Contributed by: Sherry Wade
Executive Web Producer, Stein Communications

Is your school twittering? If not, you may want to reserve your school’s name at twitter.com, just in case. More and more schools have begun to twitter. Think of it as a mini-blog — a simple, easy way to stay in touch with your constituencies. You have only 140 characters per post, so there’s no pressure to write eloquently. People who are pressed for time (and who isn’t) like Twitter because of that character limit — you can keep up with a person or an institution without being inundated with text.

Prospective students and alumni can choose to “follow” your school, receiving your “tweets” to their Twitter home page, their phone, their Facebook page, or their IM account. You can send out news items, admission reminders — whatever will fit in the character limit.

Most schools are using their Twitter accounts as a way to aggregate and distribute school news from a variety of sources. See http://twitter.com/valparaisolaw and http://twitter.com/calvincollege.

You can use twitterfeed.com to automatically post headlines delivered by reliable news outlets. For instance, you could search for your institution in Google News, and then share Google’s RSS feed with twitterfeed.com. A news feed may pick up some bad news, but using Twitter allows you to dispel rumors quickly or post a link to another viewpoint.

All you need to use Twitter is an internet connection or a mobile phone. To advertize your account, post a Twitter “badge” on your website. Set up your email preferences to notify you when you have a new follower, or click the “followers” link in the sidebar of your Twitter page.

Contributed by: Mark Miester
Tulane Freeman School of Business

Not long after he started the MBA program last year, Joel Yarmon realized the Freeman School — and New Orleans — had an image problem.

“My friends would say, ‘What’s it like down there? Is it still under water?’” Yarmon recalls. “Most people had a very different image in their mind’s eye of what it was like here, so I wanted to show them the real picture.”

Combining his love of technology with a desire to promote Tulane, Yarmon created TulaneMBA.org, a blog dedicated to MBA life at the Freeman School. About three times a week, Yarmon updates the site with pictures, videos, news stories, links and his running commentary on pursuing an MBA in general and pursuing an MBA at the Freeman School in particular.

“I try to keep an open mind when I’m going through school and life,” Yarmon says. “If something strikes me that I think would be important for people outside of New Orleans to know about, I make it a blog posting.”

In a typical week Yarmon might post the text of President Cowen’s Tulane Talk e-mail message, a podcast interview with finance professor Bill Reese, a video showing off the Freeman School’s Trading Room, a list of frequent questions MBAs get during job interviews and his thoughts on Fox’s new New Orleans police drama K-Ville. When a rare tornado touched down in Uptown New Orleans last February, Yarmon posted photos of Tulane’s campus the next morning to show viewers it was untouched.

“Everything moves so quickly today,” Yarmon says. “That’s why blogs are so important. I can put up information that nobody else vets. It doesn’t have to be politically correct. It doesn’t have to portray anybody in their best light. The important thing is that it’s real.”

Since launching the site in October 2006, Yarmon has posted more than 170 entries, and the site is averaging about 4,000 unique visitors per month, many of them prospective MBA students seeking the uncensored, unbiased viewpoint that blogs provide.

“Prospective students are very skeptical of the mainstream media and promotion in general,” says Bill Sandefer, director of graduate admissions at the Freeman School. “The blog has been a great resource. Prospective students get a lot of information from the admissions office, but I hope they use our current students to validate what we are telling them.”

While the blog has thus far been a labor of love on Yarmon’s part, he hopes to involve other students so that after he graduates the site can continue to provide readers with an insider’s perspective on Freeman and New Orleans.

“No matter what, it will remain student driven because I think that’s really what people appreciate about it,” Yarmon says. “Business school is a big commitment. I’m just trying to give prospective students another way to do due diligence on the decision to go to business school and, more importantly, the decision to attend the Freeman School.”

—
Many thanks to the Tulane Freeman School of Business for allowing Stein Communications to reprint this article. We encourage you to visit their web site: www.freeman.tulane.edu.

News flash: Your site is important. It needs its own staffing.

Contributed by: Terry Hamrick
Director of Interactive Services, Stein Communications

Let me state what you and I already know: The web has become the first choice for researching a wide range of topics, from the best microwave to the best college or university. Word of mouth on the Internet and web users seeking reassurance about their choices and decisions — in social media such as blogs and online communities, among others — are powerful new trends that are reshaping marketing, public relations, and the way institutions, both private and public, interact with their audiences and constituents.

From the growing pile of studies showing the importance of the web in the college search process, let’s take a quick review of results from a recent study released by The Princeton Review.

First choice for researching colleges
The 2006 National Survey of Website Usage in Undergraduate and Graduate School Search (.doc) (6,885 undergraduate surveys; 2,184 graduate) shows that undergraduate school-bound students spend 80.5 percent of their total school search and research time using the web. Graduate school-bound students spend 81.7 percent of their total search and research time on the web.

Furthermore, according to the study, school-bound students rate as their five most valuable search aids/tools (in terms of percentage reporting valuable and very valuable):

Undergraduate school-bound

• Institutional web sites, 82 percent
• Print materials, 77 percent
• The school visit, 66 percent
• Higher education research websites, 65 percent
• Guide books, 60 percent

Graduate school-bound

• Institutional web sites, 76 percent
• Graduate school admissions staff, 57 percent
• Higher education research web sites, 55 percent
• Print materials, 52 percent
• Graduate school rankings, 51 percent

With these kinds of numbers and trends in mind, the issue is no longer if the web should be considered a critical facet of institutional communications and marketing, but when, and by how much, it should be funded and staffed as an essential communications and outreach function of the college or university.

We are beyond the question of traditional channels (viewbooks, ads, PR, news releases, etc.) versus the Internet channel (and all its facets). Today, it has to be both.

Your brand face to the world
Your web site is your brand face to the world. Its visibility can be tens to hundreds of thousands of views a month, available 24/7, and its reach is potentially every computer user on the globe.

Now, you’re not going to be visited by every computer user on the globe, but the actual and potential visibility of your institution’s web site underscores the need for it to be top-of-mind in any strategy planning involving the institution’s branding, messaging, communications, and — not to be overlooked — improved customer service initiatives. Nothing has the potential to telegraph an institution’s organizational discord, inefficient processes, and lack of mission focus more quickly than its web site.

And while the web makes it easy to publish lots of content — and academic institutions certainly have no lack of content — the uncoordinated publishing of that content can be highly counterproductive. It’s important to move beyond the “because we can, we should” publish-it-on-the-web thinking of the last century. We all know how busy and information-overloaded everybody is in this century. Your site visitors are no exception. They are looking to use their time efficiently on your site. After all, they also have to check their MySpace page, answer waiting IMs, and text the gang.

You need to provide key site visitors with content and web services better focused on their specific needs and the tasks they want to accomplish online. This may entail difficult, but necessary, decisions on site audiences, approach, and focus. And it will require dedicated and continuing attention to the details.

Dedicated staff and funding
With that in mind, oversight of this critical communications channel should have dedicated staff and funding. This seems obvious, but I still encounter a surprising number of institutions where site management is unfocused and scattered, with those trying to do the job working in a vacuum of limited support from the top.

As a beginning, an institution should look at adding, or identifying from current staff, at least one full-time staff member whose duties are solely based on the communications, messaging, and content aspects of the web site. I’ll call this person the Web Content Manager — but it could be Web Editor, Web Communications Director, pick your title — with the intention that this position is oriented towards content, user experience, and site management; and is not a webmaster, developer, or other technical position. (You need the techies too.)

I see the Web Content Manager (WCM) as a bridge person who works with both the campus community and the IT side to ensure that an institution’s web experience is of the highest possible quality and on target. For example, the WCM:

• Makes sure marketing, branding, and style standards are applied site-wide.
• Ensures consistency of content and message and cheerleads content contributors across campus.
• Champions the user experience of site visitors and works with IT and administration to ensure that technical decisions and site features are always pro-site visitor.
• Works as an evangelist for web communications and technologies in institutional funding and policy decisions.

Needless to say, depending on the size of your institution and site, the WCM may be just the starting point for a more expansive and dedicated web management staff, perhaps with a mix of additional full-time, part-time/student intern, and external contract/as-needed staffing.

What happens after launch?
When an institution undergoes a web redesign project, an important (and unfortunately often inadequately addressed) question for the college or university becomes: What happens after launch?

It should be remembered that your new, attractively designed and appropriately branded pages are meant first and foremost to be found and read. The launch of a new site without an ongoing maintenance plan or staffing and budgeting in place to manage the content, navigation continuity, and design of the new site going forward will only result, in fairly short order, in a new site with the same old familiar problems.

Lack of post-launch attention is not the way to ensure the best return on your institution’s considerable investment of the time and money involved in a site redesign. Furthermore, for those thinking along the lines of a content management system “magic bullet,” the installation of a CMS will not solve issues of content relevance and maintenance. While the CMS can provide a consistently structured and accessible presentation of your site; there is, as far as I know, no CMS to date that can write, edit copy, recruit content contributors, or take attractive photos.

Plan for your web site to succeed. Dedicate the resources — both staffing and funding — to allow your web site to flourish and serve as a beneficial resource to your key constituents, particularly prospective students. They’ll appreciate your effort, and you’re sure to see positive results.

Contributed by: Meg Gwaltney
Web Content Manager, Stein Communications

In the last issue of The Scoop, we talked about podcasting in higher education in terms of how it is being used as a recruitment tool. Admission offices across the country are hosting some amazing podcasts, with respect to content as well as design and production quality. In my opinion, the most effect podcasts, by far, are those created by current students, for prospective students.

Continuing our series of articles on podcasting in higher education, this article focuses on podcasting for academic courses, programs, and departments.

Podcasts for Course Lectures
Probably the first example that comes to mind when you think of academics and podcasting is course lectures. Remember the media buzz in 2004 when Duke University handed out iPods to every freshman student on campus? Their ongoing Duke Digital Initiative to improve technology-enhanced learning (including podcasting quite a few course lectures) has been and continues to be extraordinary, despite the challenges mentioned in their DDI End of Year Report (PDF).

Additionally, iTunes U made a big splash when Apple partnered with higher ed institutions such as Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Duke’s Fuqua School of Business to provide them with their own school-branded version of iTunes. With iTunes U, course lectures and other campus recordings became even easier to deliver to students, faculty, and the community in both restricted- and open-access portals. What’s even better, it’s free — for the institution and the user.

While podcast lectures should not replace the experience of classroom learning and interaction, they have proved beneficial to students and faculty, particularly in the areas of music, performing arts, languages, and other disciplines with audible components.

Promotional Academic Podcasts
In addition to podcasting course lectures, some colleges are also using podcasts to promote specific majors or departments to prospective students, as well as to share research findings with the community.

For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosts a compilation of podcasts under the umbrella of AMPS: Academic Media Production Services. Users may subscribe to the podcasts for free from MIT’s web site or directly from within the iTunes Music Store. AMPS includes a small, but well-produced collection of video podcasts, all related to a research venture, an academic course, a performing arts event, or other on-campus events. Personally, my favorite is “2.007 Retrospective.” It documents in a fun, engaging way the thirty-year history of MIT’s famous undergraduate robot contest. Prospective students would do well to view the AMPS vodcasts to get a better feel for the types of projects they will work on as students.

Another great case in point: Asbury College’s broadcast journalism podcasts of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. The group of 29 students, three alumni, and one faculty member posted blog entries and podcasts on their web site. If this project isn’t an excellent opportunity to get real-world experience, I don’t know what is.

In the coming years, it seems like a given that an increasing number of colleges will begin to podcast more of their course lectures, whether it is through iTunes U or another method; I hope the same will prove true for the promotional academic podcasts. They have great value in providing an intimate, in-depth look into an institution’s academic programs in ways that even a campus visit may not provide. With a myriad of voices — students, faculty, alumni, and special event speakers — contributing to these productions, they have the potential to be an excellent marketing tool.

In our next issue of the Scoop, we’ll continue our podcasting discussion with a focus on alumni relations. To share your college’s experiences, thoughts, and concerns about podcasting in education, please email me at mgwaltney@steincommunications.com.

Contributed by: Sam Jackson
High School Senior, Phillips Exeter Academy

No matter how well-endowed a school may be, another finite resource will always be in short supply: time. The energies and attention of an admissions office must be focused for best success. Dynamic web marketing can be very effective. If you are considering using new web technologies to connect with prospective students, there are some things you should know; if you already do, there is still more to learn, for I have never seen an implementation that couldn’t benefit from audience feedback. Read carefully, because I speak for your audience.

The web is not a magical vehicle for marketing. With proper savvy, the internet can be coaxed into performing as a successful higher education marketing tool, but even the most polished of marketing attempts can fall flat if it loses touch with its target market — and what age group is more fickle than teenagers? The modern web offers untold opportunity for creative and effective marketing techniques to be utilized, but with these new tactics can come new abuse. I will cover some of the difficulties that arise when an institution seeks to exploit blogs, podcasts, YouTube, and the rest of Web 2.0 — and what can be done to avoid them. (This piece focuses specifically on blogs.)

There is one key principle which, if followed, almost guarantees a successful message: “Respect the consumer.” I have observed a few deadly sins of higher education marketing, but a lack of respect for us, the consumers of so much endless marketing tripe, is the worst and most frequently perpetrated! It’s important to remember that we millennials are not stupid, however ridiculous that name might be; we can see through the trimmings of traditional marketing copy and we resent pandering.

Disrespect manifests itself first and foremost through a lack of authenticity. Authenticity is more important for good, effective PR than anything else. The perception that a finely polished brand image is a reasonable trade-off for authenticity is a false one, so far as people my age are concerned. In the post office at school, it takes only one quick glance into the recycling bin to see what people think of the campy mail storms attempting to drown out one another in the battle for our mindshare. If you think you’re safe from the knee-jerk garbage reaction on the basis of your brand’s intrinsic value, think again: I have seen expensive materials from the most prestigious universities in the US meet their end without ever leaving their shrink-wrap. Though I read everything I get, most people are not as generous with their attentions. What applies to direct mail applies just the same to new media — it’s even easier to click the back button than it is to try to throw a paper airplane brochure across the room.

Back to the web: blogs are the most prevalent new form of exotic web marketing. There are three kinds of blogs that can work to promote an institution: Sponsored student blogs, admission office blogs, and unofficial student blogs. The last a school has no particular control over, but they exist as nearly unconquerable competition for any homegrown sponsored effort, as they can nimbly tread waters a school-sanctioned blog could not — especially the salacious details incoming students really want to hear about. Schools can promote their blog programs by pushing visitors there; let the content do the rest.

A request for authentic information is not a request for students to tarnish their school’s name. I have exchanged heated emails with sponsored student bloggers who angrily accuse me of demanding they slur their university in the name of authenticity. Not so: it is a demand for respect, not slander. Anything less can and does create a negative backlash. To illustrate: drinking certainly occurs on college campuses, but I don’t ask for photos of drunken escapades any more than I beg for candid shots of late-night cram sessions. Neither one of those scenes presents a credible, balanced image of a school. What is true for photographs applies to all blog content in context: there is a middle ground between descriptions of room decorating adventures and Frat Party weekly. Even the appearance of impropriety (i.e., marketing) can sour public opinion. Better to promote honesty and authenticity — two concepts which, when treated carefully, can actually coexist with donors, parents, presidents, and most importantly prospectives.

When a school deploys a sponsored student blogging program, its primary goal should be to connect with prospective students. Painfully often, this goal is never met, and the blog dies nothing but a flat perspective of student life mired in tour guide style censorship. Blogs convey two kinds of information: first, readers value the insight that casual details about daily life afford. One blogger I spoke with told me that no one would care if she complained about the terrible rush to get season tickets for hockey. However, a close reader would see that enthusiasm and passion for the team shows that the school is a close community. Then there is the easier-to-access big picture campus topic: a vignette about recent student political protests on campus tells me a lot more about campus activism than any vague, sanitized answer from a tour guide.

Student bloggers should be encouraged to write about issues that are important to them; people write best about what they know best, and students know their school. They’re less familiar with the thing that only exists on glossies sent to new students and alumni. Let the students sell the school.

My preferred sort of official blog are those maintained by one or more admissions counselors for a particular school. I think these are great from an institutional perspective because the counselors can do the same thing they always do (answer questions online) while developing a knowledge base of old questions, answers, and content which can be accessed anytime, anywhere, by anyone. Most of all, these blogs go a long way towards pulling back the curtain on what is a very mysterious world to most; not everyone has time to read The Gatekeepers. The power of friendliness is not to be underestimated.

The desires of prospective students will, for a long time yet, fail to intersect with those of schools and admissions officers, but I hope that some insight into the mind of your applicants has been gleaned from my words. It’s a long way down from the window of the ivory tower, but that doesn’t justify the disconnect from the masses clambering below. Throw down your hair and reach out a hand: the web can help.

_____
Sam Jackson is a high school senior boarding at Phillips Exeter Academy, where he spends his free time trying to appropriate funding to make liquid nitrogen ice cream for his Science Club. When it’s too cold for ice cream, Sam passes the time debating (on and off the team), fighting the dress code, and missing his golden retriever, Cozmo. He also publishes a blog, the Sam Jackson College Experience, chronicling his journey in the college recruitment process: www.samjackson.org/college/

Stein’s CommunityYou web product is designed to help increase yield among your admitted students and increase retention of your newly enrolled students by providing them with their own online community created specifically for your institution. CommunityYou can be overseen and managed by your admissions staff. It also provides you with an additional forum to communicate important announcements to this critical audience. To learn more about CommunityYou, please contact Jenny Brower at 404.494.4393 or jbrower@steincommunications.com.