SquaredPegBrad J Ward’s Thoughts on Higher Education Recruitment

Just in: I’ll be giving two presentations on day 1 of the upcoming conference:
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A group of local Indy bloggers are attempting to put together an Indiana Blog Conference.  Sounds like a great idea, and I would only have to travel 5 miles to get there   If anyone in the regional area is interested, sign up now while it is only $49.  If the 200 user mark is reached, then you will get charged for the conference.

I emailed the people running it to see if there could be a place for higher ed blogging, and I figure they are pretty flexible with the schedule.

Hope to see you all there!  I’ll be sure to show you my great city.

Well, it’s back to the daily grind.  I was promptly greeted by cold wind and rain the second I stepped into Indiana.  The 3rd day of the conference was a nice little recap of what all had been discussed, and Steve Kappler’s always interesting look into the data from TeensTalk. (Check out the webinar for the full she-bang.) Here are a few stats that stuck with me from the last day:

• 92% of SOPHOMORES have discussed specific colleges with their parents, and 89% with friends.
• 64% of Juniors still want to receive snail mail from colleges.
• 85% of all traffic is generated from a search engine (and why aren’t you using AdWords?)

In an effort to pull some of my colleagues into the Web 2.0 world, I’ve created a group on Flickr for the Stamats conference. Feel free to post any photos in there from your trip, or start a discussion.  What a great way to get started on learning, just jump right in!

The conference also has me thinking a little more about our intentions with the blog here at SquaredPeg.  I think we will be trying to refine what exactly we want our blog to be (thoughts, how-to’s, etc.), so be prepared for some changes around here.

Back to work now, where things have massively piled up.  The lack of wireless in the conference room kept me out of my email and away from work during the presentations, which was a good thing, but now it’s time to get caught back up.

Nice to meet all of you at the conference!  Leave a comment to say hey and let me know where you are blogging/posting.

It’s a packed house at the Stamats conference, with close to 180 people. That is double last year’s conference attendance. It’s been a good time for sure!

Today we got more into the ‘implementing’ side, whereas yesterday was a little more visionary. There were several solid presentations that really keyed in on some topics that a lot of people were soaking in. We had a GREAT discussion on social networking, and honestly it should have lasted a few more hours. I had so much that I wanted to say, but it wasn’t my presentation and Matt did an awesome job with it. When you only get through 3 PowerPoint slides in 70 minutes, you know the audience is captivated. I think next year it would be awesome to have a 2-3 hour panel with some younger people (or those who ‘get it’) taking questions left and right from the rest of the crowd. Stamats, if you are reading this, count me in.

Today’s big notes: I need to be doing more usability testing, I need to be digging in to my Google Analytics more, I need to be doing more with my AdWords campaigns, I need to be nurturing my blogger/forums/photos community more, and…. I need more time in the day.

I can’t wait to do my first presentation.  I did a lot of presenting at conferences during college but I just haven’t ‘broken in’ to the higher ed circuit yet. I absolutely love public speaking and I am so passionate about my job and higher education, and going to these conference just fires me up. If I can just get some ‘green lights’ at Butler and strike on some of my ideas that haven’t been implemented at other universities, then maybe I can be giving some ‘you should be doing this’ talks by next year

I skipped out on the last 1.5 sessions of the day because the sun finally came out and I needed to charge my phone (no wireless internet= no laptop = iPhone to the rescue). San Diego is beautiful! To check out some pictures that I took, just click the image below to go to my website.

So day 1 is over with, and it was a pretty good start to the conference.  Again, I don’t get nearly as much from the presentations as I do from talking with people, so tonight’s networking reception and the events taking place afterwards were total brain food for me.

We did hear some good presentations today.  Here are a few of my notes/takeaways:

• Don’t just think outside of the box, DO outside of the box.
• More kids are homeschooled (~1.2 million was the stat, I believe), than private/charter schools combined.  I think this could certainly be considered an untapped market for most institutions.
• We need to invest in ideas that will get exposure.
• Become as good at narrowcasting as you are at broadcasting.
• Make the goal engagement, not exposure.

Spent most of the night talking shop with a good mix of crowds.  Special shout outs to Matt and Obie, looking forward to talking to these guys more in the future. As usual, I have so many ideas running through my head, just struggling with getting the buy-in/resources I need to make them a reality.  Just gotta keep trying.

Tomorrow’s schedule looks pretty good as well.  Topics covered will be Video/YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Brand/Print/Web, Interactive Technology, Keywords/Coding and Analytics/ROI.

I have arrived in San Diego, and life is good. My room is huge, and I have a decent balcony view of the harbor. That blue awning below is where some suckers have to exit the building to walk over to the South Tower (Sorry, Jeremy). Overall, the hotel is fairly nice and has a great view, and there is also a neat Irish pub on the first floor (oh yeah, and a Ruth’s Chris… yum.)

The jet lag has gotten the best of me this morning, but hopefully that’s it. I promptly woke up at 4:30am, ready to go to work. It gave me some time to catch up on blogs, read the paper, reply to emails, etc. Things I usually don’t have time for when I am rushing out of the door to go sit in traffic.

Almost time for breakfast, I’m looking forward to meeting everyone and sharing ideas/knowledge and hearing the presentations. I remember how re-energized and motivated I was after last year’s conference, so hopefully I can ge some ideas to run with and hit them hard all winter in preparation for ’08 yielding/Fall ’09 recruiting.

Stamats took the page for the conference off of their site, so I don’t really know who all we are going to hear today. I’ll write more later when time permits.

Take care, and don’t be afraid to say hey to me! That’s me below. Unfortunately my wife couldn’t come this year.

2/3rds of the SquaredPeg team is heading to San Diego, back-to-back. Yours truly [Brad] leaves tomorrow AM to head to the Stamats Generating Successful Interactive Marketing Strategies conference at the Holiday Inn on the Bay in San Diego. The conference is from Thursday-Saturday, and looks like a pretty good lineup. More importantly, there will be opportunities to network and share ideas with other Higher Ed professionals, which I definitely look forward to. Expect some blogging throughout the conference, but not necessarily live. Although I am a 24 year old tech junkie, I still like to look back on handwritten notes for months to come when the conference is over.

As I am flying out of San Diego at 11am on Monday, Chris Potts will be wrapping up his 10am presentation titled “Vodcasting for Student Recruitment”. This will be at the American Marketing Association’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education at the Sheraton Hotel across the harbor from our conference.  Check out his presentation at Slideshare.

Chris will hopefully be blogging soon, as he is finally done with Travel Season 2007. What a hectic time in the office, it’s good to have everyone back.

San Diego here we come!