data to prove it.

The Problem

The general argument against text messaging as a recruitment tool is that students don’t want it. Whether it’s qualitative findings, like those highlighted in the above-mentioned NY Times article, or quantitative findings from surveys like Noel Levitz annual E-Expectations Survey, critics point to the fact that a vast majority of prospective students say they simply do not want colleges or universities to communicate with them via text messaging. As an industry, we’ve taken these findings and jumped to the conclusion that if it’s not a broadly applicable tool, it’s not worth implementing. But the fact is, text message marketing isn’t about the vast majority.

The Data

For the last three years, St. Mary’s (TX) has provided potential students the option to sign up for text updates when they first make contact with the institution. Throughout the recruitment process, students who opted-in get helpful and important text alerts, and, if they reply, the university writes back to them individually.

For example, in recent text campaign prospective students were invited to Sleeping Bag Weekend (a key recruiting event). Many students responded via text: ‘thank you’ or asked simple questions. One student specifically engaged in a conversation about the admissions process, transcripts, application and transportation to sleeping bag weekend. After all his questions were answered, he replied “..all of this texting helps a lot..”.

As an early adopter, St. Mary’s has been very successful, enjoying record breaking enrollment for the last three years. Texting is only one component of their multi-channel communication mix. However, a very important one. In the last year…

1,923 student opted in for text updates (out of 40,000 who inquired) – but 30.8 percent of those who did ended up applying, compared with 10.9 percent of all prospective students.
42% of the texting students paid a deposit to attend the university compared with 26% of all accepted students.

Conclusion

While one could look at the above numbers and scoff that a mere 5% of prospectives signed up for the service, they’d be missing the point entirely. Prospective students who opt in for texting are significantly more likely to apply and enroll, which makes SMS adoption an excellent early qualifying indicator. In addition, an argument could certainly be made that it is also the helpful, personal and easily accessible communication inherent in texting that can make a difference, at least among a portion of participants.

So it’s true text messaging as a recruitment tool isn’t for everyone. In fact, most inquiring students will not opt-in for these text alerts. But when 97% of students rely on texting as their own primary form of communication, and when participation in such campaigns provides a nearly instantaneous qualifying indicator, it just seems contemptible that our industry would write the technology off entirely, simply because it’s not a universally applicable tool.

The bottom line is that the data is in, and text messaging is a viable marketing tool worthy of a place in our recruitment toolkit.

Conferencepalooza

Michael Fienen — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:00:14 +0000

Everybody loves a good conference. The nights out can certainly be even better. And there’s a killer chance to do some networking. However, if we want to preach breaking down silos internally, I think we very seriously need to get out of our own a little bit. I’ve been involved with some great events this year, and one thing I’ve learned is that we absolutely have to get outside our boxes. We read and share information from all over, trying to expand and learn from others. Yet when the time comes to get feet on the ground, we stay very close to our community. That’s not bad, it’s just somewhat limiting.

Everyone knows how important HighEdWeb is to the community. There’s no secret there. But, HighEdWeb has a problem. Size. So many people want to go, yet you can’t keep growing the conference without the risk of damaging some of the networking and personal time that comes with it. And while there is great catharsis in sharing war stories with the like-minded, we have got to start looking to industry events as well. So, in no particular order, here are some other ideas for your budget planning (note: pricing is the top listed, last minute, no extra frills cost, so you can likely get in cheaper on many of these if you register early):

Confab

Price: Up to $1349
Date: May 14-16
Location: Minneapolis, MN

Whether you love content strategy or hate content strategy, this is a great conference to talk and listen to the absolute top industry folks on how to plan and manage content on your sites. Good representation from book authors, consultants, and site managers at organizations both large and small. Kristina Halvorson (founder of Brain Traffic and author of Content Strategy for the Web) makes it a point to encourage people to get out of their comfort zone and listen to things they don’t necessarily agree with. Good advice for any conference really. Upcoming speakers include Kristina herself, Ann Rockley of The Rockley Group, Colleen Jones (author of Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content), and Lou Rosenfeld (consultant and IA expert).

JBoye

Price: Up to $2095
Date: May 7-9/November 6-8
Location: Philadelphia, PA/Aarhus, Denmark

JBoye conferences are about networking in a big way. With events in both the US and Denmark, going to the JBoye conference is a chance to learn from some of the best people about web, intranet, and digital marketing techniques in the world, all the while connecting and building relationships you can take home with you. Attendance ranges from about 200 up to 350, plenty small enough to meet and interact with a lot of the folks there. I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at their international conference this year where I had a fascinating discussion with Yousef Elbes of the World Health Organization about how their multilingual content strategy works. Yeah, I’m a nerd – but this is ridiculously valuable information that we don’t necessarily get at normal .edu web conferences. They do offer a higher ed track of talks, but I’d encourage you to sit in on some of the online communications and digital marketing stuff too. Past speakers include founder Janus Boye (possibly the best interpersonal networker I’ve ever met), Mark Greenfield (of HighEdWeb fame, among others), and Cathy Marshall from Microsoft’s research division.

UI Seventeen

Price: $1349+
Date: Early Novemberish
Location: Boston, MA

The annual UIXX event is the user interface and experience conference organized by the kind folks at User Interface Experts. Spearheaded by the one and only Jared Spool (who can also entertain with some mad card trick skills), it attracts speakers like Luke Wroblewski, Kevin Hoffman (Happy Cog), and Brandon Schauer (Adaptive Path). If you’re doing anything related to UI or UX design, this is a great place to learn from some of the people that started the discussions to begin with (in other words, since the next one is UI17, that means they’ve been doing this event for 16 years. Just try to find another group with such a long standing tradition in the field). The conference focuses heavily on practical examples and application of concepts and ideas so that you have real world takeaways that you can look at implementing at your own organizations.

In Control

Price: Up to $995
Date: February 20-21
Location: Orlando, FL

In Control is a two day event that features ten speakers on topics raging from the technical (HTML5 and jQuery) to the abstract (strategy, techniques). They focus on 90 minute talks from industry professionals to cram in as much practical experience as they can, without making you feel overloaded with dozens of different sessions to choose from (by comparison, I believe #heweb11 had something in the area of 60 total presentations). While the event is newer than most (in its second year), it’s still bringing in speakers like Kristina Halvorson, Chris Coyer (css-tricks.com), and Dan Rubin. It is hosted by Austin local (see, I remembered this time!) Christopher Schmitt (Chris’s organization Environment for Humans also helped put on the .eduGuru Summit earlier this year).

This isn’t to say these four specific events are the end-all and be-all of alternative conference venues (for instance, many people recommend SXSW – though personally I’d say stick to somewhat smaller events). These are just some opportunities to get you thinking about the kinds of places you could go that look at things from a bit larger picture. Just as an example, think about how many parallels there can be between how websites operate in the health care industry and higher ed – large sites, many stakeholders, unskilled editors, privacy and legal considerations, balance of marketing vs. service providing. What could you learn from the people functioning successfully in that field? It’s so important to keep sight on the fact that our problems aren’t that unique. We like to think so sometimes, but it’s not true. And of course, always keep an ear out for various An Event Apart, XCamp, or TEDx type events that are hosted at locations across the US and might be organized locally. These can be great, low cost chances to talk to all kinds of exceptional people outside of higher ed. What have been your favorite non-.edu specific web conferences?

Photo Credit: Some rights reserved by HighEdWeb

Why Higher Ed Admission Offices Must Think Like a Sales Team

Kyle James — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:57:54 +0000

Higher education admissions offices too often think of their job as ushering students through the final stages of the enrollment process. But admissions counselors and marketing teams must think instead like a sales team. Focusing only on the end of the application and enrollment process means universities loose out on countless prospective students and promising contacts and ultimately, hurt their enrollment. A while back I wrote about the concept of Marketing and Admission focused which I coined arkmissions. This post hopes to take it a step further on exactly why this is so critical.

Think Strategically

Financial times are tough in education. Just as the economic recession has taken it’s toll on the private and public sector, a weakening economy has also affected the university system, especially public institutions. Which school hasn’t seen a cutback of some sort or another in the past few years? In response, schools have raised tuition and worked to increase enrollment.

Higher education admissions offices should develop strategies designed to minimize marketing costs while maximizing marketing efficiency.There are several strategic steps admission offices can take to bring in more prospective students before they decide to apply for admission.

Increase inbound marketing strategies to provide prospective students with the information they want and need early in their decision making process.
Gain contact information from prospective students and nurture leads through email.
Effectively use social media including Facebook, Twitter, mobile-ready websites and geolocation.

All of these require a strong alignment with the Marketing/Communication/Web Office to pull off successfully.

Students = Revenue

Each student who eventually enrolls in a university equals a revenue stream. Higher education admission offices must analyze what portion of the school’s annual revenue comes from tuition. It is an admission counselors job to bring in revenue for the school by increasing enrollment. The best way to increase enrollment is to encourage more students to apply. The best way to increase applicants is by increasing inquiries of all sorts.

Traditionally, admissions offices plan marketing by starting at the wrong end of the marketing funnel — the application. Instead, they should plan marketing by starting at the top of the marketing funnel, the stage where prospective students are just starting out their school selection process. The more students a university can grab at this stage, the greater the revenue the admissions office can produce.

Prospects Lead to Applications

Higher education admissions offices should think of the entire sales funnel as a path to application. When the admissions team catches more students at the top of the funnel, more students will ultimately end up applying for the school. Having more applications has several advantages for universities.

First, schools could choose to make their selection process more rigorous. With more applications, a school could increase its level of prestige simply because there are more students to choose from. Secondly, a school could choose to grow by accepting more students. Growing has the advantage of attracting even more students in the future as programs grow and gain in recognition. Finally, schools will increase revenue by bringing more students into the university.

Higher education admissions offices need to rethink their strategies in order to move their universities ahead into the 21st century marketplace. Implementing a sales strategy that recognizes the admissions process is really about selling the university and the benefits of a higher education will reap the benefit of increased enrollment and increased revenue. It’s time to start thinking different.

Colleges Join In For Google+ Pages Launch

Mike Petroff — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:57:33 +0000

Yesterday, Google announced that they are rolling out Google+ Pages. According to Google, “this means we can now hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour. Google+ pages give life to everything we find in the real world.”

At launch, only a few Google+ Pages were available but more will be coming soon. You can check out the the Google+ Page create page if you plan to create one for your school. Access is somewhat limited but the Page creation option should be open to all users soon. Quick tip: Only ONE admin per page is currently allowed, so it may be better to create a Google+ Page using a department Google account (and not a personal account). Multiple admins should be coming soon.

After one night of some searching and crowdsourcing, I found about 20 schools that have already created Google+ Pages. If you’re a Google+ user, you can view a Shared Circle I’ve created to collect and showcase colleges with Google+ Pages.

UPDATE: Huge thanks to Travis for sharing this Circle from Educational Marketing Group, Inc. filled with over 180 schools on Google+.

Some of the first schools to join include:

UPDATE #2: I’ve also created a shared doc for Google+ Page admins to add their schools to the list.

College Pages on Google+

Google+ Page Features

Even though Google+ Pages are still in the very early stages, they still include some interesting features for colleges looking to experiment on a new social platform.

Google+ Page for Emerson College (click for larger image)

Circles

Google+ delivers a few standard Circles for Pages, including Team Members (possibly employees of your school), VIPs, Customers and Following. The approach here is that you’ll segment your posts out to specific populations of Circles if that content is audience-specific.

In the future, colleges may want to create Circles for audiences like Prospective Students, Parents, Faculty, Alumni, etc. One downside is that Pages can’t add people to Circles until the page is added first or mentioned. So, you’ll have to do some marketing of your Page before you can segment your users into Circles.

Direct Connect

An interesting feature is Direct Connect, which simplify searching for and following colleges on Google+. After connecting your website to your Google+ Page, you are eligible for Direct Connect through Google searches. A user can then type in + then your Page’s name into a Google search and be sent directly to your Google+ Page. More information in this video:

Hangouts

Pages can interact with other Google+ profiles by starting Hangouts. This could be an easy way to create video chat with specific Circles from your Page. Let’s say, maybe, that you want to connect accepted students online before they move in. You could start a Google+ Hangout from your Page and invite students moving into a certain dorm on campus. Or, you could have your college’s president initiate a Google+ Hangout to talk to select members of the college community.

Your Thoughts?

Google+ Pages have just arrived, but because of the possibilites with Google search and Adwords integration along with Direct Connect, we’ll be seeing brand Pages pop up more in our search results. It’s really just a question of “will your audience actually visit their Google+ stream to see the information you share?”. That seems to be biggest hurdle for Google+ to overcome.

Have you created a Google+ Page for your school? What are your initial thoughts of the platform and eventual growth? Share your thoughts in the comments.