Tap into the Social Networking Craze

Connect with Students Through Social Networking
By Jerry Allocca,
President of CORE Academics

As of October 2007, hundreds of millions of young people logon to social networking sites like MySpace.com, Facebook.com and hi5.com every single day to connect with old friends, make new ones, discuss interests, share news, photos, videos, and get advice. This is where a great majority of your prospective and current students are. But how do you reach them?

Special my space Section Dedicated to Colleges & Universities
Did you know that myspace.com has a special section dedicated specifically to colleges and universities to help students find the right school? And it’s FREE! Here’s the link. Go ahead and explore it: www.myspace.com/collegesanduniversities If your college or university is not using this free space to connect and promote yourself, you are missing the simplest and most available way to let potential and current students know you are at least aware of their networks. It is correct that students show great disdain if your school attempts to be one oif them by trying to write like a college student. But this spot on myspace is there for you to use. If you need some help with it, just give me a call and I'll be glad to help.

Statistics and Growth
The three social networking sites I mentioned above are all ranked in the top 10 of the most highly trafficked sites according to www.alexa.com, the authority on the subject. As of the end of 2007, myspace.com continues to get the most traffic out of all other social networking sites. However, things move fast in the Internet world. Their closest competitor, facebook.com, is not far behind and growing at an incredible pace. From September 2006 to September 2007, facebook’s traffic ranking increased from 60th to 7th, according to Alexa.com. Here are some highly important statistics for MySpace.com—currently ranked 6th on Alexa.com. There were 106 million MySpace users as of September 2006. There were 200 million MySpace users as of September 2007. The site is currently growing at a rate of 230,000 new users per day! An average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day. And this is just myspace.com. There are others. Many others. And they are all growing, and becoming more and more important to the digital generation, every single day! And your students, current and potential are there. You should be.

What Can I Do On A Social Networking Site?
Most social networking sites enable users to communicate and collaborate in a number of different ways. You can search for friends with similar interests and get or give friend requests. You should always be building your friend list and staying in touch with friends. One way to communicate is through a community bulletin board organized by category and similar interest. Here you can listen to other people’s posts/messages, then reply with your own posts. You are a critical part of the site and your contribution to the site is what makes the experience truly interactive while keeping the content fresh and interesting. The site would have no content without other people’s contributions. People just like you! Another way to communicate is through private groups where you have a group of friends who want to privately share a common web page and message board. This becomes their private collaboration space online. You can instant message anyone in your friend list and communicate immediately. View/share photos, video clips, audio clips, and of course comment on these media items for others to see what you have to say--and then reply back to them. Take advantage of reading up-to-the-minute news stories and articles. Search classifieds or post free classified ads within the following categories: For Sale, Jobs, Housing, and more. You can also create events, public or private, to let people in your friend lists, and people in your friend’s friend lists, know about your upcoming events—as well as getting them (gladly!) on board to help organize the social gatherings. Create blogs to share your thoughts and listen to others. The amount of features and things you can do on social networking sites is burgeoning, but the keys are ease of communication and collaboration.

Niche Social Networking Sites
Suddenly, niche social networking sites are popping up. Do you like dogs? There’s now social networking for dogs: www.dogster.com allows you to create a profile for your dog complete with photos, videos and more. You can even search for other dogs that have similar interests to yours. You can probably guess that if there is a dogster, then there must be a catster too. And you’re right! www.catster.com makes social networking for cats (and cat lovers) a reality. Pets not your thing? Perhaps you’re into, ummm, I don’t know, sneakers? Try www.sneakerplay.com for those obsessed with sneakers. Whatever you’re into, I’m sure there is a social networking site out there for others just like you. And if there isn’t, why not create one yourself?

In fact, if your college has a specialization in an area of study, you could create a networking site to promote it by hosting for those interested in that area. If you are a veterinarian school, shouldn't you be posting appropriately on both dogster and catster? If you have a loarge animal vet program maybe you should create and host cowster or some other site. If you want to know if a name is available, I'll even be glad to check it for you. Just send it to me and I'll let you know.

Where Is Your School?
It all comes down to this…social networking is growing at an incredibly fast pace among young people. The technology is free and available to anyone with an internet connection. This is where your prospective and current students are spending their time. This is where your school should be. This is where your admissions reps should be. This is where your financial aid reps should be. This is where YOU should be. It takes more than just a cool website to connect with today's digital generation. You've got to tap into their social network. Listen to their thoughts. Join in the conversation. Be a part of their world.

If I can help you in any way, please do not hesitate. It will be my pleasure to help you myself.

_______________________________

This article was written by Jerry Allocca, President of CORE Academics, an award-winning internet solutions firm and the creator of the award and enrollment winning on-line admissions personalization application program Leadwise . CORE has been helping colleges and universities leverage new technologies to increase leads, enrollments and brands since 1998. Its Webeval college website evaluation system has been used by hundreds of schools to let them know their strengths, weaknesses and what they can do better. To get Jerry and CORE on your team, visit www.COREacademics.com send an email to Jerry@CORE.bz or call at 516-719-6235 ext 111.

The picture above of Dr. Raze Man is my facebook photo. It was created by Chris Sanna a great graphic designer who does excellent design work for colleges, business and real rappers. I recommend him most highly for any design work you may need.

"IPod" Webs -Webs for the ME Generation

So how does one market to ME?

The I'll Manage my own Experience thank you very much Generation?

Well, to some extent, you don’t. Not in the old sense of marketing. Not using the old marketing 101, Madison Ave control the image approach. In fact, what needs to be done is to cede much of the control to the audience. Let the potential students manage the experience as they manage their own. Try and make the college a marketing IPod.

That can be done with some of the technology we have today. For example, your college’s web site. Without even looking at it right now I can assert that it is probably killing sales…I mean applications. Your web site was designed by the people at the school for the people at the school and not for potential students. The home page is all cluttered with stuff that make the internal community feel good about but does not respond to the needs or wants of the customer. That by the way is a classic definition of poor customer service. Not listening to the customer and then telling them what they can have and that’s it.

“Your Website Hoovers” (a verb)
Now I know, as you do, that the homepage was a compromise anyhow to try and keep people happy. And the marketing people felt they needed some control too so the Campus of Dreams image comes across because that is how they6 want to see their school. So we end up with the same bland homepage as every one else. In fact, it is so compromised that it could represent any college in America with just a change of the headline name. What is worse, it does not sell to the market.

And the internal pages!!!!!! They are often done by everyone. “Let’s not offend anyone so we will let each department create its own page to make sure it is happy.”

”What about the students? Do they have a say?”

“Huh? On the college’s website?”

Right. Why should they be involved? How about because it is a primary point of contact for them and potential students? Therefore it should speak to them and what they want. Moreover, remember this is a generation that wishes more control itself – not be controlled or given reheated, old marketing to eat or go hungry. They won’t go hungry though. They’ll go somewhere else.

IPod Websites
So Step 1. Ask students what they think of your web and how you could make it better for them. Not just the students you’ve got either. The students who might apply. Go to high schools and get some focus groups going, surveys or get someone to do it all for you with a national audience.

LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS.

Then, step 2. GIVE UP CONTROL. How about providing an IPod homepage. A homepage that allows the visitor total control over what will be on it. That’s right. A homepage you don’t design but the visitor does. Just as a student decides what he or she wants to download onto an IPod, the student downloads what he wants on your college homepage thereby making it his own. It can be done.

CoreDataCenter (our technology partner) has been working with us to develop a webpage that has a cluster of graphic images with simple captions to allow visitors to assemble their webpage of your school. They get to select the information they want and not what the college wishes to give them (or actually itself). This places the control in the mouse of the visitor.

Granted they still get to choose from images and information that you may provide but you can also open up the image and information to students who can create videos and information for other students.

“OH MY G-D! YOU WANT TO LET STUDENTS POST WITHOUT OUR MARKETING CENSORS VETTING WHAT THEY SAY? ARE YOU MAD?”

Not yet, but your students and I will be if you don’t place some trust in them. And in the fact that they can talk to your potential students much, much better than you can and will ever be able to. As for the danger and marketing potential, read the WIRED article “And Now a Word from Our Customers” by Frank Rose in the December 2006 issue. (BTW, if you aren’t reading WIRED, you are missing the boat that has already sailed. A must read for college marketers for certain and most everyone else too if you want to have an inkling what your students are doing, thinking and going to do and think.)

Okay, so here is how what is currently being called LeadWiseWebs™ works.

The potential student comes to your landing page. That was your boring, overly wordy homepage. Clicks on some areas that interest him or her like a graphic or picture of a diploma for academic programs, a dollar sign for tuition costs ,a mob picture for adjunct faculty, or a football helmet for administration decisions………That leads to some other graphic-based choices to click on. For instance, if she clicks on the diploma, that moves to a page of a group of graphics representing the majors. A briefcase for business, an apple for education, a jail cell for criminal justice, and so on. They in turn guide other choices like scholarship information (a hand giving you money maybe). So if a student clicks on the jail cell and also scholarships, only scholarships that relate to CJ majors show up. That eliminates the dreaded list of all the scholarships for left handed nursing majors from Podunk which only turn visitors off and wear them down since they have nothing to do with their interests.

The end result is that LeadWiseWebs™ generates the student’s homepage for the school with just what he or she wants. And since it is an offshoot of our already prize and enrollment-winning Leadwise™ personalized view book generator, everything can be fully personalized with the student’s own information like his name. Then the student can save that homepage and even change or update it later.

This would also be a fantastic portal creator tool too. Ever wonder why students don’t use the portal you created for their use? Because you created it actually for your use. To let students do what you wanted to let students do to make it easier for the school.

Did you know for example, that we found that students would rather have their grades mailed to them than have to go to your portal and get them. That’s why some of them never see their last semester grades and sign up for wrong courses.

But, let students generate the portal they want and they may actually use it.

The college can still maintain full control in the classroom if it wants to. It can also lose more students by doing that as I have written before but let’s face it; academia is a control-focused universe. But as long as we realize that finally it is the students who are in full control of his or her decision to enroll and stay, we will focus on them and work to provide them the customer service they need and deserve.

Campus of Dreams Marketing to the ME Generation

So how do you market to the Me Generation? Maybe you don’t. At least not in the old traditional academic way. You know, the Field of Dreams view book approach in which you shape a reality you want the potential students to see. (Even if you have to fake aspects like pictures of students who don’t go to a school.) The goal of this approach is to manipulate the reality and the image to manipulate the target audience. So the Campus of Dreams.

I am sure you can picture it now. A group of four or five students (one white, one black, an Asian, an Hispanic and maybe a male of an alternate lifestyle) walking together (all healthy, well dressed like a TV show teen) across a sunlit but slightly shadowed green campus with some wonderful building slightly out of focus in the rear of the scene. Then in other pictures – reading a book while leaning against a tree, sitting in class while a better looking faculty member or a model hired to look like a teacher smiles while writing on the board and so on and on.

You know, the campus of dreams where marketing ideas from the past are supposed to attract students to that new dorm you just built out in what was a parking lot. The Build it and they will come. Not the building but the image. We think the cliché worked in the past. Maybe then. Not at all now.

This was a marketing concept built on control of image and the buyer. It was marketing 101. If we marketers control the message and the image, we can control and manipulate the mind and emotions of the market. That will get us the results we want. We will make the school look like the college we wanted to go to. That’ll do it. And for a while it did just that.

An example. When I designed a community college marketing campaign in 1998 for a school that had eleven years of enrollment decline with “traditional college marketing” we came up with a campaign called “Harvard on the Hill” (a traditional slight against community colleges) we decided to position ourselves against well know schools in the first two years as a transfer option. Most community colleges can compare themselves very favorably in those years against name brand schools in class size, student teacher ratios, cost…followed by transfer to a four-year school. So we developed billboards that had text such as “A Harvard education. Just $62,540 off.” Start here. Go there” Or “First two years of Georgetown. Just less Hoya Paloya. Start here. Go there.” And so on. We backed it all up with detailed advertorials that flushed out the numbers and details.

I received letters from other schools complaining that this was no way to market a school. It was “anti-collegiate.” “Not academic.” “Too (choking sound) commercial.” They were bothered by the humor we used and by comparing ourselves to othet schools. These all came from colleges and universities which were then having no enrollment issues. Now..? A couple school trustees even questioned the marketing as perhaps not appropriate to an educational institution. “They seem out of control” one said.

Ahhhhh. Perhaps that was the secret.

Now the real test of marketing. Marketing is to finally sell product, services, and purchases. That’s what even image marketing or branding is supposed to do. So, if the campaign worked and enrollment went up, it worked. It worked. Then when there was a change in leadership, they went back to the old academic marketing and enrollment dropped again.

Lesson. The old ways are not the best ways. They do not work. We just put so much money and tradition into them that we must believe they will work. They don’t. they are control-based.

Perhaps what needs to be done is realize that to a very large extent what we call marketing doesn’t work. And maybe didn’t really work well in the past. Though it may have pleased the internal campus and even won an award from peers, did it really sell enrollments? Not really sure. But I am sure now that what is thought of as traditional collegiate marketing will not sell to the ME generation market.

As Scott Donaton, Editor of Advertising Age was quoted in the December 2006 WIRED (p 231) The era of control is over: “You can either stay in the bunker, or you can try to participate. And to not participate is criminal.”

It is criminal because schools are spending huge, ever increasing amounts of money to market for enrollments. But they are doing it with traditional collegiate control the image and message approaches that will not work with the ME generation. This is a generation that does not respond to a message unless they can at least participate in forming it.

So now, what will work?

Enrollment, Retention, Marketing and The ME Generation

What do iPods, TIVO, FaceBook, My Space, SecondLife, Lonelygirl15,videocams, Power Director, on-line and podcast learning and a survey by MY College Guide tell us when looked at as a group? I can tell you now, once you realize it, you will look at students, as well as your marketing and retention efforts quite differently. And you'll rethink all that Millennium Generation stuff.

Look a bit more. Think about what the connecting concept here is…. Ahhh. You have it. Right.

The connecting concept is personal control. But a new sense of control. Not the old control of restraint, or structure, or domination of one by another. Certainly not “your not the boss of me” Big Brother or en loco parentus. But control by me over my environment , my experience by me, for me, and without you. And I want it personalized.

Control is by and for the individual. Not for me over you but over my environment. I will listen to what I want, when I want and not when a radio or TV station schedules it. And I will watch only what parts I want. Ads? Nah. I'll fast forward through them and drive the marketers nuts. I don't need to watch and I won't watch if I don't feel like it. Your old styles and modesjust won't work with me.

I will devise my self-definition of who I am and how I want others to see me. I won’t leave it up to you. If I want to be someone else, I will do that too. Hey, I’ll look like Robert Redford. If I want. See my picture. And my description of myself.... I will make me who I want to be.”

And I will take classes when I want and where I want. In my underwear at 2:00 in the morning. If I want. I’ll start it on my computer and finish it on my video MP3 player on the bus.

I will control my own world as I can. At the very least, I will manage my experience. I don’t need you to do it. I don’t want you to do it. I am a member of the ME Generation. The generation that Manages Experience.

A generation defined not by age just as a college population is no longer bound by ages 18-21. Adults are major factors of colleges today. A generation defined not by when they were born but what they can do, especially with technology. From 19 year old Jessica Rose as Lonleygirl 5 to the 54 year old creep who goes on FaceBook and creates himself as an eighteen year old high school student, they are all potential members of the ME Generation on your campus. They crave control over their own reality, time and desires.

Granted at many schools, the traditional age college student is predominant as the primary market. But to reach that market, it is necessary to realize they are part of a generation that wishes to manage its own world. And may decide to opt out of yours which is why campus clubs, and organizations may not get many really interested visitors at their tables during orientation.

Yes, the ME generation also seeks strong community connections but they do not have to be high touch ones. High tech lives can suffice and substitute as a form of reaching out to touch someone. A FaceBook community is a community for this generation. A chat room can be a ‘face to face” discussion. Even comments left on TorrentSpy can form a social group with shared norms, traditions and heros.

The concern that students do not seem to go out together as groups like we used to is correct but not a concern. Identity with an assemblage of friends to go to the mall for example, is not the point. Going to the mall and then seeing who’s there to form a temporary group is enough. “I will decide who I will be with tonight when I decide to decide that. Not before.”

Le Soleil c’est Moi. The world revolves around me. I will manage my own experience. And I have the technology available to do it. I want it all personalized to me. If I cannot manage it completely I want to at least participate in forming it. So you'd better let me in on forming the experience or I will not accept it. Markting? Better make it personal and personalized if you want to get my attention.