http://www.thelawlorgroup.com/intel/focus/0803-online-strategies-to-engage-admitted-students

I actually agree with the decision makers on this one. What would happen if you rejected a student because of what was on their facebook or myspace instead of their official application (with all the required material) and the student found out about it? That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

I also disagree with you that email is dead in communicating with your applicants. You’re their counselor, not their friend. The rules are different. Students still use their email accounts (if for nothing else than to log into their facebook accounts) but studies show they use it for “business purposes”, such as communicating with colleges. Also, you discount the input of parents at your peril – they are just as pivotal in a student’s decision-making process than anything. So even if it is the parent reading the email, what have you really lost?

Tangled Up in Tech – Admissions deans grapple with the promises and pitfalls of electronic recruiting

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. Kenton B. Pauls, director of enrollment services at the University of North Dakota, knew that high-school students frequently send one another text messages, so last year he decided to incorporate text-messaging lingo into the viewbook…”

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i28/28a03601.htm

Also, for new media innovators having a tough time getting buy-in on new-media approaches, sometimes the argument to adopt certain approaches needs to be honed.

To go back to the title of this post (“Facebook? Not in Our House!”), a search on Facebook for *class of 2012* turns up 500+ groups, and that is without search variants such as *collegename ‘12*. Showing these search results along with a list of easily developed additional arguments for being proactive can help persuade higher-ups if there is resistance:
- The Facebook group will exist even if we don’t start it
- The kids are already on Facebook, so it would be relatively easy to get them to join
- We can help stop misinformation, and further inform/soft sell in the group
- We can connect students with each other to help yield applicants/reduce summer melt
- We can build connections before they arrive, potentially helping retention
- Our competitors’ Facebook groups have more members than ours, and Suzy, Johnny, and Sally (who also applied to our school) are in our competitor’s Facebook group
- The VP/director’s alma mater has a class of 2012 group on Facebook

etc. etc. with some time, we could probably triple the size of that list.

If you express interest and offer constructive ideas for old media and how to integrate it with new media (especially in terms of developing metrics for print materials as I mentioned before), your boss might gain additional confidence in your judgment re: new media.

Back to sending out some e-mails to prospective students and checking the incoming student Facebook group

Print in general does have the tendency to follow traditional print which seems to differ greatly from some contemporary forms of ‘publishing’ (the way a newspaper is written differs from the way a blog is written). Effectively bridging old and new media, where appropriate, seems, at the very least, to be worth a shot. I think you’re right about viewbooks- the glossy brochures have a tendency to be boring and a “dime a dozen.” The answer isn’t necessarily to abandon as perhaps to innovate, as you pointed out. The fact that it’s been done this way for so long also suggests any transition should be thoughtful, and not too abrupt.

My comment on ’schools that we know by name’ was indeed incomplete. Certainly factors beyond simply a school’s ability to innovate combine to put that institution in the forefront of our news and in our minds. Your Google example is an interesting. I would add that Google, Facebook, and most other lasting innovations on the Web weren’t always what they are today. We (i certainly include myself) use these tools today because someone was willing to innovate- **someone** both in terms of the product brainchild/founder and the first users/early adopters. I willingly acknowledge my own unwillingness to embrace certain forms of innovation (i wouldn’t bank online for a long time- I mean, it was my **money** right?). But to cautiously adopt innovation is drastically different from totally dismissing it. We must demand results from new media, I just think that positive results are a function not only of the innovators ability to magically build the right technology, but of the end-users willingness to taste-test and then weigh-in.

In politics, feelings of political efficacy correlate strongly to participation. I think technology might have an even greater correlation. Understanding (personally) that we don’t have unlimited amounts to time to seek out and test every innovation that comes are way, I do think we should not stand idle, particularly in our field of study/work, as innovation comes before us. Our participation, at it were, impacts not only the end product, but what has a chance to be a lasting innovation. Our vote, especially an educated vote, really counts!

The movement toward new media/Web 2.0 in higher ed is still needed, and it is great that Brad, Chris, and others are proactively promoting this. That there is finally starting to be growth in electronic/interactive recruiting positions in admissions offices is exciting.

I don’t dismiss new media. My full-time position is interactive recruitment, and I consider myself to have been a very early adopter in this young field: I sent my first mass e-mail to prospective students in 1997 (I kept a copy for the college archives), I had my first IM conversation with a prospective student in 1999, set up my first electronic group for admitted students to talk to each other around that same time… Yes, I proactively use Facebook for recruiting, etc.

It saddens me that many schools still don’t use “basic” tools like IM (which has already peaked in effectiveness from my experience, but is not dead), and many have barely scratched the potential of e-mail (which is hardly dead – it is extremely effective when done well). Text messaging is even more rare…

While adopting electronic communication approaches in the late ’90s, I was simultaneously overhauling all of our print recruiting publications. Changes to print were informed in part by feedback obtained through new media. Hence my bias that they are intertwined.

“But do you think really think many, if any, schools are struggling to keep old media in the mix? I think the point of this blog was how to innovate.”

I do think the majority of schools are struggling to innovate *within* old media. Join even a mere dozen random college mailing lists this week as a high school junior, watch the mail pour in, and be mostly unimpressed. Alone, sitting on your desk during the review process, these print pieces often seem good. Toss them in the mix of a dozen other schools flooding the mailbox, and they sound like most others. “Talented students, ideal location, successful graduates…” Or, sometimes worse, they fail to convey basic information about a school in a clear way. Think new media writing for the Web, and adapt it to print.

A prospective student might be more inclined to take you up on your open house visit option if your brochure about it also lists some basic facts about your school, such as majors at a bare minimum. Do you receive many e-mailed questions about available majors from rising seniors in spring and summer? If so, your print materials might not be including this info AND that info might be harder to find on your Web site than you think.

Print/direct mail can stand out. Join the Colgate mailing list as a high school sophomore and you’ll likely be impressed. Granted, Colgate likely has a larger marketing budget than the rest of us…

I think there **is** a need to persuade new media advocates at colleges to also learn, appreciate, and take advantage of the effectiveness of old media done well.

New media advocates are often equipped with the knowledge to know the details about their own school that get prospective students excited. As such, they also have great insights into tweaking old media approaches.

Further, they can integrate old media with new media and develop metrics between them. As a basic for instance, think unique Web landing pages for a print piece, for instance. You can develop focused, relevant content for that landing page. (Using includes makes maintenance of recycled content simpler.) You can track how many visitors come to that page from a print piece. You can even track what they do when they get to that page to tweak content for the revised print piece in the future. Basic, but seemingly not often done.

“The innovators… in higher ed will always be the schools that we know by name.”

In terms of new media, I think the innovators will also be the schools we *don’t* know by name, though they may not be heading out to national conferences to present. We’ll always be aware of the brand name schools. Related example: Google is an innovator. But unknown start-ups can be incredible innovators – you simply haven’t heard of them. And just as Google can buy the startup, the brand-name school can buy the innovative new media marketer if he/she doesn’t have a strong bond with their current school.