I’m sad to say, I had to miss the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education this year. I’ve enjoyed attending the conference in the past and always went home feeling like I learned something new. As much as I would have liked to be there, I’ve been able to satisfy my desire for information (a bit) by keeping an eye on Symposium happenings through Twitter.

What a difference a year makes. To help organize the tweets, most of the folks include #AMA 08 in their posts, so you can search for all of the posts relating to the Symposium at once. Hot topics seem to be the importance of authenticity, social media, branding (of course), and building trust (see authenticity). In terms of how Web 2.0 and, in particular, social media have been addressed, I’ve gotten the sense that many of the sessions didn’t dig deep enough.

Keeping tabs on a conference this way feels voyeuristic. It’s hard to say how accurate my impression is, simply because I’m hearing about it from a limited pool of people. But at least they are a savvy bunch. As always, it sounds like it’s been a good conference, encouraging thoughtful dialogue. Next year, hopefully I’ll get to experience it first hand AND see what Twitter offers up on the side. In light of the changing marketing landscape and the challenges we’re all facing, it’s bound to be quite a conference.

Our dear friend and colleague, Ross Lenhart, recently shared some of his thoughts and reflections on attending NACAC throughout his (to date) 42 year career in the NACAC conference blog. If you have a few moments, it’s definitely worth the read. The vignettes he shares really capture why we all do what we do and what makes it so special. With 42 years of stories to share, I’m certain he could fill up a book. Maybe that’s next on his “to do” list after he enjoys having a bit more free time!

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.

Bright and early tomorrow morning, I hop on a plane with my colleagues, bound for Seattle, WA. I’m excited about this trip for two reasons: (1) attending NACAC since I had to miss it last year while preparing for maternity leave and (2) visiting Seattle for the first time. My career has provided me with the chance to travel extensively throughout the United States, yet until now, I haven’t stepped foot in the Pacific Northwest.

NACAC is always a great experience. It’s a chance to catch up with folks we only get to see a few times throughout the year – our wonderful clients, friends at institutions we may not work with but always enjoy seeing, and friendly competitors who share the same mission we do – to help our clients in the education market achieve their goals, engage and inspire prospective students, articulate their brand to their many constituents…

As NACAC progresses, we’re going to keep our colleagues back in Atlanta in-the-know as well as our contacts on the institution side who maybe didn’t make the trip to Seattle for NACAC this year or work outside of the admissions area. Last year, grounded in Atlanta, I had to make do with living vicariously through the photos our team posted to Flickr. This year, the ante has been raised and you can stay abreast of NACAC activity in a number of ways. In addition to our blog posts, you can follow us on Twitter or if you’re a Facebook member, check us out there! If you’ll be in Seattle, please visit us in the exhibit area — booth #712.

Signing off. Back to packing…