4 Key Things
I’ve spent the last decade working in higher education technology companies. In this arena, one theme that crops up from time to time is the notion that academic institutions would do well to manage themselves more like businesses. William Brody summed up this thinking recently in an issue of Johns Hopkins Magazine.
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Alumni as a Recruitment Tool
A couple of weeks ago, Andrew Careaga had a great blog post on leveraging “tradition” as a recruitment tool, and it got me thinking about some other ways that institutions could and should leverage their unique assets to recruit students. One popular approach is share your success stories.
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Tweens on Twitter
As usual, Brad J. Ward offers some interesting insight today on his blog about Twitter trends in higher ed. He finds that more than 400 institutions of higher education now have some presence on the micro-blogging site. However, he also notes that “Admission offices usually have the lowest # of followers out of all types of accounts.”
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To Twitter…?
I was disappointed but not surprised to see that washingtonpost.com cut back on some of their online chats (every day they have about 7 or 8 forums on various topics, from celebrity gossip to local politics, hosted by an expert in that field). Could it be that even online media are feeling the pinch that their print colleagues are experiencing? Not long ago, my hometown paper, The San Francisco Chronicle revealed its financial troubles.
Is the internet to blame for the woes of traditional publishers?
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Light at the end of the tunnel?
For the better part of a full year now, we have been getting bombarded with diverse stories that chronicle the global financial downturn – Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, the plummeting Dow, Stanford Bank, and so on. While this news stream has been inescapable, the reality of the situation inevitably hits hardest through “smaller” stories much closer to home – foreclosures here, lost jobs there, disappearing budgets for projects that had been on-track just days or weeks before.
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Intelliworks Social Marketing: Product Introduction
As many of you know, we recently introduced the Intelliworks Social Marketing application to enable colleges and universities to connect their social networking presence on sites like Facebook to their broader relationship management initiatives. A few of the basic things this application allows you to do are:
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The Paradox
Applications surging at public universities, but budget cuts make it difficult to keep up with demand. Good interview this morning on CNBC with the presidents of the University of Arizona and SUNY New Paltz. Thanks to @rachelreuben for sharing this on Twitter.
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If they don’t commit, then quit
As in all courtships, if a person you’ve shown an interest in doesn’t reciprocate that interest it’s probably because (s)he’s just not that in to you. For this reason, many colleges are paying extra attention to those students who show early on that they’re ready to commit.
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Social Networking: Still Primitive
Nielsen Online’s newest report, Global Faces and Networked Places shows that in 2008, internet users spent more time on social media sites than they did emailing. Two-thirds of worldwide users currently engage in social networking and blogs, making them the fourth most popular internet tools- right behind search and portals. Since currently one of every eleven minutes spent online, is being spent on social networking sites, it has become apparent that these sites are more than a passing fad. Alex Burmaster, the study’s author said in a statement, “Social networking isn’t just growing rapidly; it’s evolving- both in terms of a broader audience and compelling new functionality.” The word “evolve” got me thinking- are there limits to how far social networking will evolve?
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Marching Towards Madness
Some of you may have heard of “The Flutie Effect” where one memorable moment on the sports field could have an incredible impact in the admissions office. Following Doug Flutie’s stellar performance against University of Miami in 1984 where he led Boston College to an incredible upset win against the powerhouse Miami, BC experienced significant increases in admission applications (more than 16%!).
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