I was working on a college campus when young people were leaving Facebook for Instagram.

“You have to get on Instagram,” keynote presenters screeched, “that’s where the kids are.”

The campus I worked at was annually ranked as one of the most beautiful in the country.

In the early days of Instagram, one could only upload images from a phone. There were no schedulers, no Meta Business Suite [shudders].

That left me with a conversation about opportunity costs.

It was this: what do we get if I upload images I take, and what might we lose?

Well, since I’m a writer and not a photographer, we lose quality. A lot of quality. This is bad for a school ranked as the most beautiful because my pictures could impact that perception.

And what do we gain? We get on a marketing platform that someone said we “Had to be on.”

We don’t have a strategy other than “be on.”

So I held the line. When people asked why we weren’t on Instagram, I would ask for the marketing argument for why we should be on Instagram.

It’s where the kids are, they argued. Arguing for media as a strategy.

It created tension, because a keynote presenter at some conference said you gotta be there. And who was I to argue with that influencer?

Eventually, the college got on Instagram. And I left.

I can never prove a negative, but I do think the opportunity cost to the school was the beauty.

A professional photo taken with a camera is better than one taken by a non-professional on a phone, mostly because professionals are better at framing moments.

There is a cost to chasing students to a platform. The cost is in time, and efforts, and what you don’t do. There could also be costs you never consider.

This is what I talk about with 3 Enrollment Marketing, Inc. partners in a Roadmap.

I’m trying to look at all the costs.

For now, I want to address one of the top searches, “Institution logo.”

This is also a top search for EVERY INSTITUTION I look at.

You know what this means, right? It means people all over your institution are adding a logo found in a Google Images search to tell people about an English Department Tea.

They don’t care (or don’t know) about brand guidelines. Why should they? Brand guidelines are for people in marketing, not for them marketing their event.

But here’s the thing: when people go off and use older logos, different fonts, or different colors, it appears as if the institution doesn’t care about how it looks. It looks like the Institution is in chaos, not in control.

Brand cops are not there to tell people not to do that — they are there to make things feel more in control. The opportunity cost of that font or that logo is a perceived lack of control.

There is a cost impossible to calculate for rogue marketing on a platform. A cost to your positioning that will come due at some point.

My friend and colleague Mary Grondahl knows how to mitigate this cost. You could talk to her.

Your pal,

Matt.

p.s. does your institution have a “logo” search?

This is also a top search for EVERY INSTITUTION I look at.

You know what this means, right? It means people all over your institution are adding a logo found in a Google Images search to tell people about an English Department Tea.

They don’t care (or don’t know) about brand guidelines. Why should they? Brand guidelines are for people in marketing, not for them marketing their event.

But here’s the thing: when people go off and use older logos, different fonts, or different colors, it appears as if the institution doesn’t care about how it looks. It looks like the Institution is in chaos, not in control.

Brand cops are not there to tell not to do that – they are there to make things feel more in control. The opportunity cost of that font or that logo is a perceived lack of control.

There is a cost impossible to calculate for rogue marketing on a platform. A cost to your positioning that will come due at some point.

My friend and colleague Mary Grondahl knows how to mitigate this cost. You could talk to her.

Your pal,

Matt.

Matt is a strategist at 3 Enrollment Marketing. He’ll happily come to your campus to help cut this out.

For most of the last century, marketing was an underwriter of content. Brand marketing was predicated on a ‘contract with the consumer’. The contract essentially went like this:

The content you are consuming is underwritten by this ad.”

Newspapers, magazines, over the air TV and radio, it was all underwritten by ads. The bigger the crowd the content amassed; the more brands paid to pitch the assembled mass.

Media departments in agencies used to get pilots and try and predict hits. Some brands turn to live sports, with the pinnacle being the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl draws an audience, ads entertain and inform.

There’s still validity in this model. The obvious issue is that content creators are having a harder time amassing the mass market in one place. Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, podcasts.

Newspapers struggle because they messed up their part of the contract. They gave people content for free in one place while charging for the same content in another place. And even though the fee was less than a dollar, free is significantly less than a dollar. News is free in many places on the Internet, and paywalled in other places. Leading to a weird world where news costs money and conspiracy theories are free.

Branded social platforms all lack that content contract.

Is that bad?

For an answer, consider direct marketing. It has always been a marketing tactic that skips the contract.

Direct marketing comes from seller to buyer via mail, phone calls or e-mail, skipping the content creators.

Postal mail is junk mail. E-mail is Spam. And telemarketing has do not call lists. People appear to hate things that skip content. We don’t call that show ad that follows us around the internet a Spam Ad, even though it feels sort of creepy. We are aware that the shoe ad makes Facebook free.

So this notion of skipping the content provider to go right to the consumer clearly agitates people. Maybe the simple answer is that consumers are aware they are getting nothing out of being pitched?

In the digital world, we continue to struggle to figure out ways to write a new contract.

Social platforms are exhibit A for the so-called new marketing. The organic Facebook Page doesn’t underwrite Facebook. The school YouTube channel doesn’t make YouTube free. The Twitter feed doesn’t underwrite Twitter.

Organic social doesn’t bring anything of value to the follower. Following a feed on your favorite social channel still might be an identity status cast: we follow our undergrad schools, well-known brands, politicians because the brand we follow say something about us.

However, like the website before it, which also had no contract with the consumer, social media needs to ask: what’s in it for the consumer in a way that wasn’t required of traditional advertising?

I don’t have the answers. I do have a lot of questions. Marketing on digital platforms isn’t exactly like direct marketing and it isn’t exactly like doing a 30-second spot. It is both and neither.

What do you think?

Right now, on a video that was a Zoom panel on the humanities, a prospective student has to watch a pre-roll ad before the video.

YouTube updated their policy terms of services, and now are showing pre-roll ads on YouTube videos from trusted channels.

“We periodically update our Terms of Service to make sure they are clear, easy to understand and meet the needs of our partners, advertisers and viewers.” They start.

“…ads can now appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), and we will begin gradually placing ads on brand safe videos.”

That means Universities and Colleges are getting pre-roll ads for on their videos. The default is now opt in to ads.

What does this mean to higher education?

In short, school’s might have ads on their YouTube channel. Note: if a video on a YouTube uses music without rights to the music, then YouTube could slap an ad on the video. This is often the case for athletics videos, especially live streamed games with breaks that include music from well-known artists.

But the real problem is perception. Since the ads are random, the marketplace could perceive that a particular school is monetizing the enrollment process.

I was there to understand how Facebook was using Live Video, but they used the chance to pitch “Workplace” — an intranet that is free to non-profits, and runs at around 3K per month for businesses.

It is an intranet build around the concept of groups. If employees can build work groups, they can also build play groups and enjoy work. Also, it kind of looks like Facebook, which people know how to use.

Groups as a Yield Tool

In the enrollment cycle, the group is a yield tool. Invite admitted student into the group, and hope that they chat amongst themselves and yield. This was kind of the strategy. Built it, invite people to it, hope it yields the class. Or, assign an AC to it to make content whilst also reading apps, meeting students, and planning spring travel.

Students who join a Class Year Facebook Group self-select as being interested. Students who are “for sures” and are on Facebook join the group right away. They are the most-motivated to introduce themselves, say hello, and engage. If the school has ED or EA, these are your people. If the group has crickets, they will ignore it moving forward.

The next group “on the fencers” need continued reminders to join the group from the school. This should never stop.

How to make a group work.

For a group to work, I think it needs three things:

1. A marketing plan to invite people into the group. You can’t set it and forget it; you need to constantly invite people. Are you in the group? Are you in the Facebook Group? Email to admits: have your joined? On the phone, “have you joined?” This should continue after deposits because I think we well run group can help with melt.
   
2. Content in the group from the school. The group can’t be crickets. It needs content.In 2018, Facebook began letting brand pages connect groups to a page, and post as the page. All the content the school makes, from videos to news stories about alumni being successful, to events for admitted students, can be placed in this group.
   
3. Content in the group from current students. There needs to be current students talking about how awesome the school is.

So let’s look at all three.

1. Marketing plan.

Invite people into the group. This is self-evident. If you build it, they will not come. You have to invite them. Seriously, if you were throwing a party, you wouldn’t plan the party and then hope people arrived at it. You would invite people. A Facebook Group is a yield tool. Tell people to attend.

But Matt, people don’t use Facebook!

Heh. I see people joining groups our partners have made who joined Facebook on the day they asked to be admitted to the group. People aren’t on Facebook because it offers no value. A good group offers value and when it does, people will come.

2. Content in the group.

This is the beginning of offering value. Facebook Groups are a website wherein a school can schedule content about why students should attend. The location (images, videos), financial aid (affordability meetings), the spirit. Images, videos, content made each year about the awesomeness of the school can be scheduled. Got a traditional event coming up? Make a Facebook event for it, and share it in the group: you’ll all be attending this next year. We’re so excited to have you as part of this tradition.

This is the beginning of value. There are other ideas here on content that can be used.

3. Current students.

The biggest innovation for the success of a Facebook group is the ability for a current student to go live in the group. Tour guides can and should go live in the group.

“Hi future classmates. congratulation on your acceptance to SCHOOL. I can’t wait to see on campus. My name is Matt, and I’m a junior from Hamilton. I’m an English major with a History minor. I’m also in this club, the president of this club, and I’m a tour guide on campus. I’m in my dorm [turns camera]. Here it is. Here is my view. Anyway, we have this event coming up for admitted students that you should consider attending. And we have tours for admitted students. If you can’t make any of those, feel free to reach out to me with any questions. Post in comments where you want me to go live from next, and I’ll see if I can pull it off.”

This is modeling the manner in which you want student to introduce themselves.

What does that get you?

I know of a Facebook Group for yield that has about 750 admitted students and gets 40 posts a day, on average. Yes, you read that right, 40 posts a day.

This isn’t magic. They didn’t build a new tool, or use some magic pixie dust. We helped them built a plan to make content. We asked student tour guides to go live, and we asked AC’s to tell students about the place.

“If you’re interested, join your future classmates in a Facebook group. Introduce yourself, find a roommate, share insta and snap handles.”

Here’s a chart showing daily active members in the group. The group has about 750 members.

This is a huge part of the #3EDigitalLab, a 3-hour deep dive into digital platforms and ideas designed to help enrollment get their class. From visits to melt, digital platforms can actually move the goals of your school. If you’re interested in learning more, hit me up. Or fill out this: https://3enrollment.com/contact.

What do you think? have you used Facebook or Instagram groups for yield?

The school is talking about the .edu, but another word for a Facebook Page is website.

YouTube offers a website with videos. On mobile, the app seamlessly picks up where someone was on the desktop.

Google Maps is a website. It is a huge part of Google My Business, which is a massive part of the Brand Search (when people search for a school by name.

Facebook groups are a website that offers a community for newly admitted students. One of our school partners has a Facebook group that has almost 700 newly admitted students and an average of 30 posts a day.

LinkedIn offers a website that functions as an about for the school. Here is the staff, and here are the alumni, sortewd by major, skills, where they work, where they live, and how they got to where they are. That website offers an incredible look into an alumni population and is massively better than any /alumni could do. LinkedIn also offers events.

I think we’re at an age when an update of a website should include an audit for the websites out there, with a plan for addressing how they will fit into the update.

Call it the Director of Digtial presence, and give that person the role of overseeing everything on the Brand Search, and everything one desires to see on the Brand Search.

At 3E, we offer a Digital Lab that structures an entire day on this very notion of websites and a digital presence. At the end of the day, you understand how the .edu, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and all your other websites fit into the enrollment cycle.

How will Google and other search engines treat each of those sites?

The thing is: there are many landing pages into a school’s digital presence. When thinking about “updating” or “refreshing” a .edu, it is worth thinking about how the other websites fit into it.

One final thing: the English department does not get their own .edu. It would be silly to do that. If we thought of Facebook Pages as websites, we would agree it is equally as silly to have their own website on the Facebook platform.

Thoughts?

What happens when the world’s foremost search engine purchases a video company with crappy urls?

Google owns YouTube. Google’s magic starts with a URL. On Google, the URL is one of the key predictors for winning a search. Schools win a search for their name (called Brand Search) because most schools are school.edu, which tells Google that the school website is their website.

And while only around 3 out of 10 people who do a Brand Search actually click on the .edu, many people see it.

This post is about getting your videos seen, too.

YouTube’s URL structuring system is a hot mess of characters that mean nothing. Thus, all of the search engine weight is handled by the metadata of the video. Here are the key things to know about metadata:

Title.

This is the most important thing. Make the title an answer to a search question. If you can, get your school’s name into the title. So a virtual tour would called: School virtual tour. I know that it sounds better to say Take a virtual tour of school, but it isn’t better. Your title is for search engines, not people. And getting your school’s name to the front of the title is better for SEO.

Description.

Add a lot of it. Add video links in it:

0:34 – we tour the academic quad via a drone.
1:12 – we take a tour of academics and talk to professor Hames. (Academics are here: https://school.edu/academics)

Note: you must add https to all your links in the description to make them links. It is a rule.

At the bottom, add things like this:
If you like what you see, sign up for a real tour at https://www.school.edu/visit or /tour.

Then your about: School was founded in 1856 for the express purpose of changing the lives of young people. Our graduates have been CEO’s, entrepreneurs, academics, researchers, philanthropists, leaders of industry. You’ll find your future on our campus: join us https://www.school.edu/apply.

Tags.

You can add 4 million of these. That would take a lot of time, and after about 10, probably not help, so add 10. Tags can be: school, town you’re in, kind of university (liberal arts), do you offer graduate, time of year, etc.

Member of playlist.

All videos should be a member of at least 6 playlists. You can make more playlists. This is important for playing the next video. According to YouTube, 75% of all views come from suggested videos. If you get someone to watch your video, you want them to watch the next one. So add your videos to playlists and YouTube will more-likely offer up videos in the playlist to watch next.

Location.

YouTube allows you to locate the video, which is probably good since you have a location. A virtual tour can be located at your welcome center.

This data is as important as the video because without it, you’ll be making a video that no one will see. If you do all the above, you might even get your video featured on the front page of a Brand Search for your school.

Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Because, newly aware prospective families are more-likely to be doing a Brand Search for your school. Your awesome videos getting on the front page of your school’s SERP is a win/win.

It is easy. First, log onto the desktop version of Zoom. Under “account settings” you’ll find “Allow live streaming meetings”

Next, log into your Zoom client. Start a meeting (I used the Personal room.)

When the meeting is launched, in the lower right hand corner you’ll see “more”.

Click it. And the connect your Facebook Profile, to Zoom. (Aside, when I did this for a major University, it was nerve wracking because it wanted to connect my profile. I was like, no not mine! but it goes in through your profile to get to the page you are an admin of. So click it.

Boom.

You can Zoom to Facebook Live.

You can also Zoom to YouTube. i think at the same time, but someone I’ll try that another time.