To piggyback on Kathryn’s post about the social media session at NACAC, I wanted to mention a blog called Servant of Chaos by a fella in Australia named Gavin Heaton. Gavin describes his blog as an “interactive diary capturing my thinking on branding, digital strategy and the art of storytelling.”

Gavin’s post from September 3rd is focused on best practices in social media. He shares a list of best practices compiled from a variety of sources and adds a new one of his own: Tell a story.

Those of us working in higher education marketing embrace storytelling in the publications we create, the web sites we manage, and the blogs we write…. and this now carries forth into the myriad other social media options available. His succinct list of best practices is definitely worth a read as you continue to build your brand online.

I attended this morning’s presentation, Understanding the Impact of Social Media on College-Bound Youth, presented by David Peck from Azusa Pacific University and Pam Kiecker who heads up research at Royall & Company.  

While I don’t have specifics on the methodology used with the UrCompass panelists, here are some of the stats that I scribbled:

• 84% of high school students are on facebook or myspace. At colleges this number jumps to 94%.
• 16% of high school students have visited a school’s official page on one of these sites.
• 2.9% of high school students use social networking sites to get information on colleges.
• The top two things students are looking to gain from these pages are to check out current students and to get information from an official source at the school. 
• Most useful insider sites, respectively: College Confidential, ratemyprofessor.com, sparknotes.com 

Is this number small enough that schools can continue to stall on building their own official pages? The answer is no because students are building their own communities and relationships surrounding your institution. And if you aren’t part of that dialogue, you can’t influence the conversation.

Often times, admission offices and others in charge of outreach to prospective students worry that they are inundated with email and print publications, but the reality is that for students, MORE is BETTER. Information is power and students want as much as possible. This was found to be even more true with students from under-represented ethnic groups.

Will students perceive our efforts in social media to be forced? NO! They think it’s smart of schools to communicate through “their” media.

The most important conclusion from the session? Online interaction, however frequent and eye-opening, does not compare to face-to-face interaction. Use social media with the same goals as when institutions use viewbooks and email broadcast: Get them to campus! Visiting campus will reinforce and elevate relationships that might have started on social  networking sites.

Seattle is bustling with admissions professionals from across the country. If the taxi line at the airport is any indication, the conference attendance may reach an all time high. It’s 8:30 p.m. here and those of us who traveled from the east coast or beyond are probably calling it a night.

On the exhibit front, the Stein team got our booth up and running in record time. I was delighted to discover that all items ordered arrived on time and the convention hall staff was on the ball. Tomorrow kicks off on the late side to give folks time to adjust to the time change, and runs long into the evening.

So far, Seattle has definitely lived up to its reputation for friendly people, good energy, great food, coffee on almost every corner, and lingering rain.

Signing off… back tomorrow.

Last week, AdAge ran an article about corporations rethinking the value of question-and-answer consumer surveys. While still spending lots and lots of money on survey-based research, major companies like Procter & Gamble and Unilever are starting to focus on “digital chatter,” the comments and insights provided on blogs and social networks, as better indicators of customer attitudes.

Why the shift?

“You can’t ask people what they want, because what they say and what they do are two different things,” said Artie Bulgrin, senior VP-research and sales for ESPN…. “We can actually improve our [initiative's] success rate if we just listen a bit more … on a passive basis.”

If what people say and do differ when it comes to something like laundry detergent and frozen foods, imagine the discrepancies when it comes to decisions they’re emotionally invested in, like choosing a school. And imagine the discrepancies when your respondents are seventeen years old. (Some schools are already engaging in this kind of digital listening and qualitative analysis for precisely these reasons.)

This article also reminded me of a terrific blog entry by John Bell on “digital listening” from August that’s well worth checking out (h/t Jenny): Digital PR Skills 2008: Deploy Live “Listening Posts”

The full AdAge article is here.

This time of year is like an early Christmas at Stein. Client projects are finishing up for fall delivery, and almost daily we get in samples of completed publications. Here are some recent printed pieces that are standouts.

Wesley College

Welsey College was looking for a complete redesign of its admissions campaign with a goal of shifting perception from a regional college to that of an academically innovative institution.

We took a no-nonsense tone with the copy and created a sophisticated design to appeal to students’ pragmatism and high expectations. One cool aspect of the concept is that it uses atypical sizes. The viewbook is about 6 x 9 inches and the visit piece is conveniently back-pocket-sized.

Bo Uzzle, design; Taylor Trussell, writing; Kathryn Spruill, account.

Wesley viewbook and visit piece

Woodberry Forest

The Woodberry Forest project involved extensive brand research and interviews. From our research we developed a brand narrative and key messages, the first expression of which is a new viewbook that captures Woodberry’s strong sense of brotherhood and academic rigor.

Bo Uzzle, design; Taylor Trussell, brand research and writing; Jennifer Bagley, account.

Woodberry viewbook spread

Arizona State University

ASU is being guided by a clear vision focused on the concept of the new American university. Our goal was to present this bold vision but without hyperbole, which could diminish its validity. Our concept for the resulting publications was storytelling with a purpose, defining the vision in the context of real people doing real things to make a real difference in the world.

Bonnie McQuagge, design; David Harrell, writing; Jay Williams, account.

ASU prospectus spread

Account Executive Kathryn, who likes to collect postcards, wondered why we didn’t have any postcards to hand out at the NACAC Seattle conference. Indeed, why don’t we, the rest of us said. So the Stein design team went to work. The designers explored the theme of Seattle and the S (which is also in Stein, coincidentally), and the results are six souvenir postcards suitable for collecting or jotting work updates to your boss. If you’re at the NACAC conference this week, stop by Booth 712 and pick some up.

– Terry Hamrick, Stein