The Social Networking Iceberg

Kevin:
I'm active on many social networks:
1. High school
2. College
3. Campus Visit Audit
4. TargetX Knowledge Center
5. Kentucky Admissions
6. Facebook - which I rarely use unless some invites me to be a friend

Some are "social" and some are "networks." I like private networks that connect me with like-minded people or people of a shared affinity. Facebook drives me crazy. I don't need more drinks, sheep or super pokes sent my way.

I get invitations to LinkedIn but turn them down.

It's cool that current students, alumni and faculty have joined - this starts the college experience early and makes emotional connections. We have to give people the tools to create their own stories, memories and experiences. Getting below the tip of the social network does just this!
JEK

Kevin -

Our office is also "active" on many social networks - we have facebook and myspace pages, though we don't do much with them. We also have our own social network (yes, through TargetX). We set it up with the expectation of both current and future student participation, and have found it to work well so far - the current students are able to answer questions for the prospectives, and all of our staff members have pages in the network as well. It has led to some realization that current students don't always know the rules on campus, but we are able to moderate and give explanations rather than censorships - I think it's fantastic :)

Jill

We are currently examining whether the SN scene is the place for us and I've become entirely convinced that it is all about the reason you want to launch it.

I think it has to go deeper than simply brand recognition or, what I hear too often, "putting the message where students are". First, I haven't seen a lot of research that shows a great amount of increased brand recognition simply from having a SN presence. So that may be a lot of effort for very little ROI.

Secondly, students aren't on a SN to hear your message, so canned reason #2 falls a little flat. I recently read an article where students said that they responded unfavorably to schools trying to recruit on Facebook and MySpace.

Internal SNS probably fair better because students are there because they want to build the relationship with you, but as Karlyn has pointed out before, you're probably only going to be attracting students are already sold on your school to begin with, so it isn't likely to have a huge impact on enrollment rates.

Because this is getting wordy, I'll stop here, but don't think I'm completely down on the whole SNS thing. I just think that our reasons for using them need to be to craft a good experience for students with the recognition that it may have little effect on enrollment. I'd be more interested in seeing the impact on first-year retention rates, but I think it may be too early to tell.

Kevin, as you are aware we have a private social network at Wilmington. Our goal is to use it as a recruiting tool and I think it's that "community" (as you mentioned) that is the power of recruiting. I started testing with current students as a class activity and just launched our first "real" campaign to invite applicants. We got about 50 applicants to join and, what I quickly found, is that some of our current "test" students know some of the applicants and have been using our network to reconnect. The natural consequence is expected to increase our enrolled yields. I also feel that it replaces the separate use of blogging and possibly podcasting because it fully integrates those functions and can more easily be managed. I'm hiring two current students from our technology program to fully interact and be the catalyst to connect applicants with other applicants and students. We are a commuter college and the social network will enable us to create virtual communities, with the hopes of having more positive outcomes for retention as well. I'm very interested in hearing about other examples as well.

Interesting feedback so far. Thanks for participating!

I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve as we inch ever-closer to May 1st...