Social Networking

The good folks of Noel-Levitz have just released their E-Expectations 2010 Report presenting the results of their latest survey of 1,005 college-bound high school students.

This 12-page report is full of really great findings that should help you fine tune your student recruitment strategy. So, make sure you download the PDF file who is made available to the public for free.

Here are a few things of interest (there are more, so make sure you read the report):

• While many (including yours truly) have been announcing the death of print marketing, this report seems to indicate that paper isn’t dead for high school students: 89% indicate that the information received in the mail is one of the ways they learn about schools.
• Email is more alive than ever and used by 79% to learn more about schools. 91% say they will give their email address (70% will even give their primary email address) to colleges to receive more relevant information.
• 75% look for the school’s website and 65% enroll search engines to help them.
• However, only 35% learn about schools via TV or Radio advertising. Time to say bye, bye to the costly traditional media advertising campaigns?
• Facebook is used by 76% of high school students and 80% of them welcome both official and unofficial information about colleges on social media websites.
• Twitter – used by only 8% of students – is definitely not the tool to reach the masses. I think it should only be used as a “customer relations” tool by admissions offices (news and institutional Twitter accounts have different goals and target audiences).

E-Expectations 2010 (PDF file)

I know this is a very long title for a short post, but what I can say…

Last week Fortune released its list of the smartest people in tech in several categories.

Dr danah boyd, who will present an online master class about the social media practices of young adults this Thursday for Higher Ed Experts, was nominated the smartest academic in Tech.

The smartest people in tech – Smartest Academic: danah boyd – FORTUNE

So, this online master class is your chance to listen to the smartest academic in tech this week.
Registration are open until tomorrow (July 13) end of the day at www.higheredexperts.com/socialmedia

You might have heard about it after Facebook developer conference, F8, back in April but the new Facebook Analytics dashboard was officially rolled out on all accounts a few hours ago.

You can access it from www.facebook.com/insights.

One of the really cool new feature is the possibility to add a bit of code to your website to link it to Facebook Insights to get some real data on how your fans interact with your own web content.

Want a quick (well, 15-minute long) tour of this new feature? Just watch this video recorded at F8. Fast forward at 4’30 and stop around 22′ in to get the big picture.

With all the current buzz around the professional use of Twitter, Facebook or YouTube in admissions, alum offices or institutions at large, it’s hard to believe that social media has been around in higher ed for 5 years or so.

While MySpace isn’t the talk of the (campus) town anymore, it played an important role – a few years ago – in this social media tsunami. At that time, danah boyd was already studying and researching these websites — and her work made me think about the possibilities for admissions marketing practices back in February 2006. More recently, I shared on this blog my comments about a paper she co-authored about retweeting practices.

Fast forward to 2010. Social media isn’t optional anymore to engage our constituents and Dr. boyd is one of the most sought-after experts on the social media practices of young adults – presenting around the world about the topic.

That’s why I’ve been on Cloud 9 (haven’t you noticed? ;-) since she accepted last December my invitation to present this summer a Master Class about her latest research. While danah boyd is scheduled to speak at several conferences in the next few months (including CASE Summit for Advancement in New York), this online lecture followed by a Q&A is a unique opportunity to get ALL your team members and colleagues on campus to learn how young adults truly use social media and how higher ed institutions should engage them.

Scheduled on July 15, 2010 at 1PM ET (with the recording available for a full-year as part of the registration fee), this 1-hour online event is the perfect occasion to help your team (and all the other offices on campus) understand how younger constituents (prospective and current students as well as young alumni) use social media and make sure no time is wasted with social marketing tactics missing the mark.

Master Class: Social Media Practices | Higher Ed Experts

Gather a large group in front of a screen with an LCD projector in a big conference room and make this Master Class a professional development event on campus!

Register at www.higheredexperts.com/socialmedia by July 5, 2010, but hurry up as only 80 virtual seats are available for this event and they are expected to fill up very quickly.

Have you seen NC State’s Twitter page yet?

Launched last month, it aggregates all the official twitter accounts on a single easy-to-use web page.

NC State on Twitter – NC State University

It looks sharp and really user-friendly.

Wish you could have a similar page for your institution?

Well, stop dreaming and send a thank-you email to the nice folks at NC State as they have decided to open-source the code powering their neat Twitter page.

But, before downloading the code, take a minute to read the short interview I conducted with Jason Austin, Senior Solutions Implementation Engineer NCSU – OIT – Outreach Technology (that’s a nice long title), about NC State Twitter page.

1) How long did it take to create this page?

From concept to design to implementation, we had 4 staff members in two departments working on it for about a week on and off. It wasn’t terribly labor intensive, just took some initiative and coordination to get it done. It started as one of those “Hey, we should make a page where all the campus twitter accounts are listed so people can find organizations they might want to follow.” Next thing we knew, we were working on a design and had the basic site up quickly. After the site went live, we began getting requests from other universities for the code, so we decided to package it up and distribute it.

2) What kind of traffic do you get on this page? Have you seen an increase in followers for the NC state Twitter accounts?

The page itself doesn’t get an overwhelming amount of traffic yet.
It’s had more than 5,000 visits so far, which is pretty good considering we’ve only advertised on Twitter and Facebook. The site isn’t linked prominently from the main university site yet, but we’re planning to promote it much more on the university home page and throughout the Web presence very soon.

The RSS feed of all the tweets probably gets the most activity because it allows people to stay up with real-time happenings on campus from all the twitter feeds and don’t have to actually follow all the accounts. That feed is part of our growing mobile site as well.

The real result is looking at the number of followers from the accounts listed on the page. The page has provided a great resource to put users in touch with on-campus groups and increase their relevant followers (not just spam). Our campus news account (@NCStateNews) now has more than 1,500 followers. It was closer to 1,000 before the site launched just over a month ago.

We should also note that putting this aggregate together has encouraged other organizations to start using twitter. We now have over 60 organizations using Twitter for all kinds of communications.
The site takes all of those feeds, puts them in a simple context, and gives a great sense of what’s happening at NC State right now.

3) What are the technical requirements to run your code for this page?

The code is based on PHP 5 and uses the Twitter API wrapper provided by the Zend Framework. No internal database is used at all. The accounts and tweets all come directly from the twitter API.

A frightening and yet interesting thing happened to Rachel Reuben from SUNY New Paltz a few days ago. The Facebook page she created 2 years ago for her university disappeared. Rachel tried everything to get the page back as she explained in a post she wrote last week:Feeling Naked: A Tale of the Disappearing Facebook Fan Page.

Long story short: Rachel finally got her page back but not the 5,000 fans – although Facebook has since let her know that they are investigating the issue.

SUNY New Paltz | Facebook

This incident and especially the lack of responsiveness from Facebook definitely put a whole new light on the current trend to rely more and more on Facebook for communications between an institution and its students…

About 3 months ago, I was interviewed for a CASE Currents’ article about private vs. public social networks for alums. While I didn’t mention the possibility of such an incident, I tried to offer a balanced view on the topic.

The article written by Caroline Mayer, The Inner Circle, has been published in the October issue (but is only accessible to CASE members), so I thought some of you might be interested in my answers to Mayer’s questions.

1. How vital is it for schools to set up an online community? Is it necessary and why/ why not? Are alumni associations without online communities missing out on something?

I wouldn’t say that it is vital for schools to *set up* online communities. However, I believe it is very important to join the conversation taking place on the Web (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn come to mind) as these online communities gather alumni who are definitely passionate about their alma mater and want to engage with their peers.

A few years ago, online community solutions were pitched by vendors as the next (natural) step to alumni associations relying at that time on more traditional print directories. These wall-garden solutions were sold as the ultimate tools to gather demographic data and contact information from alumni as they would allow them to connect with their old classmates. Unfortunately, most of the implementations of these solutions failed to engage enough alums to get the conversation rolling.

Today, while the tools have evolved and more and more associations have created groups or pages on popular social networking websites, it is easier to reach a critical mass. But, this doesn’t mean that it is easier to nurture and develop online communities. It takes a lot of work and time, and associations should only launch online communities if they are sure they can invest the efforts necessary to make them successful.

2. Does it make any difference how it’s done? i.e. should it be a private network where only alums can go making it feel special (and giving the schools the access to databases such as email addresses) or should it be where most of the alums hang out these days (Facebook, Linkedin).

As I said above, the problem with private communities is participation.

Alums (and other constituents) live busy lives offline and online. If schools can offer a unique and compelling experience to their community members, they can definitely be successful with a private social networking website. However, they should prepare to work harder and longer to attract and keep these members interested. If they are successful, their hard work will be paid by access to more contact information.

In the case of the most popular social networking websites, it takes less effort to attract community members as they are already using these websites to keep up with their friends and colleagues, but it doesn’t mean it’s easier to keep them interested. On these sites, alums have other options to spend their time – countless options just one link away within the same familiar interface.

3. Is a private network worth the costs? Do private networks provide anything that Facebook and other networks don’t?

First, a private network doesn’t always come with a big price tag. More and more institutions launch private social networking websites using the Ning platform – which is basically free or cost a minimal monthly fee if you wish to remove Google ads or/and use a branded web address.

Some vendor solutions do come at a hefty price though. While the user experience offered by most of these solutions is very similar to the ones provided at no cost, some vendors have set up interesting link between their community application and other CRM/ERM solutions, allowing to set up a system tracking community members from engagement on the social networking website to donations — or matriculation in the case of prospective students.

Private networks also provide a sense of greater privacy – especially when alum associations choose to keep them totally private (you have to be a member to read AND post). On Facebook, pages – used by institutions to manage their community – are indexed by Google. Any comments made on these pages by a fan – i.e. a member of a Facebook page – can be associated to its author right from a Google search.

4. Is a public network worth the lack of control?

It really comes down to participation and engagement. Is it worth losing a bit of control if people are actually going to come to your party? Probably. Moreover, if schools manage to create communities on Facebook or Linkedin and become their administrator, they actually keep some control – they can delete comments, prioritize the order in which some discussions are displayed, etc. However, there is always a risk of backlash if schools intervene too much and try to censor conversations.

My new UB column is now available in the October issue as well as online: “Social Media Measurement 101: A seven-step plan to set up (and benefit from) a simple social measurement program “

Here are the 7 steps:
1. Define measurable goals for social media activities.
2. Choose key performance indicators (KPIs) carefully.
3. Plan ahead and properly set up the right measurement tools.
4. Capture the data at preset intervals.
5. Don’t forget some benchmarking.
6. Share your measurement data.
7. Use measurement data to craft your next moves.

Social Media Measurement 101

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Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business has used online videos to promote its Graduate Program in Business Administration with great success.

I stumbled upon this mini-series composed of 4 different YouTube videos last week and found it very compelling.

Really great work and great acting talent.

That’s why I contacted the manager of Concordia’s YouTube channel to find out more about it.

Shelagh Peden, Information & Project Coordinator at University Communications Services, was kind enough to answer my 3 questions over YouTube messaging system.

1) Did you use real students?

Yes, all subjects were JMSB undergrads (one non-JMSB) who showed interest in the program. They volunteered (not paid), and the whole thing was coordinated by a co-op student, including training the actors.

2) How did you promote these videos?

YouTube, GDBA website, Facebook, LinkedIn, our blog, sent to our alumni and friends (no print, all web-based and by word-of-mouth). The videos were also used the info sessions as an icebreaker, and someone went from class-to-class making 5-minute presentations. Most views of the video were through Facebook.

3) What kind of response did you got from prospective students? Were you able to trace any application to this initiative?

The program received more *qualified* applications than can be accepted (170 vs. 150). We didn’t specifically track applicants, felt it would be awkward to ask if they were swayed by video when it’s a graduate program.

This is our first program that targets Millennials (no ads in newspapers, just web-based).

YouTube – ConcordiaUni’s Channel

What I really like with Twitter is that it’s a great medium to get answers to most questions.

Earlier this week, I asked a quick question to the people who follow me on Twitter – and the general Twitterverse:

Twitter / karinejoly: Quick question: Why and what do you retweet?

I got a few answers to my question, but nothing that could help me get a better understanding of the practice of retweeting.

@mgraca: @karinejoly Any message I want to spread from the Wheaton College account, as well as interesting items from people I follow. #pleaseRT

@davidlmulder: @karinejoly I retweet anything that is particularly useful or interesting that I think people would enjoy #pleaseRT

@sliebler: I RT anything I find insightful, usually interesting blog posts since interesting blog posts are so difficult to find on my own. #pleaseRT

And, then tonight, as I’m doing my usual session of blog reading, I find this gem courtesy of danah boyd: the draft of a descriptive paper about retweeting as a conversational practice written by her, Scott Golder and Gilad Lotan.

The paper – currently under review – is titled “Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter” and is available as an 11-page PDF file.

I’ve just finished reading it and thought I’d share some of interesting points found in the analysis of the data sets used for this research – to get you to read it:

About tweets – from a sample of 720,000 retrieved from Jan 26 to June 13, 2009
22% of tweets include a URL (‘http:’)
36% of tweets mention a user in the form ‘@user’;
86% of tweets with @user begin with @user and are presumably a directed @reply
5% of tweets contain a hashtag (#) with 41% of these also containing a URL

About retweets – from a sample of 107,116 retrieved from April 20 to June 13, 2009
52% of retweets contain a URL
18% of retweets contain a hashtag
11% of retweets contain an encapsulated retweet (RT @user1 RT @user2 …message..)
9% of retweets contain an @reply that refers to the person retweeting the post

There’s definitely more to this draft paper, so go read it now!

But, before, why not tell us why and what you retweet by posting a comment?

The registration deadline for the “Writing Right for the Web” 2-webinar series scheduled on May 5 and 6, 2009 is now approaching fast.

For more info and to register, you can visit www.higheredexperts.com/writingright

This series features 2 speakers who have mastered the art and craft of Web writing: Tim Nektriz from SUNY Oswego and Mary Beth Kurilko from Philadelphia U (and former Temple University)

May 5, 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: May 12, 2009)
Web Writing 360: How to write right for all the online media
Tim Nekritz, Associate Director of Public Affairs at SUNY Oswego and Chief Content Editor of Oswego.edu, will explain why good web copy still matters in this age of YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. He will also share best practices in authoring great copy for websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter make sure your messages reach your targeted audiences.

May 6, 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: May 13, 2009)
Web Writer Coaching 101: How to find, train, and nurture web contributors on campus
Mary Beth Kurilko, former Director of Web Communications at Temple University, will show you how distributive web content authorship can be the solution to all your institution’s web content issues. She will also share her 10-step plan to enroll, train and turn into great web contributors any of your campus administrative or academic writers.

Webinars: Higher Ed Experts

Already registered institutions include:

Appalachian State University
Suffolk University
Lethbridge College
Harrisburg Area Community College
Widener University
Penn State University
SUNY College at Oneonta
Kettering University
Indiana University East
SAIT Polytechnic
Eastern Mennonite University
Saint Anselm College
Olympic College
Florida International University
CSU Office
Connecticut College

For more info or to register: www.higheredexperts.com/writingright

If you have any questions, just email karine@higheredexperts.com