Posts filed under 'Enrollment'
As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s never been easier to shoot, and edit video. So, why is it so difficult to put video on our websites? Playback quality, browser compatibility, and other complexities make it so challenging that we end up doing something we really shouldn’t — putting videos on YouTube and using the embed code to display them. Go ahead and admit it, we’ve all done it! It might not even seem that bad of an idea, right? Not so!
Posting video to your campus website using YouTube can pose a problem. Your video production will be YouTube branded. Furthermore, if you click on the video while it’s playing, you’re redirected to the YouTube website. Allowing your visitor to be redirected to an external website is clearly not good marketing strategy. You may never get them back.
To keep in control of things, OmniUpdate is now offering a free service called Transcode-It. The idea is to make things really easy for you to take any video and play it right in your web page. Like this…
View the video playing in a fictional university web page.
Transcode-It is a free service that allows college web professionals to quickly convert any video, then upload and display it as a high quality Flash video embedded right in any web page. It’s as simple as inserting an image into a document. Feel free to try it right now at http://www.transcodeit.com/.
Transcode-It requires no software installation and creates a video file that plays on all modern browsers (Windows and Macintosh). Your resulting video will not be branded by Transcode-It, and will not redirect viewers away from your site.
In the spirit of community, we at OmniUpdate hope that colleges and universities will find Transcode-It a helpful service. We offer it as one more tool in your arsenal for reaching that often unreachable audience.
Lance Merker
Guest Blogger, May 2008
CEO
OmniUpdate, Inc.
lance@omniupdate.com
May 27th, 2008
Offering site visitors the opportunity to subscribe to RSS feeds is one feature of a winning website strategy. Assuming your RSS feed is integrated into your web content management software (CMS), every time your staff updates important information on your website, an applicable RSS feed item can be created and sent to your audience. RSS is fantastic because the message is sent in virtually real-time, and isn’t filtered or blocked because it’s delivered to willing recipients… you can’t beat that messaging strategy!
As I mentioned in my last post, RSS feeds can be directed by the student to his or her preferred medium and accessed on a variety of devices, such as Facebook, RSS readers, email and portals. This alone can be huge. Think about it, how many other opportunities do you have to get right on your student’s Facebook?
In addition, RSS can be automatically converted to SMS and rapidly delivered to all subscribing cell phone users.
Now, how effective could RSS be when used for crisis communication? Well, based on a recent Newsweek report, approximately 97% of your target audience keep their cell phones “on stand-by” at all times. These people will get your message, whether they are sitting in a lecture, or on their way to class. While in class, their phones are in silent mode, but many students are still getting text messages discretely during lectures. Other audiences could include prospective students, parents, media, faculty, administrators and alumni.
Combine RSS with your web CMS and you’ve got an extremely powerful and cost-effective way to make updates from one central hub — your website! If subscribing to an emergency RSS crisis feed is integrated into the student enrollment process as part of a crisis notification plan, nearly all students and their affected family members could be registered automatically.
With a little planning, RSS can play an important and crucial role in both marketing and crisis communications.
Lance Merker
Guest Blogger, May 2008
CEO
OmniUpdate, Inc.
lance@omniupdate.com
May 23rd, 2008
I know all of you are doing a great job at testing your site visitors on a regular basis through one-on-one usability tests, focus groups, and open feedback. But it is always nice to compare your site visitors with the general population. Pew has been providing great statistics for the past five years, but there are two higher education studies that have come out that need a quick peek.
- E-expectations. This ongoing study, by Noel-Levitz, James Tower, and NRCCUA, touches on the effectiveness of social networking, text and IM use, and online activities. A couple statistics of note: only 33% of prospects have used Facebook or MySpace to connect with current students; 27% have read a current student blog; and 44-49% would accept a text message from a college. This study focuses on how your prospective students want to be communicated with. It is important to remember that their entire online experience with you is not at your .edu.
- The Game Has Changed. This study, by UMass-Dartmouth and Eric Mattson, centers around the comfort level of online communication in admissions offices across the country. Their theory is that colleges and universities are adapting to social networks and online communication more quickly than corporations. I think this has to do with audience focus (of course), but let’s pat ourselves on the back for a second. Some interesting notes: 51% of admissions offices see online tools (blogs, message boards, social networking, online video, podcasting, and wikis) as “very important”; and individual student research is starting to sprinkle into admissions (26% use search engines and 21% use social networks to review a student…scary).
The rule, as always, is to take this research and compare it to your own information, but these two studies give a glimpse into both sides of the table: prospective students’ communication preferences and admission departments’ ability to adapt.
Happy reading.
Eric Hodgson
Content Management Consultant
hodgson.eric@gmail.com
September 3rd, 2007
…to sign up for this year’s eduWeb Conference … honest! And I want to thank our June Guest Blog Author — Jeff Kallay, the Experience Evangelist at TargetX — for some great posts so far this June! So keep reading them at this blog, eduWeb BUZZ.
There is a great schedule of presentations, including some recent newsmakers, such as:
… we have two presentations and 1 workshop, of which the presenters have been recently featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN for their success in their undergraduate admissions campaign, admissions blogs and a community-noticed website.
Daniel Creasy, Senior Asst. Dir. of Admissions, of Johns Hopkins University, was featured in The Washington Post in March 2007. He will speak on “The Blog Revolution: Admissions Office Blogs” on Monday, July 23rd from 9:45 - 10:45 am.
Jack Chielli, Exec. Dir. of Marketing Communications, at Wilkes University, whose institution was featured in The New York Times about their successful undergraduate advertising campaign. Jack’s presentation is titled A Majority of One and scheduled for Monday, July 23rd, from 4 - 5 pm.
For the workshop on Tuesday afternoon, from 2- 5 pm, there is Jeff Keeton and Deborah Lucas, from The University of Alabama Birmingham, whose site on the biennial journey to Antartica was featured on CNN. The workshop is titled “Architecting a Hit: How UAB Built a Site the Community Noticed.”
Besides Daniel, Jack, Jeff & Deborah, we have plenty of great presenters speaking on wide range of topics … Second Life, RSS, Web Re-designs, Recruitment, Viewbooks, Microformats and Semantic HTML, Crisis Communications and lots MORE! Check out our program schedule
Come and join us soon for a great learning experience … not only from the presenters but from your peers as well. Look who’s coming!
Sign up NOW!
Shelley Wetzel
Dir. of Marketing Communications &
Conference Director
eduWeb Conference
June 15th, 2007
JUNE 29 - THE RESULTS ARE IN: Millennials top the poll
To see results: click here to go the post or click link to download them Millennials_vs_GenY_SurveySummary.pdf
When I got back into higher education marketing six years ago, Millennials Rising by Howe and Straus was required reading. Then I began to see “Millennials” pop up in conference session titles and more books by Howe and Straus (Millennials Go To College and Millennials in Pop Culture). It seemed like the name was solidly ingrained in secondary and higher education, easily flowing from our lips into conversation along with the companion term “Helicopter Parents.”
Now that Millennials are entering the workforce, mainstream media is reporting about them. But, they refer to them as Gen-Y.
Yesterday I was getting caught up on some reading and came across a recent Fortune Magazine cover story entitled “Manage Us? Puh-leeze!.” It pretty much repeats what we in higher education have experienced for the past seven years, but now this generation is now invading the workplace - helicopter parents and all!
Anyhow - what’s up with the name Gen-Y? Why hasn’t the term Millennials been adopted by the mainstream media?
If I learned anything from Howe and Straus it’s:
- That each generation rebels against the generation before it, and that they don’t want associations that connect them to the previous generation. That’s why Generation-X didn’t like being called “Boomer Busters” and why we took to the name Generation-X after Douglas Coupland’s 1991 book by the same title (with homage to Billy Idol). Doesn’t the moniker Gen-Y associate and connect them to a generation of which they are polar opposites?
- That Millennials are special, unique, and one-of-kind (just ask them or their parents) and deserve a stellar name like “Millennials.”
So is it going to be Millennials or Gen-Y? I’ve created a short, four question survey for you to weigh in on the outcome.
Click Here to take survey (sorry the survey is now closed)
Take just a few seconds to share your preferences and thoughts with me. I’ll post the results at the end of the month.
Jeff Kallay
June Guest Blogger
Experience Evangelist
TargetX
kallay@targetx.com
PS
I do love Millennials, but it’s just as a proud member of Gen-X I don’t want them associated with my very cool generation!
PSS - June 21
Check out the comment by Millennial Ryan Paugh and his website Employee Evolution.com - The Voice of Millennials at Work
June 14th, 2007
July 15 - Note from June Guest Author: Since this post I came across a timely AdAge article Second Life losing lock on virtual-site marketing Downloads of the application and unique visits have stabilized while visitors and marketers are increasing activity at Zwinky, Stardoll and Doppelganger. (JEK)
In the last month the Chronicle of Education or it’s Wired Campus Blog have reported on three interesting stories about schools creating Second Life islands to connect with various audiences:
- Case Western Reserve Builds Virtual Campus to Woo Prospective Students (requires login) at the cost of $30K Case provides a very virtual tour
- Library Makes its Debut, in Second Life Santa Clara University’s new library won’t be open until fall 2008 but you can tour it online in Second Life
- MIT’s Virtual Dormitories for Freshmen Tour your dorm virtually before you select it
I think Web 2.0 is all about connection - about giving people the tools to create their own stories, memories and experiences.
Is this the start of something really big? Or just a passing fad? Is your school considering a “Second Life?”
Please weigh in on the subject.
Jeff Kallay
June Guest Blogger
Experience Evangelist
TargetX
kallay@targetx.com
June 12th, 2007
Just a quick note to thank you for your readership and time in the month of May. I really appreciate the chance to be a guest blogger in this forum and I hope you have found something worthwhile. If so, please continue to check out my blog “Insights in Admissions Marketing”.
Have a great summer and I look forward at meeting you at the eduWeb conference at the end of July!
June 2nd, 2007
As posted on “Insights in Admissions Marketing”
Welcome to summer! A time to relax and reflect upon the recruitment year that was, as well as the recruitment year that is just around the corner…right?Wrong.So, what are you doing to stay connected with your prospective students over the summer and ensure you don’t face the regret of “summer melt” this fall? According to the latest
E-Expectations Survey results, an area you need to keep in mind is popular social networking sites.
While we are still compiling data and results, early information points to an increasing acceptance of college and university pages within sites such as MySpace and Facebook. (I won’t reveal the results here, but I would encourage you to attend the JT “Technology in Student Recruitment” conference this summer for the full report and a wealth of information.)
What should you keep in mind if you start to look creating a presence in these areas? Here are a few tips:
1. Don’t be who you aren’t.
You aren’t a high school senior anymore. Get over it and act your age. Don’t try to talk the lingo. Don’t try to be cooler than you are. Just provide a forum for students to meet you, meet each other, share some information and have their questions answered. Prospects know you don’t understand the environment as well as they do. It’s ok. Just be yourself.
2. Makes sure your web site does the heavy lifting.
Allow your page to share basic information and background, but make sure to drive students to your web site or other resources as much as possible. Use social networking as a tool that lets you set the hook. How you work with them and communicate with them after you have set the hook will determine if you can reel them in or not. (Can you tell I am from Minnesota?)
3. Don’t get too “friendly”.
The nature (maybe even the goal) of most social networking sites is to establish a network of friends. Not friends in the traditional sense…but rather a collection of miscellaneous individuals that may or may not know one another outside the electronic realm. Resist the temptation to reach out and build your own little group of friends. Let them find you…and if they want to be your friend…treat them with the same respect you would any student that comes to campus to visit.
And by all means, check it out. See what you can do. Go where your prospects are and stop making them come to you.
June 2nd, 2007
At Elliance, we try to stay on top of college and university change not just in admissions marketing and web development, but also how the campus environment is changing. I’ve watched how colleges and universities have been busy upgrading everything from cafeteria menus to campus visit events to web 2.0 sites, all in the hope of satisfying the “me-first” needs of millennials. All great things for your students, but the return on such investments (in numbers of applicants, student quality measures and overall awareness) can be hard to quantify.
Meanwhile, the low hanging enrollment fruit, in many instances, goes unpicked.
I’m referring to the role of search engine optimization or SEO in your overall enrollment management and institutional marketing efforts.
For-profit education sellers have known this for years and beaten endowment-driven college and universities to the punch. It’s time to punch back, and dedicate at least five percent of your marketing and enrollment budget to natural or organic search [defined].
I’d like to hear from those who’ve made search a priority, as well as those who remain search skeptics.
In a search-driven world, site rankings paired with a conversion-driven web site can lead your enrollment efforts. Elliance used a site redesign and aggressive search campaign to boost applications to a Carnegie Mellon University program 118 percent. Read more here.
In another case of integrated site redesign and search marketing, Elliance helped student-guide publisher College Prowler rise to number one on Google for critical keywords, boosting book sales and raising their national profile. Click here.
Organic search involves an ongoing effort, and a willingness to adapt. New developments, such as social search and mobile search, will play a growing role in your perspective student’s decision making. Elliance offers an ongoing series of infographics to help those trying to grasp the ever-changing search world. Click here.
March 8th, 2007
