Special UB column about admission-sponsored student blogs: Michael Sexton, Dean of Admissions at Lewis & Clark College

Last May, I conducted several email interviews to prepare my column about admission blogging for the August 2006 issue of University Business: “License to Recruit? Admissions-sponsored student blogging can get real results for your institution.”

Michael Sexton, Dean of Admissions at Lewis & Clark College, answered these questions at this time.

1) Your institution uses student blogs/journals as recruitment tools. Can you please describe the way you implemented them?

We implemented our blogs in 2003 and have just completed our third year. Bloggers are given digital cameras and are able to keep them after successfully completing their blogging responsibilities: posting regularly & appropriately during the academic year. We find our bloggers by recommendation and at the student activities fair. Many of them were regular posters on our yield web site, “Inside LC.”

2) What are your marketing goals for these tools? Why did you choose to offer student blogs/journals on your admission website?

We want prospective students to have a chance to get to know our students and learn a bit about life at Lewis & Clark. This is especially useful for students who can’t visit campus. Over 82 % of our students are from out-of-state, including 48 states and 42 countries.

3) How do you measure the results of this initiative? How many visitors/page views do your blogs get? How well do they perform compared to other recruitment tools? What kind of feedback do you get?

We monitor the number of visitors to the pages and also find that our prospective students will mention the blogs in conversations with admissions staff and in their application materials. We get great feedback from prospective students and parents. We don’t have a comment feature, but prospective students are able to email the bloggers individually with any questions.

There are “regular” readers as evidenced by a spike in traffic on the days when new posts are made by the bloggers.

4) Why don’t you allow reader comments on your journals?

Because it is right on our main pages, we decided not to use up real estate for a comment bulletin board that we would constantly have to monitor to see what non-LC folks chose to post. We would have no quality control and might be put in a position of having to censor any inappropriate posts by non-LC folks. No need to give a worldwide audience on our site for whatever comments we might find.

We do have a “Conversation” section on our password protected yield site, “Inside LC.” It is just for admitted students and is very popular. Inside LC won a CASE National Gold award when launched years ago. The new version just won a National Silver award.

5) Can you quantify the return on investment of this initiative? What is/was your budget (including any offline promotion efforts such as postcards, brochures, etc.)?

The investment we make is fairly low (about $100 each for the cameras) considering how easily prospective students are able to access the web from around the world and get to know Lewis & Clark and some of our excellent students.

5) Would you recommend the use of blogs/journals to other institutions? Why?

I think blogs are a great way for prospective students to learn about life on campus and about the kinds of students who go to a particular institution. For today’s web savvy youth information on a web page is crucial- that’s the primary place most go first for information. Our student blogs provide insight into LC and give the College an added dimension that can be difficult to convey over the internet. In our small community our students are one of our best assets and we want our prospective students to get to know them and learn from them, the blogs are one way this happens.

Students appreciate the real feel for the institution that they get. It clearly is not the official College produced and controlled message. Our prospective students like the candor they get from fellow students.