Fuzzy Content

Using Stamats’ proprietary TeensTALK® (Trends, Attitudes, Lifestyles, and Knowledge) nationwide study, we’re able to segment, analyze, and interpret the data to help you understand what’s important to teenagers at specific decision points in their college selection process. Is there a difference between a teen’s attitudes about college when he or she is 15 as opposed to 18? At what point do a teen’s college choices start to solidify? At what point are you too late to be added to the teen’s top choices?

What’s unique about our study is that TeensTALK® reviews teens’ perceptions and preferences not just as a single snapshot, but at several points along their decision-making timeline, starting in spring of their sophomore year, continuing in spring of their junior year, and in both fall and spring of their senior year. This presentation will provide you with a bedrock understanding of how teen perceptions and preferences affect the national landscape, the big-picture issues, and, most importantly, the context for understanding the continually evolving preferences of your prospective students—from start to finish of their college selection process lifecycle.

College and university marketing is often about stories. This is especially true when managing the development or giving Web site for institutions. These sites don’t fulfill the need without stories or opportunities for your audiences to connect (or reconnect). Some must-haves on these Web sites, in my opinion, are:

• Drive to action. Making a gift is always the most significant action. Other actions are to register for events, volunteer, and RSS subscriptions or newsletters.
• Stories. Even though facilities campaigns make great stories, nothing beats personal testaments. Use scholarship winners, faculty projects, and even staff reflections as ways to personalize the experience. Make this effort long-term by creating a blog.
• Ongoing news. Keep your contributors up to date on campaigns and awards. And publish these in easy to subscribe formats. The more often your Foundation is in front of people with good news, the stronger the relationship.
• Events. Get people to come see you. An away football game, groundbreaking, and open houses are great ways to get your constituents to mingle. Chapter events should not be too private…share local events on the national Web site as well.
• Giving information. This seems basic, but make it as simple as possible. Giving programs, gift calculators, and tax procedures all make the process straightforward. And don’t forget ongoing progress.

A few sites that I think are doing great work include:

• Oregon State University Foundation.  Their tools for giving section make this site simple for the first-time giver. Also, their tax information and professional advisor information make giving an investment.
• Oklahoma State University Foundation. “Gifts in Action” and the scholarship blog keep friends engaged and coming back to the site. The contests drive participation. And the stories act as prime real estate on the home page.
• Supporting Notre Dame. Stories take center stage (even from the .edu home page). Their “Inspirations” campaign shows the impact of gifts through students, alumni, faculty, and staff. They have a pretty clean photo gallery. And I don’t say this very often, but their page design certainly caught my attention.

Some honorary mentions for me are Ohio State’s O-H-I-O feature, UNLV’s Invent the Future videos, and South Dakota State’s YouTube participation.

Rebuilding a higher education Web site is always a significant endeavor. It takes months, it involves so many people across campus, and it can seem never ending. Much like a new building opening, more universities need to have a “ribbon cutting” of the new Web site.

Why, you ask? A few reasons:

• Any publicity is good publicity. That’s not necessarily true, but launching a new Web presence is positive for the institution, the campus community, and the general public. If you have built the new Web site correctly, a site visitor should be thrilled at how much easier the site is to use, how much more they can do, or how much stronger tied to the institution they are.
• It’s taken blood, sweat, and tears. Through committee reviews, content revisions, design changes, navigation nightmares, and just sheer length of time, the launch is a cause for celebration. Everyone involved deserves a pat on the back…make it official.
• You’re proud of what you’ve done. In the end, the new site is better. Let people know.

How, you ask? A few tips:

•  Plan early. How you are going to launch the site should be decided during early phases. As you are setting site goals, resources, and timelines, decide how the message is going to get out about the new site. Look for an event to tie the launch to. Look for a time to launch that won’t disrupt significant activities (Fall registration, for example). And pad your time accordingly.
• Log the development process. Many institutions have started to do this as a collection for all documents, processes, and resources. It is not only a great way to keep on track, but also a great way to look back at all that was involved. Make this as public as you are comfortable with.
• Let the dust settle. With any significant Web redesign, there are bound to be a few bugs found after you go live. Flip the switch, get some user testing in, then make it official 2-4 weeks later. We call these “quiet launch” and “loud launch”.
• Throw a party. There are two reasons a party should be thrown. First, there are several people that gave their heart and soul to bringing the new site to life. Publicly thank them. Second, you are moving into Phase II, which is maintenance. All the content authors, bloggers, image managers, developers, site stakeholders, and central managers should understand that the next step is to keep the site as shiny and new two years from now as it is today. Motivate them.

These are just a few ideas in getting the site launched with the most bang. If you have a launch story, please share in the comments section. I would love to hear.

I have two brothers - one in high school, the other a freshman in college. It stunned me to hear from the industry that email is a dead communication vehicle for high school students when I know my two little brothers both have (and check) gmail accounts.

At eduWeb, I caught Karlyn Morrissette’s session on recruiting using interactive media (podcast). She discussed all formats to get the attention of high school students, with email being one of them. That’s the important takeaway…email being one of them.

News.com had an article that put this well for me. Email is not dead…but rather their forum to ‘talk to adults.’ For those of you in the admissions field, you and your institution are adults. When it’s time to move the relationship forward, email does it.

Catching their attention may be in other formats. Back to Karlyn’s session, she mentioned MySpace as one of her more popular forms to engage students and push messages. When the important steps come, or more personal communication, email seems to be the one that most teens will head to.

Find ways to incorporate email, social networking, and text messaging where appropriate. More importantly, ask teens when and how they want to be communicated with. You’d be surprised that some will give you a home telephone number. You’ll also be surprised when the only thing you get from them is a Facebook account. Regardless, adapt to them.

For my two little brothers, if I want to catch their attention, I facebook them. If I want to ask them a question, I message them on facebook or myspace. If I need them right away, I text them. If I just want to send them something, I gmail them. It just works.

I caught a good article for non profits using social networks to move forward. The article is great, but a quote inside of the article gave me some goose bumps. You’ve heard me say it before, but it’s nice to see coming out of other’s mouths:

“Give up some control. When you start letting the details out, those passionate people are going to comme up with own ideas about what you can do. Let them take those ideas and run with them. Resist the urge to take them over or tell them what would work better. Instead, point to them proudly”

There is no better essence of what participating in social networking on the Web can do for you. A thousand voices is stronger than one any day. Read Marnie’s post.

Reading this site and many other blogs, we certainly get enough daily bread of what to do with social networks. Over the past six months, we have seen SN (that’s what the cool kids call it) expand on integration. What’s next for these little bundles of joy is certainly unknown, but through this whole time, the SNs that have held their own are the ones providing the most value.

Web 1.0 didn’t necessarily fail, but it wasn’t built for communication. But more importantly, it wasn’t built for anarchy. The level of control a site owner had on the content in his or her domain was controlled. Webmaster doesn’t like content…webmaster takes down content.

Now, the Web is finally realizing its own name. It’s a web of communication, relevance, and user ownership. Page references are a thing of the past, where content containers have taken its place. Syndication and taxonomy define not only how content interacts on your domain, but now where it is seen by the user. Where do social networks come in?

They have become the communication vehicle for content relevance. Content relevance used to be a one-to-one relationship. I find information I desperately need…and it ends there. Now, relevance adds a third party: Me, the information, and all my friends.  In the past, if I found something that I thought “johnny” would like, I emailed him the link. Now, he sees what I do on social sites and joins in (if it’s relevant).

That is why social networks work. Action has become communication, which is filtered by relevance. It just doesn’t get easier than that.

Many of you have heard of Blackboard’s social bookmarking initiative, Scholar. This new service allows the Blackboard portal to become one-to-many, rather than one-to-one. It connects all Blackboard institutions (or at least those with the latest upgrade), and gives faculty and students the ability to share academic resources with each other.

I attend several conferences a year and have seen the art of networking amongst peers and competitors. Now, the academic community has a tool to practice this activity as well.

Read their press release for more information.

For those in marketing (me being one of them), I hear many stories of frustration in building a visitor-centric Web site. You can control the message and presentation, but you will never be able to control where site readers enter the site, what sequence they move through pages, and when they decide to leave.
Web 2.0 (I know, I know) means that now I have even less control. Not only did I lose control over visitors on how they used my site. But now, I will see many visitors get information without even entering my domain. Syndication has allowed site content to become a collection of information that I, as a reader, review in the comfort of my own RSS aggregator (newsgator, myYahoo, etc).

As microformats continue to take hold of consistent content, this will even become more of the case. Sites and software are beginning to format their information (profiles, blog entries, events, and eventually course catalog information) following standard structures. This practice gives visitors an even wider platform to find information related to you.

The secret is to understand where people find information about you, then participate. In the “real” world, prospective students find information and build impressions of your institution without stepping foot in your admission office. But the more active you are in advertising, printed material, and high school visits, the better chance the information and impressions are accurate.

So, if you haven’t already, actively participate in Facebook groups. Submit your events on upcoming.org, and look for tools that help you gain exposure outside your .edu. You won’t have complete control over what your visitors are reading, seeing, and acting on, but you will better understand who and where people interact with you as an institution.

I’m talking to all the content authors out there.

Colleges are getting so much better at testing their sites by watching visitors. A simple view of how students, alumni, and other audiences move through your site on a daily basis can surprise administrators that spent months drowning in navigation labels and content placement. Remember to do this on a regular basis.

These tests, in too many cases, are done by central administration and only affect the top level of the site. For your institutional presence to be effective as a whole, this practice must trickle down to content owners in individual departments. [by the way, if you aren't allowing people across campus to develop and manage content, what are you waiting for?]

Site success for the visitor comes with ease of use and being able to find information on a regular basis. Site success for the institution (and I don’t think I’m being selfish here) is the drive to whatever action your department wants visitors to complete.

The right side of a Web page has conventionally become a location for “related” information. Related links, campus events, and the latest news have populated this area to give more eyeballs to dynamic content. Your job is not done. I’ve always proposed drives to action for this area as well. It’s also time to drive them to next step information.

For example, you know that handy directions to campus page. Add campus visit information, open-house events, and alumni events. Supply parking permit information, local hotels, and printable campus maps.

Every page has a focus to it. As the owner of a portion of the site, your job is to understand what site readers will do with the information they have found. Here are some questions to ask for every, and I mean every page in your Web presence.

• Why do site visitors come to this page (what’s the focus)?
• At what point in the relationship are most visitors coming to this page?
• What questions will the readers ask after reading the information?
• What do I want them to do after they read this information?

Doyle Brunson, the legendary poker player, once said, “The key to No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em is to put my opponent to a decision for all his chips.”

Usability testing is not about getting them to the page…it’s about moving them through the relationship.

You know an idea is successful when large corporations get into the mix. Also, spin-offs of a great idea also tell me when the idea has arrived. In this case, we have social networks.

A history lesson is seeing Facebook geared toward educational communities, Friendster for dating (sort of), and MySpace to fill in the holes and allow companies to cover as individuals. LinkedIn has been highly successful because of their niche in professional development.

Welcome Disney to the mix. Xtreme Digital is geared toward pre-teens, pushing Disney content to those of interest. It’s early to tell if this will be a successful portal for Disney, or more importantly for the kids.

From Australia, FatSecret has been launched to help those trying to lose weight. It includes communities by diet or region, polling information, and friend networks.

Are these going the way of portals from 5-6 years ago? Not in my opinion. The failure of portals in their height of popularity was the need to be the next Yahoo. The difference for Disney and FatSecret is their focus. Disney, although overly commercial, stays in their sweet spot. FatSecret isn’t for everyone. One of Facebook’s failures, to me, is when they opened up the community to everyone. Although the number of users have grown immensely, I think they’ve lost a little of the close niche that they used to enjoy. Now, the only difference between Facebook and MySpace are policies and an innocent beginning.

Social networks are dependent on social policies. My personal friend network is by commonalities. I have friends who love hockey, I have friends in higher education, and I have friends that are technologically gifted. When they intersect, that is wonderful, but I would never mix groups.

Social networking is here to stay because of one word…focus. Find your communications vehicles that intersect with interests and you can use social networks to your advantage.