Patricia Baldridge, Vice President, Marketing & Public Relations, Christopher Davis, Director, Web Communications and Kathleen Kissane, Senior Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions (Philadelphia University) presented their case study “Online Student Journals as Effective Recruitment Tool” earlier this week at the EduWeb Conference in Baltimore.
Nalatie DiPasquale, Online Relations Manager at Ripple Effects Interactive, is one of the seven very nice people who agreed to share their notes with all of us who couldn’t attend the EduWeb conference this year. This is Natalie’s first post about the conference.
A very informative, engaging session on Philadelphia University’s take on student blogs and the success they’ve seen to date, granting prospective students the opportunity to more personally enter the lives of current Philadelphia U students via their weekly journal entries.
It opened with a compelling exercise – the presenters projected four phrases onto the screen and asked all attendees to identify which one of the four was written by a college student. Needless to say, the large majority of us guessed incorrectly – consistent with one of the themes of this conference (if we heard it once, we heard it 20 times!), that we are not college students, and that they are perhaps the most dynamic, challenging group to market to in respect to the web today. The correct college student lingo was, “I would like to welcome everyone to my world of lyrical wizardry as I begin to place my college life on exhibit.” written by Malcolm, a Philadelphia U pre-med student in his first online journal entry on 1/13/05. The presenters awarded the prize, a cute stuffed Baltimore Orioles mascot, to one of the attendees who guessed correctly, Jake Yale, Assistant Director of Admissions for Clarion University, and Patricia Baldridge, VP Marketing & PR, opened the presentation.
Interesting take-aways from her portion:
- Blog purists argue that all blogs are journals, but not all journals are blogs
- Colleges, universities still in early stage of embracing blog culture, either via third party external blog providers (www.blogger.com, www.typepad.com), third party blogging software hosted locally (www.wordpress.com), or blog-like html journals hosted as part of a microsite, subfolder or subdomain, written by students but designed, hosted and maintained by college/university – which is what Philadelphia U chose
- Choosing the most appropriate student blogging approach is more than a technology decision; it’s an issue of marketing strategy
- Philadelphia U made a conscious, strategic decision that the entire University website is primarily a recruitment entity, and online student journals will play an integral role in Admissions’ messaging
Chris Davis, Web Communications Director, helped explain the major aspects of launching and maintaining online student journals, including collaborating with PR and the Web Dev team to create a template for design and content. Philadelphia U’s journals have a nice design, consistent with the entire University’s look and feel, although darker – and they include weekly text postings (updated every Thursday, which cause a significant spike in site visits!), photos & video, student profiles (no last names), archives of past entries and an email alias to contact each student blogger (which actually goes to Kathleen Kissane, Senior Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions, who reads and forwards each email to the respective student blogger).
Kathy went on to present how they’ve successfully recruited, selected and managed student bloggers and how they’ve successfully driven traffic to the online journals.
Interesting take-aways from her portion:
- Visual & text-based links, right on the University homepage as well as the Admissions homepage, help drive traffic to the journals (Philadelphia’s received comments that prospective & current students appreciate how easy it is to access the journals)
- Philadelphia’s application process required student blogger applicants to submit three journal entries (one on freshman year experiences, the other two on anything creative of their choosing)
- While some schools experimenting with blogging do not offer incentives, Philadelphia U provides a new digital camera each student blogger can keep, an hourly wage (same amount University Ambassador tour guides are paid), a CD of their journals upon completion of the year, and of course the opportunity to become a celebrity!
- Philadelphia’s experience has been that student bloggers spend approx. 1.5 hours a week on their journal & photo submissions – not a bad investment for marketing that really speaks to this audience!
- Philadelphia has heard from several students that they love the photo aspect of the journals
- Philadelphia changes the student bloggers every year, but don’t’ worry – the 04 & 05 journals are still available on the site
- Philadelphia suggests FrontPage as a WYSIWYG editor, and PhotoShop to crop and size all images, or Dreamweaver and Fireworks as other options
- Philadelphia is considering staff and president online journals for the future
Of special interest was Philadelphia’s unique “Where Are They Now” concept, which updates readers of these online journals on what the students are doing after their stints as celebrity bloggers (jobs, engagements, etc.) – the fact that there is interest in these bloggers’ lives, even after Philadelphia U, really speaks to the popularity of online journals!
Another very cool tactic presented was Philadelphia’s podcast (first was on 3/16/06) during which all five student bloggers gathered to answer questions submitted by students accepted to Philadelphia U. They received approx. 60 questions and chose to answer approx. 13 live; every student whose question was chosen received a free Philadelphia U t-shirt. All questions and answers are available online, but what a great idea to also have real students’ voices giving honest, off-the-cuff answers to questions from “How did you adjust to the transition from high school to college life,” to “Do you find the Philadelphia U workload overwhelming,” to “What is it like to move into a strange dorm room and live on campus your first year” – prospective students today are looking to not only absorb content, but to interact with your brand, and while this podcast concept is a great step in the right direction, more live chats would probably be received well too. (Philadelphia reported that to date, over 600 people have downloaded the podcast.)
One great quote was that “online journals are portals, not just destinations.” This helps demonstrate Philadelphia’s understanding that it is necessary to embrace our prospects’ desire for consumer-generated content and community-building online. Online student journals, when done well, drive readers to want to learn more – whether it’s further exploring your site, requesting more materials or applying, it was clear that online journals can help influence recruitment & application decisions.
Some statistics (besides a general questionnaire, are there any stats being gathered on how journals are tangibly impacting recruitment?) might have been the only element that could have enhanced this otherwise very well-prepared, helpful presentation on one university’s clear success after two and a half years of online student journals.