Best wishes for a very happy new year to all 4,000+ subscribers, old and new. I am looking forward to another fine year of conference presentations, webinars, and client projects as we explore together the always challenging world of
higher education marketing.
If you have something special to share with your colleagues, consider submitting a proposal to SUNY CUAD or eduWeb2011. The call for papers is open for both meetings. Check SUNY CUAD at
bit.ly/gSDCq9 and eduWeb2011 at
bit.ly/hHrEvS My own 2011 presentations start this year with two in January: the NAGAP Winter Institute in
Fort Lauderdale (
Social Media and Graduate Student Recruitment) at
bit.ly/gvZ5Sp and a Magna Publications webinar (6 New Essential Elements in Web-Based Marketing) at
bit.ly/eWt1BYGerry McGovern, my partner in Carewords research, has a free webinar upcoming January 17 on Web Customer Support Best Practice. Register at
bit.ly/gDfNeULate in December I took a few quiet moments to reflect on the past year. Visit my blog at
bit.ly/huH54q for "Higher Education Marketing and the Future: 8 Notes from 2010."
Refer a friend to subscribe to this newsletter in 30 seconds at
bit.ly/17Letl And now here are your first marketing news and notes this year.
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Best Values at Public Colleges & UniversitiesNew York wins the top 2 places in Kiplinger's 2011 report on "best value" public schools for out-of-state students.
SUNY Binghamton takes the first spot, followed by
SUNY Geneseo.
UNC at Chapel Hill does best overall, taking first spot for in-state students and third for out-of-state students.
See how your school fared against competitors, including average debt at graduation, when you visit
www.kiplinger.com/tools/colleges/ ______________________________________
3 Myths: How College Students Use the WebJakob Nielsen tested 43 college students from four countries including the United States to learn more about how they use the web. Tests like this shed insight on web use that every marketer and web designer ignores with peril. If you recruit graduate students right from college, pay special attention.
Myth #2 is especially important: "Students Crave Multimedia and Fancy Design." What students really crave is the ability to complete tasks quickly, with a minimum of effort.
Check the other myths at
www.useit.com/alertbox/students.html ______________________________________
Recruiting Without Paper: 2011 UpdateThis was a popular topic at my conference workshops and tutorials in 2009, particularly speculation on the future of the printed view book.
News from the 2011
Consumer Electronics Show suggests that indeed printed view books may well vanish 3 to 5 years from now if the rapid adoption of iPad-like tablets takes place as anticipated.
Plan for a future recruiting students without printed view books after you read about how people are discovering practical reasons to own a tablet in the AdAge article at
bit.ly/gGM6lO______________________________________
Tips to Optimize Press Releases for SEO VisibilityMost colleges and universities do not do an especially fine job of exploiting the potential of press releases for increased
search engine visibility.
Search engines like new content and press releases are added to websites regularly. That might be a winning combination for SEO. But scan most releases and you will not find much use of the internal links that search engines use to explore a website in depth when they exist. Page title tags sometimes do not reflect the specific topic of the release.
Website Magazine offers the click-through link tip and other easy steps to gain more SEO advantage from your existing press release content at
bit.ly/hxP0zx______________________________________
Law School Marketing: Less than Truthful?The Sunday Business section of the New York Times yesterday included a leading story strongly suggesting that many law schools were less than honest with future students about their prospects for success as lawyers.
The tone of the article is set by the subhead: "Deans Say Graduates are Working. They Don't Say How Many Are at Home Depot." Why not? According to the Times, pressure to maintain enrollments that generate large classes and high net revenue is intense.
Take an excursion into another PR challenge for higher education when you read the story at
nyti.ms/dNNkdN ______________________________________
Social Media Marketing: Start a Mash-up Page in 2011Are you making people scurry around the Internet to find out what you have on
Facebook,
YouTube,
Twitter and everywhere else?
Patrick Powers has pulled together a list of the "best social media mash-ups in higher education" at
bit.ly/iiVjMK that includes University of Maryland - Baltimore County, Missouri State Tufts, Vanderbilt,
William and Mary, and the
Savannah College of Art and Design.
Visit to find screen shots and links to websites that combine recent social media postings from a variety of places on a single website page. Be sure to read the comments from people adding new locations.
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Early Decision Apps Boom for 2011; Admits a Different StoryIn 2006 binding
early decision programs were under fire as discriminating against people who could not afford to surrender the lure of competitive merit scholarships and
financial aid awards in return for guaranteed admission to their first choice school. Harvard, Princeton, and
University of Virginia abolished binding early decision programs. Few followed them.
Early admission applications are booming in 2011, according to stats reported in the EducationLife supplement of the NY Times. Of 39 schools listed, 32 have seen increases for 2011 entry. Admits, on the other hand, were up at only 9 of the schools and were down by as much at 51 percent at
University of Richmond.
Most of the 39 have used early admission to fill large percents of their freshmen class. Five have filled 40 percent or more of the places. Twenty others have 30 to 39 percent of their classes in hand.
Boston University is the only school in single digits, with 9 percent of an estimated 4,000 new freshmen.
Check the list from
American University to
Williams College at
nyti.ms/gPocaX ______________________________________
Top 10 Ad Agency Website Design MistakesHigher education can plan to improve website impact by reviewing this list of 10 design mistakes common in the advertising world. The first two are my favorites: bad search and using PDFs for regular content that people are expected to read online.
Check your site against the other top mistakes at
bit.ly/feeL20______________________________________
Future of Email on College CampusesFrankly, I was surprised by the response to this news when I did a tweet on it last week: at least 7 RTs and over 70 visitors to an InsideHigherEd story reviewing the official and unofficial ways in which email will continue to play an important role on college campuses.
The marketing lesson: "old" forms of communication often evolve rather than disappear and for at least the immediate future that is true of email. Plan to continue to include email in your student recruitment
communication plans. Teens and adults will indeed read it as a valuable source of official information from schools that interest them.
The original story on "How Will Students Communicate?" is at
bit.ly/fDgl16______________________________________
Public Relations and Higher EducationYou really have to wonder just how dense people can sometimes be.
That thought went through my mind after reading a story about 36 top executives in the
University of California system who were concerned that expected increases in retirement benefits might not be forthcoming.
Higher education leaders who truly are interested in preserving favorable public opinion, not to mention just doing the right thing, will take care to lead sacrifice rather than attempting to shield themselves from it.
See if you agree after reading the story at
bit.ly/fphaZE______________________________________
Marketing Impact from TwitterMatt Creamer has an insightful AdAge column exploring the marketing impact of Twitter, starting with the fact that is it extremely difficult to measure. We often know that activity is taking place, but measuring the impact of the activity on conversion steps is where things get murky.
The answer is not that Twitter has no marketing role. But an official presence is not mandatory for marketing success.
Apple has no official Twitter presence.
Steve Jobs is not on Twitter.
Keep Twitter (and other social media) in perspective. Read the column and the comments at
bit.ly/h7bZhoFor now, I'll continue my Twitter marketing updates at
twitter.com/HighEdMarketing ______________________________________
My Upcoming Conferences and Webinars in 2011Attend an upcoming conference to share questions and answers with people like you who are building a competitive edge in higher education marketing. Join me at these events.
January 20-21,
National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals Winter Institute, Fort Lauderdale, FL: "Social Media and Graduate Student Recruitment." Register at
www.nagap.org/conferences/Winter10.asp January 26 webinar: Magna Communications, "6 New Essential Elements in Web-Based Marketing." Seminar outline and registration are at
bit.ly/eWt1BY March 31-April 1, Education Dynamics Carol Aslanian Conference: Converting Credits to Degrees: 38 Million Adults to Recruit, Chicago, IL: "Creating (or Re-Creating) an Adult-Friendly Website." Review program and register at
bit.ly/gMFchz May 3-5, J.Boye Conference Philadelphia 2011, Pre-conference tutorial "Mobile Communication Challenges in Higher Education" and "
Susquehanna University: Achieving a 90% Positive Web Rating." Register at
www.jboye.com/conferences/philadelphia11/ June 8-10, SUNY CUAD Annual Conference, Saratoga Springs, NY: A "core faculty" person for marketing issues for presentation and personal meetings. Program details available soon at
www.sunycuad.org/annual_conference Increase ROI from your online marketing. Expand the writing, editing, and search marketing skills of people on your campus. Host a campus workshop on online marketing.
Contact me at
bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com____________________________________________
That's All for Now Be a marketing champion on your campus.
Bob Johnson, Ph.D. (bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com)
President and Senior Consultant
Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC
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Bob Johnson Consulting, LLCIncrease your online marketing success with these 6 services.
• Customer Carewords Research with Gerry McGovern
• Writing Right for the Web On-Campus Workshops
• Marketing Communications Website Review
• Competitive Website Reviews
• Content Copywriting Services
• Usability Analysis
Start now at
www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/whatwedo.html
Bob Johnson