Special UB column about admission-sponsored student blogs: Nancy Prater, Web Content Coordinator at Ball State 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.”

Nancy Prater, Web Content Coordinator at Ball State 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?)

We launched our blog project in September 2005. Our goal for the project is to help students feel more connected with Ball State by allowing them to follow real students—and to ask them questions about campus life. The blogs are unedited and the comment feature has been left on. Ultimately, we hope this helps students decide if Ball State is the right fit for them.

We selected our 12 students by first by asking deans, department chairs, and key professors in specific disciplines to recommend students. We told them that we were looking for students with excellent communication skills (written and verbal). Plus, they needed to be able to think creatively and have the self-discipline to go the distance with us this year. The students did not need to be technology whizzes, but needed to be comfortable with learning new skills. We then interviewed candidates and made selections with an eye toward diversity in terms of ethnicity, gender, hometowns, majors and year in school.

We compensated students for their work by giving them a digital camera with Web-quality video capabilities, an iPod, Griffin iTalk (which turns the iPod into a recorder) and some other accessories. The total package was worth about $800. So, the idea was that the students would get products they desire, but also serve as tools to do their jobs.

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

Our goals for the project were to:
Offer more personal, interactive recruitment communication so prospective students can begin to feel connected to Ball State and begin exploring if it is the right fit for them
Provide “unvarnished” (but positive) view of the university
Reflect university’s technology prowess
Set Ball State apart
Experiment with emerging media
The site offers visitors an authentic feel for what student life is like at Ball State and a way to interact with selected bloggers in a friendly, multimedia environment.

An important distinction of our site is that the comment feature was left on, so Web site visitors can ask questions and interact with our students. This ability to post comments, as well as sign up for RSS feeds, allows for true interactivity. This is not just a place to gather information, but to connect with Ball State.

The blogs were not only featured on our Admissions site, but our university home page and many academic department pages as well. The Admissions site is not usually the first landing point for prospective students who are just beginning their college search. Rather, it is the institution’s home page, or even more likely, the home pages of academic departments. We thought it was important for students to be able to find these bloggers no matter how they began their search.

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?

Preliminary results have been positive and is being followed by qualitative and quantitative research this spring and summer .

Initially we have noted successful results in the following ways:

Traffic: In early December we were excited to be averaging about 3,000 visits per day. However, after Christmas the totals shot up to an average of more than 11,000 visits per day.

Interaction: In order not to impede interaction, we do not require people to identify themselves by their audience type. However, we can see that among prospects who self-disclose their identity, many seem to be admitted students or eighth or ninth graders. This latter group is particularly interesting because we have not sent promotional materials to them. The site has also received postings from current students, family members, and professors, which helps to establish a feeling of collegiality – an unintended, but added benefit.

Research Plan: To determine positive or negative reaction to the blogs and their influence on brand perception and the college selection process, we have conducted intercept interviews of prospects and parents during campus tours this spring and are surveying incoming freshmen and their parents during summer orientation

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 have not tried to quantify our return on investment, but can say confidently that the value we have received has far outweighed our cost. Our costs were actually fairly minimal even considering we gave students iPods and cameras. If you compare the cost of this project with, say, the cost of producing and distributing a campus viewbook or producing and buying time for a television commericial.

Here is a breakdown of our costs:

Compensation package for bloggers and faculty trainer/tech support person: $10,800
Equipment/Technology to run the blogs: $500
Promotional postcards and posters (includes cost of mailing): $24,000
Social events for students: $2,000
Total: $37,300

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

Without hesitation I would recommend the use of blogs to other institutions. Prospective students, and certainly their parents, watch with a critical eye when we show them beautiful words and pictures depicting a perfect campus life. No one believes that any university can serve up perfection. What these decision makers need instead is a way to understand what life is like on a particular campus to help them decide if that is the right place for them.