Late summer greetings to everyone. From the chatter on Twitter, it seems that the arrival of new freshmen on campuses across the country has been a marvelous event. Special congratulations to everyone who helped carry freight from cars to dorm rooms.
Check at the end of the newsletter for new fall presentations, including a conference in Denmark, a December webinar for "Writing Right for the Web," and the continuation of the "Bob$100" discount for the October Aslanian adult student recruitment conference.
Plan to attend the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education and register for an updated and expanded "Marketing Communications in a World without Paper" Sunday tutorial. A highly rated summer version from eduWeb09 is the first one on SlideShare at www.slideshare.net/bestbob
Check my blog for notes on Heather Mansfield's "10 Twitter Tips for Higher Education" at bit.ly/12VoTl
Join me on Twitter at twitter.com/HighEdMarketing
For everyone here in the States, best wishes for a fine Labor Day weekend.
And now here are marketing news and notes for September.
_______________________________________
Forbes Magazine 2009 College Rankings
Forbes released 2009 rankings in early August, based on "the quality of the education, the experience of the students, and how much they achieve."
While most of the usual suspects fill out the top spots, Forbes calls attention to unexpected additions at the highest levels, including Centre College and Union College. At the top of the list: West Point.
My favorite criterion: 25 percent of the ranking is based on student evaluations at RateMyProfessors.com. That beats the "reputation" factor in another popular report.
Start the full report at www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/colleges-university-ratings-opinions-colleges-09-intro.html
________________________________________
Evaluating Social Media Results
You should not worry if the people who sign on to your social media sites or read your blogs do not actively participate with comments and other contributions of new content. Most people just read,without joining or actively participating. And that, of course, has marketing value by itself.
By far the largest category for social media participation is from Spectators (79 percent), while Creators (24 percent) and Critics (37 percent) lag far behind. Indeed, only 51 percent will actually join a social media site where they are spectators.
What is the marketing lesson? Do not over promise active results when you start new social media ventures. For the details, check the latest research at the Groundswell blog site at
blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2009/08/social-technology-growth-marches-on-in-2009-led-by-social-network-sites.html
________________________________________
Drexel Gets First Place: Top University Websites for Search Engine Optimization
Find methodology you can use to test your own school as you review "Top SEO College Websites 2009" at www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2009/09/01/top-seo-college-websites-2009
The writer gives most colleges and universities an "F" grade for SEO and includes four reasons why he thinks more schools do not do better. The first: over reliance on "brand recognition" to bring traffic to the website.
The increase in the importance of online education does seem to motivate some schools to do much better than others. The "Top Three" here: Drexel University, University of Phoenix, and Capella University.
_________________________________________
Google Analytics Basics
Just getting started in web analytics? Thinking of using Google Analytics?
"Google Analytics 101" by Ron Jones at Search Engine Watch is a good place to start. The link at searchenginewatch.com/3634842 will take you to Part 2 and you can track back from there to Part 1.
Better use of analytics is an essential step to getting higher impact from your website. Pay special attention to the "bounce rate" (percent of people who leave a page without going further) at your admissions entry page and at each important page after that. Be sure that you filter out results for first-time visitors from those who are returning visitors.
Google advises that a bounce rate between 20 and 35 percent is acceptable.
_________________________________________
Best Ad Sizes for Online Advertising
AdAge reviews what works best and why at adage.com/digital/article?article_id=138554
Special note: flash-based ads were the least effective of every type tested.
_________________________________________
Time Magazine Picks Top 50 Websites
No college or university websites made the Time list, but the academic world is represented by selection #9, Academic Earth. That is a website for free college courses and lectures from 7 "leading universities."
Browse the full 50 to learn more about the expectations that some of these sites will create for users of higher education websites. The Times list is at
www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1809858_1809957,00.html
And visit the clean and simple Academic Earth home page at www.academicearth.org/
_________________________________________
Mobile Web Help from MIT
Expect more and more people to access your website from iPhones and similar smartphone devices. And more and more schools are developing special mobile-friendly web content rather than forcing people to navigate and use their regular websites.
Review in detail the strong effort from MIT at mobi.mit.edu/about/ or access it from a mobile browser at m.mit.edu
Not only MIT can do this. For a smaller school alternative, visit the Azusa Pacific University example at www.apu.edu/m/
MIT will help you get started. Contact Information Services & Technology at mobiweb@mit.edu
___________________________________________
Old School Marketing: 5 Tips for Better Envelope Copy
Still using mail to prospect for potential new students? Then "mystique" and "relevance" are especially important first impression goals.
Learn more at www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/5-ways-upgrade-envelope-copy-410894_1.html
___________________________________________
7 High End Twitter Analysis Tools
If you are very interested in Twitter, take time to explore the tools profiled at mashable.com/2009/08/30/analyze-twitter-content/ and you will likely find something of interest.
Scroll down to the end of the report for more links to other Twitter tools.
If you are not that interested in Twitter, keep reading.
___________________________________________
National Merit Scholarships End at UT Austin
What is the future of merit scholarships in the present economy?
The move by University of Texas at Austin to stop funding over 200 National Merit full-tuition scholarships reflects new pressures to focus scare funds on need-based awards. That is the rationale given to explain why UT Austin is dropping out of the National Merit competition and rolling those funds over to students with financial need.
What is the marketing impact of fewer National Merit scholars? UT Austin does not believe it will be great. Current brand strength is sufficiently strong that the SAT and GPA components of the academic profile are not expected to suffer.
Read more at www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/01/merit
__________________________________________
Teens and Twitter: Age is Not the Problem
New research on how people use Twitter makes an important point. Yes, the "great majority" of teens do not use Twitter. But then, neither do the "great majority" of adults use Twitter.
A key finding: Teens use Twitter at a higher rate than people from 25 to 44 years of age.
Another key finding: the reason most adults and teens do not use Twitter is simple: they can do the same things elsewhere on other sites that they prefer. Not using Twitter, it seems, is not related to age.
See the in-depth details at www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/30/why-dont-teens-tweet-we-asked-over-10000-of-them/
______________________________________
Distance Learning Gains Faculty Support
A detailed report from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities brings good news to marketers who recognize that student interest at every age level is shifting in favor of online learning.
Professors, both senior and junior, are more willing to entertain teaching online courses than ever before. That is an important message for the not-for-profit sector as for-profit competitors continue to expand their online offerings.
Of course there is a caveat. Faculty do not think they are receiving enough support for the effort it takes to develop and introduce new online courses. Read an outline of the report at www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1347 and see where senior enrollment and marketing professionals might give support and encouragement to people willing to expand product in this key area.
__________________________________________
Web Writer Position at Alma College
Alma College is taking applications for a web content writer position within the marketing and public relations office. Details for the position are at www.alma.edu/about/offices/personnel/jobs/archives/2009/08/28/web_writer
________________________________________
My Upcoming Presentations in 2009
Share questions and answers with people like yourself who are building a competitive edge in higher education marketing. Join me for one or more of these events.
October 21-22, Chicago, IL: Aslanian Group Seminars: Competing for Adults Students, "Branding and the Web: The Value of Your Official Website in the Social Media Era." Download conference brochure at www.coburncreative.com/educationdynamics/f2009_seminar.pdf Save $100 when you enter "Bob$100" in the discount code box as you register.
October 26-27, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin System, Adult Student Recruitment & Retention Conference, "Key Website Features for Adult Student Recruitment." Conference information is at www.uwosh.edu/rrconference
November 3-5, Aarhus, Denmark: J. Boye Conference: Aarhus09, "Improving Higher Education Websites: Lessons from the Student Experience." Conference program and registration at www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/higher-education
November 15-17, Boston, MA: AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, "Marketing in a World without Paper: Creating a Recruitment Communications Plan in an Online Future" (3.5 hour Sunday afternoon tutorial). Details at www.marketingpower.com/Calendar/Pages/marketingevent_highereducation_2009.aspx
December 8, Webinar: "Writing Right for the Web." Program details soon from Academic Impressions at www.academicimpressions.com/web_conferences.htm
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
__________________________________________
Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC
Increase 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
Recently in Search Engine Marketing Category
Check Title Tags to Improve Search Marketing Results
Just a few minutes ago a visit to the Traffic Resources website reminded me that there is low hanging fruit in the online higher education marketing world that isn't being harvested.
On that page is a "daily poll" that's been running since January: "What's The Most Important SEO Element For Google Ranking For A Given Keyword?" Visitors select from 9 choices:
- Title tag
- Quality of inbound links
- Quantity of inbound links
- Link texts
- Outbound links
- Site structure
- Overall keyword density
- Unique content
- Other
This isn't the most popular poll on the planet. So far there have been 33 responses... 36.4% for quality of inbound links, 24.2% for title tag and not much for anything else. Despite the low poll number, the results are accurate: title tags on web pages are important.
Incomplete, Brief Title Tags Reduce Search Marketing Results
The poll flashed me back to a phone conversation this morning re online marketing capabilities and what one college might do to make them stronger. Some steps require time and money... but some don't require nearly as much effort. One of those is improving the title tags, those key words that appear in the thin blue line at the top of my ME7 browser page.
In this case, the intro page for graduate programs clearly listed three degree programs in the main text area: business, engineering, health care. In the title tag space appeared only the words "Graduate Programs." How easy it would be to just add the names of the three degree programs themselves: MBA - Engineering - Health Care.
We also did a quick test while we talked to see the results if we added the name of the college's geographic area to a Google search... "MBA - Sahara Desert" to keep things anonymous. That turned up 8 paid "sponsored links" ads from schools interested in MBA leads from that region and the name of a competitor about 8 spots down on the organic list.
Based on that, the new title tag might read:
- Graduate programs - MBA - Engineering - Health Care - Sahara Desert
And yes, there's still room to add the name of the school although it isn't likely as important a search element for new leads.
Quality of inbound links is important but that requires more time and energy to improve. Review the pages on your website and you're likely to find more than a few title tag examples to enhance. Reach up and harvest that fruit.
Quick, Detailed, Inexpensive Search Marketing Page Reviews
No time to review your pages? Let me use my WebPostion license to review pages you pick on your website for title tag recommendations and edits to primary page content. Minimum of 5 pages at $75 per page. Contact me at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com
That's all for now.
-
Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing
-
Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/
Muhlenberg College and the "Real Deal" on Financial Aid
In yesterday's blog post on a parent's reaction to the cost difference between Northeastern University and University of Connecticut, I mentioned the practice of "preferential packaging" that is widespread in the private sector and not unknown among public institutions.
Preferential packaging isn't new in 2009. Financial magazines like Kiplingers and Money have been writing about it since the mid-1990s. But you won't find much straight talk about it on college and university websites.
Muhlenberg College has been an outstanding exception to that practice for over 10 years. Visit "The Real Deal on Financial Aid" and you'll find an explantion of how financial aid is awarded that is quite rare.
Preferential Packaging Defined
Muhlenberg provides this definition: "Preferential packaging means, simply, that the students a college would most like to enroll will receive the most advantageous financial aid packages" created from a mix of grants, loans, and work opportunities.
- People who are most desired may even receive awards higher than their actual "need."
- People who are in the "bottom half" of the class will see loans and more work to meet their costs.
That's it. The language is clear. The page is easy to find from the first admissions page.
Reality Marketing Builds Credibility
Those familar with Muhlenberg's enrollment history since the mid-1990s know that that this page did not hinder steady progress toward increased applications, a higher academic profile, and a lower tuition discount rate.
Parents and students who visit the site just might think that a college that speaks honestly about how it awards financial aid will also speak honestly about other elements critical to the college selection process.
Credibility like that builds brand strength.
In this age where transparency in financial matters is increasingly desired, more institutions might follow the Muhlenberg example.
That's all for now.
-
Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing
-
Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/
The news came first on the radio driving to Marshall last night on my trip back from CASE V in Chicago... ironic perhaps that I'd just that morning done a "Writing Right for the Web" workshop that holds up direct marketing and journalism as two precursors of an effective web writing style.
The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News (two parts of the same corporate conglomerate) will end most home delivery of the newspapers next year, citing increased costs for fuel, ink, and news print. And, no doubt, continued shrinking of the advertising income.
Just a symbol of the economy in Michigan? Hardly. The news report quoted a high level person whose name escapes me now that it was time to get heads out of the sand and take a major step in recognition of the changing ways that people get news.
Then came an email from David Anger, editor of the Free Press, to home subscribers, citing two major reasons for the change:
- "First, the newspaper industry must completely transform its way of doing business in order to survive. With generations of readers and advertisers using digital media more and more, we simply cannot continue to bear the cost of delivering the ink-on-paper newspaper every day.
"Second, we need to invest in new ways to deliver information digitally, whether on our Web site or on the mobile devices so many people carry now. The changes we're announcing will enable us to do that. We need to move even more rapidly into the digital age."
And so the transformation of how we get our information continues, away from print and toward the online world. These newspapers may be leading the way on the home delivery front, but others certainly will follow.
For college and university marketing, the change highlights the ongoing shift away from newspaper advertising and toward organic search optimization and online advertising.
I've read the Free Press since arriving in Michigan in 1973. Always, right after the front page headline, the comics were the first attraction. But that's changed within the last few years, as the size of most strips was reduced to tiny print matching shrinkage of the page size of the paper itself.
Life will go on. Major news headlines will appear each morning as the laptop comes to life. And there's Yahoo2Go on the smartphone for headlines anytime, anywhere when the connection works.
The Free Press editor's message to subscribers is
here.
Using language that your key audiences use is one of the most effective things you can do to engage visitors when they arrive at your website and give you 2 to 10 seconds to capture their attention.
That came through to me again yesterday while reviewing 20 pages on a client's website for ways to increase their search engine visibility. While you never want to write for a search engine at the expense of your live visitors, sometimes the two overlap. When that happens, it is time to seize an opportunity.
In this case, the client was using the term "Graduate Programs" and "Undergraduate Programs" as major topic headings on the site. And so I used the free tool available from Wordtracker at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ to run a quick check on alternative terms that might raise the search visibility of those pages and help capture interest from people interested in online degree programs.
Here's what I found:
- Very few people search for "graduate degrees online" or "graduate programs online" online.
- More, but not many more, search for "masters degrees online."
- The winner by a wide margin is "masters programs online."
Check the labels you're using now on pages with content in this area. Check the page title tags and the major headings on the page and your left-hand navigation. If you don't offer doctoral progams online, make a quick switch to "masters" programs from the "graduate" word. If you do offer doctoral programs (almost nobody searches for those, by the way), break up the content so you can use both words.
Make changes like that and you'll please both people and search engines. Can't beat that combination.
Denny Hatch is an old-time direct marketer who writes a regular online column for Target Marketing. I read it often to maintain a connection between still-effective direct marketing eternal truths and the modern online world.
If you've been wondering about the contribution to marketing effectiveness that analytics can make, then read today's column at http://bcs.targetmarketingmag.com/story/story.php?sid=110810
Denny is joyful today because he finally found the Holy Grail of how to measure the effectiveness of online marketing when he attended a presentation in Philadelphia. Fun to read just to witness the conversion take place. Old dogs can always learn new tricks.
One specific comment from the presenter I hadn't seen before: search engine spyders (or at least Google's) will return to a website every 3 days if they find new content, every 10 days if no new content is found, and eventually will not return at all if no new content is being added.
The first person commenting on Denny's column returned to an important reality that doesn't get enough emphasis: content of a web page counts more than anything else. If your intended audience isn't interested or can't quickly scan the page, web analytics won't save you, but it will tell you that nobody is paying attention.
Did you by chance think the Washington Post was just the name of a newspaper?
Major newspapers don't survive today by selling papers, subscriptions to papers, and advertising in newspapers. The Washington Post Company has been diversifying for years and holdings now include the college test-prep business of Kaplan, Inc.
And so it isn't a surprise that the Post has now bought a search marketing firm used by a plethora of colleges and universities to find adult students for masters and bachelors programs. The announcement in the Washington Business Journal at http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2007/10/08/daily35.html reports that advertising in the education sector was a bright spot. Education-related advertising increased 23 percent in the 2nd quarter of this year.
The new acquisition was founded in 2004 and will continue to operate under its Course Advisor name at http://www.courseadvisor.com/
When you visit, be sure to notice the client mix that ranges from University of Phoenix and Capella University to University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Boston University, and numerous trade schools.
More than dozen dedicated people continued on for another three hours last Tuesday after the close of the eduWeb 2007 conference for my workshop on "Simple Steps for Search Engine Success."
We had a fine time until 5 PM finally ended our explorations. From all that we what we discussed, here are some key points that stand out today.
- The emphasis on speding time to rewrite title tags was well worth the time in the presentation, as many of the people present agreed that the title tags on their pages (the first thing a visiting search engine sees) are not detailed enough about the content on the page. To see a great example of a page optimized for search results, from title tag on down through the page, visit http://www.mbaregis.com/
- The keywords tool at Google (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) can be used for a quick visual review of the number of people searching for related terms and the number of times that keyword is being bought for online advertising. Use this and you might be able to find keywords for paid web advertising on Google or elsewhere that are somewhat popular but are not often used by advertisiers.
- If you plan to spend money on search advertising, plan to evaluate the results just as you evaluate any other advertising: track inquiries from the source and know your "cost per inquiry" and your "cost per enrolled student." That's the only way to decide if paid search advertising deserves a place in your marketing budget.
- Everybody speculates about what's next in search marketing and optimization so get close to the source with Google's Matt Cutts in his blog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
- You can't tackle an entire website at once so identify the pages you'd most like people to find at your website, the key "entry" pages, and work on those first.
Why the emphasis on Google?
Simply because it is has by far the largest share of the search market (50 to 60 percent depending on the source) and the market share has been increasing in 2007. Yes, Yahoo still has a large share at over 20 percent, Ask might have the most elegant reporting, and you might feel pity for Microsoft and Live. But if you have little available time, focus on Google.
And in any case, what you do in "organic search" to optimize your site will work well for all the search engines. That Indiana "careers in elementary education" page noted above was top ranked by each of the major search engines.
Most college and university websites will benefit from careful attention to improving organic search features from the page title tags to the careful use of keywords throughout the page in headline, subheads, and regular text. Start soon, be patient, tend to the most important pages first.
Wednesday morning today is final prep time before my Search Engine Marketing workshop this afternoon at the ACT Enrollment Planners Conference in Chicago.
And so a quick note from today's issue of Search Engine Land as I was checking the latest Search Marketing news.
"SEO Tips and Tactics from a Wikipedia Insider" is a column by a person who volunteers to review and revise inappropriate changes to Wikipedia content. The focus here is on changes made by the offices of political figures to remove unflattering references to them that were indeed based on true facts.
Two elements stand out from this report:
- Changes were spotted quickly by the Wikipedia volunteer corps, in part because it was usually easy to see who made them.
- Edits to remove the "bad" content and in some cases restore what had been changed were also made very quickly.
But that doesn't mean that editors from college and universities (and political offices, for that matter) can't play an active role in updating Wikipedia content and achieving stronger search engine visibility. The article gives 8 "white hat" tips on how to do that without getting yourself in trouble with Wikipedia.
Spend some worthwhile moments at http://searchengineland.com/070717-113550.php for the details.
If you haven't yet discovered a new feature from Wordtracker, visit the "Free Keyword Suggestion Tool" at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
Enter single keywords and you'll get back a plethora of results for your entry and a long list of similar combinations. When you can't quite decide how to label something at your website, go here and use the tool for an estimate of how many people are searching for your possibilities each day.
Yesterday, after lunch at the CCU Communication Officers Conference, three of us were discussing the relative popularity of "elementary education" and "teacher education" as possible labels for a website path at a particular college. None of us really had an especially educated guess about which one to use.
Wordtracker made it pretty clear which of those terms is in more common use:
- Elementary education... estimate of 800 searches per day
- Teacher education... estimate of 81 searches per day
That's obviously quite a difference and strongly suggests which term is best used in the title tag for a page and for the primary heading on the page.
We also learned that "Special education teacher" was a relatively popular term, with an estimate of 222 searches a day.
Your results might not always be quite so definitive, but this is a quick and easy way to do an initial test.
