Special UB column about admission-sponsored student blogs: Bob Robertson-Boyd, Web Content Coordinator at Capital University

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.”

Bob Robertson-Boyd, Web Content Coordinator at Capital University, 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 (When? How many bloggers? How were they recruited? Are they paid?)

Capital has had online journals since spring semester 2003. We attempted to launch a student journal fall 2002, but we were not ready. Our first journal was live on Capital’s Web site as the My First Year journal in February 2003.

We only had one student blogging at that time. It was a pilot project to see how the university community would respond to an unedited online journal. Our selection process for that first journal was closed and controlled. The Admission Office hand picked a student for this pilot because Capital had committed to not reviewing or editing the entries prior to publication.

The trial was successful so we prepared several more online journals for the next fall. To select students for the fall 2003 semester we prepared a 14-question application that was given to select incoming students whom admission counselors felt would best represent the university.

The application was similar to a registration form on a teen-oriented Web site because we wanted to understand what teens wanted to know about each other. We included questions like:

• “What’s your favorite movie ever and why?”
• “What’s your favorite book ever and why?”
• “What are your favorite places to shop?”
• “What’s the one thing you believe in most strongly?”

We asked the students to tell us about the last day of their senior year in high school.

Admission counselors and student tour guides selected three students from those applications. We added a fourth student later that semester. Each student was given a digital camera, but that is the only compensation they received.

We have used the same application and procedure each year, though we’ve tweaked it a bit. For the 2005-2006 academic year, the Admission Office gave the application to all incoming first-year students rather than asking certain students to apply. We selected seven bloggers out of more than 100 applications for this year. (Though one blogger decided not to maintain a blog this spring.)

Capital has had My Second Year and My Third Year bloggers and we’ve had four students who were in the study abroad program maintain blogs. In the coming academic year, we hope to have several adult students maintain blogs to support our degree completion and nursing programs, and possibly our MBA program.

All of our bloggers sign an agreement with the university that outlines accepted behavior and describes the process for removing or correcting information should that be necessary. In short, the agreement says that the student will not publish information that would embarrass themselves, their families or friends, or the university and that they will not defame anyone.

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

Our objective for the journals has been to reduce the distance between current and prospective students. We felt that by providing current students with an unfiltered and unedited forum to discuss life at Capital, we would promote our brand and help prospective students discover how they fit into the Capital Family.

I believe that authentic marketing can only be done customer to customer. Organizations must first get over their distrust of the customer before their message and actions can be seen as authentic. By stepping out of the way, Capital has avoided the entire question of whether what we’re saying is marketing fluff or true experience. And we reinforce authenticity by allowing real-time commenting on the bloggers’ posts.

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?

Our measurements have been rather soft, unfortunately. Much of the project’s success is found in the comments of families when they come for a visit. We have significant anecdotal evidence that prospective students and their parents enjoy the blogs and that the blogs have had a positive influence on their opinion of Capital. We have heard concerns from alumni and some internal readers about the writing style used by our student bloggers, which presents an opportunity for us to inform and educate our internal people about the expectations of our prospective undergraduate audience and the free-flowing, conversational tone of blogs. But the positive response we’ve received from parents and students is overwhelming.

Capital’s My First Year journals of 2003 and 2004 were the most visited pages on our site. We found that certain bloggers were more popular than others, but that all bloggers were being read regularly. Statistics for the current year have been complicated by the launch of a new Web site and publishing tool.

The campus visit and the personal attention our faculty and staff provide still have the most influence over recruitment, but our blogs support those tools effectively.

4) 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.)?

We can’t point to a specific ROI for this project at this time. But Capital’s investment in the journals and blogs has been minimal until this year. Our IT staff built the software that was used for the first few years and we did not advertise the blogs other than in e-mail and prominent placement on our home page. So other than significant staff time, no resources were spent on the project.

This year was the first year that we invested in the blogs specifically. We had a professional photographer shoot the students on our campus, in their residence halls and even in a tree!

Then Capital launched a new Web site in November 2005, including a content management system. The blogs were a primary part of the redesign effort from the beginning and are a part of and maintained with the content management system.

Capital customized the Estrada content management system to better support our goals for the blogs by adding real-time commenting and photos and by including the three most recent blog entries on the Capital University home page. The newest blog entry includes a photo of the blogger who posted, the first 100 characters of that post and a link to the full blog entry. So our bloggers are publishing right to our home page without review or oversight.

Obviously, Capital has a significant amount of trust in our students. Their content is mingled with the university’s content and valued equally.

I believe the risk that a student could post something inappropriate is worth taking because this kind of content draws readers deeper into Capital’s Web site where they are exposed to more links about the Capital experience.

There’s also the aspect of setting expectations. Our bloggers know that they are on the home page. By giving them the opportunity to do the right thing, we reinforce taking responsibility for actions.

As far as advertising, we’ve recently run ads in high school newspapers directing students to Capital’s blogs to learn about what life is like here.

The most significant investment was customizing the CMS; however, we view that as an investment in the Web site as a whole because much of that customization will be reused elsewhere. We’ve also used the photos of the bloggers in general print campaigns, which helps to justify the cost.

Our marketing and admission offices are very pleased with the feedback we’ve received on our blogs and the new Web site. We believe that these have been excellent investments in Capital’s future, and we intend to repurpose these tools to achieve other marketing goals.

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

Colleges and universities need to look at themselves first and consider whether their environment can support a blog. Blogs will not work everywhere, and they do not work for all brands.

I think we would all agree that perspective students benefit from interaction with current students. That’s why admission offices everywhere hand-pick and train students to give campus tours.

Many online journals and some “blogs” on university Web sites are edited, reviewed, or otherwise controlled – perhaps overtly by editorial review or subtly by instructing students to post only about their academic or student life experiences. But controlling content, even by assigning parameters to the project, you limit the authenticity that is most valued by consumers and often missing from marketing messages (and brands).

Only blogs that are published without review and that have live commenting have the potential to be seen as a truly authentic current student voice. Not all institutions, or administrators, are comfortable stepping out of the conversation to this degree. And not everyone at Capital thinks this is a good idea.

But I believe interaction between these audiences is inevitable and already occurring elsewhere, so why not facilitate the conversations and take advantage it on our own Web sites? Prospective students and their families are visiting RateMyProfessor.com, LiveJournal.com or TheU.com to learn “the truth” about our institutions.

So what do you have to lose by posting blogs to your site? If you’re not comfortable letting go, you could do more damage to your brand by trying to control what is said about you. By starting an institutional blog (or a personal blog) you are making a serious commitment to your most important audience. If you remove or edit a comment, photo or post – or the whole thing – your reputation could take a beating online.

I liken having a personal blog to getting a tattoo. Thanks to Google, RSS and the Internet Way Back Machine, a blog is something you will live with for a long, long time. What you publish becomes part of your identity to anyone who reads it. Or repurposes it. So don’t embarrass yourself, your friends or family… or your institution.