Or as John Palfrey, author of Born Digital, warns, “…some people do certainly share too much information about themselves online. They’re going to have tattoos in the digital space that they want to get rid of a few decades from now.”

But when I think of the tattoo example, I think of my first job as a teenager, in a family restaurant.  People with tattoos had to cover them completely with bandages or clothing.  If they could not, they would be assigned a job in the back, as a dishwasher or cook.  I was warned that a misplaced tattoo would land me a career in dishwashing forever.

I did what any respectable aspiring teacher would do.  I waited until my 20s… and eventually inked a spot on my back that would be covered by school dress codes.

By the time I got my higher ed job, tattoos have become more commonplace.  Higher ed blogger @micala blogs about getting her tattoo and how her supervisor accepted the idea.

The point is that if enough people are doing something (like getting inked) it becomes part of a cultural norm.  Sooner or later the naysayers end up accepting it, whether or not they ever like it.  As long as what you do or say isn’t on the far, far outside the norm (like tattooing obscenities on your forehead), you gain acceptance with the group.

Having a public presence on the Web should be no different.  At some point, the things we say and do on in social networking sites and on blogs become norms.  And while there’s professional risk in having a public persona on the Web, there’s also a greater chance than online reputation will result in professional opportunities.

What do you think?  What online behaviors are acceptable now?  What online behaviors are outside the norm?  What ones might be overlooked 5, 10, or even 20 years from now?  Do you think some online behaviors will always cross the line?

(Note: I’m not saying we shouldn’t expect students to be digitally literate.  As a matter of fact, I’ll be talking about the need for digital literacy next week.)

Related posts:

1. Division III Releases Social Networking Rule Change for Communicating with Prospective Student-Athletes
2. A Friendly Reminder: Social Media Is Social
3. Highlights from E-expectations: Class of 2009

Armed with the list of vulnerable facebook applications, and FBConTroller, an attacker can potentially harvest a huge number of facebook cookies. From there s/he could spam the accounts users/friends, sending them links to other compromised sites or to download malware.  If you are an admin of your University’s facebook page/group, be very paranoid about which facebook applications you use, or simply don’t use any at all.

Photo by Aaron Landry

Related posts:

1. Security in October: Google Wave, Facebook, XSS
2. Imposter Twitter Accounts could be Making Money off your University
3. Social Survey: Facebook

”MySpace is like the wild wild west or Las Vegas of social media, dirty and ghetto”

Yup, that quote pretty much summed up MySpace a year and a half ago and now it’s even worse. It’s like an abandoned Detroit neighborhood.  If you look at the below graph (click to view full size or follow the complete link to the left) from website analytics company Compete you will see how unique visitors to MySpace have pretty much flat lined over the last year while Facebook has jumped right over it.  However, look how Facebook has flat lined the last few months… this might be another trend to watch if Facebook has finally hit its saturation point.  At least Facebook got profitable first.

So What Did We Learn?

MySpace had sexual predator problems and then came the swarms of spammers, viruses and even porn.    When News Corp bought MySpace for $560 million dollars back in 2005 many people thought the price was way too low.  Although MySpace was profitable for quite some time you always felt like that was because they pushed advertising too strongly and the whole site was just a bunch of unorganized advertisements.  Quite frankly I remember when I first created a MySpace profile probably back in 2006.  I thought the site felt like a badly designed site brought back from the 90’s.

For a while it was a lot of fun, but there is only so much fun we can have reconnecting with old friends before we realize why we lost touch with them in the first place.  People have short attention spans…

I think the takeaways were many but here are a few I would note:

• Technology changes at lightning speeds (aka things get old and unsexy) – We are talking about years, not decades, between the rise and collapse of this website.
• Keep It Simple – Remember the KISS rule I wrote about a while back?  Quite frankly it wasn’t very easy to do a lot of things in MySpace if my memory serves me correctly.  Yes, many of those things might be easier now, but the only saving grace I had was the fact I understood HTML and enough CSS to be dangerous.
• Everyone isn’t a designer – The fact that MySpace gave people so much control over the look and feel of their profile turned out to be a very dangerous thing.
• Advertising can’t be your only revenue stream (unless your Google) – MySpace sucked in the ad dollars and for quite some time was the much more successful bigger brother of Facebook.  Although it took Facebook forever to begin to break into the green, they appear to be building a sustainable revenue module, and instead of forcing as many ads as possible, they are doing it in intuitive and quasi interesting ways.
• Third party developers help – You probably know third party programs in Facebook as Applications, and anyone who has ever used Twitter can probably name a dozen third party applications for it.  If you let your rabid fans build upon your produc, there will be new ideas and features that you never thought about come out!

Is Facebook Also Doomed?,

Eventually we have to assume that Facebook will hit that saturation point…the day my mom gets a Facebook account I will know it has gotten to that point  (my mom refuses to learn to text message so we might be safe here… love you Mom!).  Rachel just wrote a post last week about how she had a crisis with her institute’s Facebook page.  This will be interesting to watch going forward, especially since as I noted above they appear to be beginning to flat line on monthly unique visitor traffic.

Final Thoughts

So MySpace is the new Yahoo… it’s the new AOL.  That’s good, but that’s not great.  It basically means they win the silver for second place to hold on and slowly become less and less relevant over time.  Its golden age has come and gone, and although like those other entities I’ve just listed it will probably remain around for a while, it will never be the same beast that claimed over 75% of the market.  Take away the lessons learned and apply them for the better.

What other lessons did you learn from MySpace’s slow decline?  Leave a comment and share!

Related posts:

1. Social Survey Week 2: MySpace
2. Ridiculously Backward Rules for Limiting Your Social Network
3. Your Social Network: “Everyone’s a Hero in Their Own Way”

Mo’s Irish Pub (also on Twitter and Facebook) is only about 4 blocks from the hotel. They serve food until 1:00AM and drinks until 2:30AM; there is a full menu on their site.

Please RSVP by Friday the 2nd if you would like to come so we can warn Mo’s ahead of time.

View Larger Map

Related posts:

1. Join the whole .eduGuru crew live, Thursday 4/23 at 3:15 p.m. EDT
2. All of HighEdWeb 2008
3. Pictures from the first HighEd Tweetup

Just 11 percent of its [Twitter] users are ages 12 to 17

A few other great points in the article:

In fact, though teenagers fueled the early growth of social networks, today they account for 14 percent of MySpace’s users and only 9 percent of Facebook’s. As the Web grows up, so do its users.

Almost everyone under 35 uses social networks, but the growth of these networks over the last year has come from older adults.

I know I wrote a post almost three months ago about the fact that 99% of 18-24 year olds are on Social Networks, but with new data like this NYTimes article coming out regularly they’re not the only audience on this network.  Even a recent Forrester Report says that 80% of Americans are on Social Media Monthly.  Just yesterday, Rachel gave us a great example of how we can use Facebook status updates to connect with not just prospective students but also alumni.

I’m probably more tired of reading articles about Twitter and “tweeting”  than anyone else, but we need to realize that Higher Education can market on Social Media.  Twitter can be a great tool, and any of you out there who use it regularly probably have lots of stories about how it has changed your life through the connections you have been able to make.  Purely from a marketing standpoint, Twitter is the second largest driver of traffic to this blog next to Google Search traffic!

Demographic Breakdown on Twitter

So if you are still curious about the demographic breakdown of age groups on Twitter this chart is also most revealing.  Contrary to the previous data, this chart gives us the impression that children and teens are the only groups growing in number of Twitter accounts.

If you want more data on Twitter, check out HubSpot’s  June 2009 State of the Twittersphere Report.

The Takeaways

Remember that social media is about relationship building.  You have probably heard me say that enough times, but it’s still true.  Ask yourself “What is the right tool for my audience?”  For your alumni you probably want to offer a few options, one of which should definitely be setting up an alumni group on Linkedin.  For incoming students you may want to create your own social network on Ning.  And although your prospective students might not be on Twitter,  that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways that you can leverage Twitter as a marketing tool for your college or university.

The point is people are using these networks, and they’re using them regularly.  It is your job as a marketer to keep coming up with creative ways to leverage these sexy tools to reach your audience.

Related posts:

1. Social Networking Research: 99% of Your Audience Are On Them, Still Need More Convincing?
2. eduWeb 2009 Live Blog – Twitter for Higher Ed
3. Accessible Twitter

So how do you cover twitter to an audience who may have already heard a pitch for using it as an institution?  How do you cover it to an audience where half is drinking the Kool-Aid and half still thinks it’s a waste of time?

Typically when Robin and I present on twitter, as a team or individually, we cover many aspects, but given these challenges, we decided to emphasize the relationships, the networking, the people of twitter… and have a little fun:

Click here for audio and @omahane’s notes. (Thanks, @omahane. You rock!)

Did it work? I think Karlyn captured the reaction best here.

If the unconverted got anything, I’m hoping that they got that it’s not just about what twitter the tool does.  Twitter is about the people on it. Otherwise, maybe we’d be be on britekite.

Just like conferences are about connnecting with people and without the people we could stay at home and to webinars, twitter is nothing without your connections.  If you are not doing that, then you just won’t get it.

For my part, twitter and conferences go hand in hand, and I was fortunate to have made more connections.  I hope you will add them to you follows as well: @billyadams, @lougan, @mmbc, @petermahoney, and @sashawolff.

One Final Word: This blog itself and its success is a testament to making personal connections, from our followers on Twitter, to our subscribed readers, to the eduStyle People’s Choice Award for best High Ed Blog.  These are all because of you sharing us with your connections.  Keep it coming and drop us a line.

Photo The circle (of laptops) is complete. We are those guys. #eduweb by opacity.

Related posts:

1. eduWEB 2009 in Chicago. Are you Ready?
2. eduWEB 2009 Reflections
3. eduWEB 2008 Reflections I

• “Division III institutions now are free to use such media as Facebook and Twitter to publicize game results and other athletics news without worrying whether prospective student-athletes are receiving those “electronically transmitted” messages, provided the communication meets some new objective guidelines established by the Division III Management Council.”

The original bylaw said:

“Electronically transmitted correspondence that may be sent to a prospective student-athlete by, or on behalf of, a member of the institition’s athletics department staff is limited to electronic mail and facsimiles. All other forms of electronically transmitted correspondence (e.g. instant messaging, text messaging and social networking Web sites) are prohibited.”

They’ve now added to this — “except as specified in this section.”

• “Any member of the general public may become a member of the group to which the electronic transmission is sent.”
  • In other words, no closed/gated online communities
• “A prospective student-athlete who chooses to receive electronic transmissions through the electronic service must retain the ability to decline receipt of the communications at any time or may unsubscribe from all electronic service at any time.”
  • In other words, use common sense and always have unsubscribe options with all forms of communication.
• “The content of any electronic transmission that is sent to a public group that may include prospective student-athletes must be the same for all members of the group (e.g. news alerts, admissions and alumni information, scores) and of a general nature.”
  • We can’t send custom content to recruits.
• “The proposal does not allow direct person-to-person electronic communication with an individual prospective student-athlete sent by a member of the athletics department staff, or on their behalf, (e.g., instant messaging, comments via MySpace, Wall-to-Wall via Facebook, direct messaging via Twitter) except via electronic mail or facsimile. Further, the proposal ensures the communications are being sent from the athletics department or the institution, and not from the individual members of the athletics department acting on their own.”

This last paragraph is most crucial, and makes it even more important for collaborative efforts on your campus. Your athletic director likely received this communication (it was e-mailed at 9 a.m. ET this morning, July 22), but it may be a bit confusing for those that don’t have a great understanding of the various tools.  From that e-mail, they offer this example:

• “If your coach uses Twitter or Facebook on their own for communication of athletics related information, and that information is delivered to prospective student-athletes, you will need to report that violation.”

Am I the only one thinking they’ve contradicted themselves here? On one hand they’re saying if it’s generic information and publicly available to anyone, then why would a coach disseminating that same public information in a public space be in violation?

Here is the complete PDF that was attached to the e-mail communication this morning. I’d love to hear your take on it.

Related posts:

1. Register for “Recruiting on a budget 101: Master plan to win the social media jackpot with prospective students”
2. LiveVideoU: Changing the Way a Prospective Student Views your Campus
3. Social Networking Research: 99% of Your Audience Are On Them, Still Need More Convincing?

So when Twitter came around and after I few tries it finally took (or rather, I took to it), the same phenomenon happened.  I became engaged, er hooked.  It was bad enough that as an avid reader, I was someone who, from childhood on, imagined my own personal narrator throughout my day, but now I was doing it in short, first-person tweets.  The twittering behavior had bed out into the real world… or maybe it had been there all along.

Some may say that this is a bad thing, but we here are the real-life lessons we can take from twitter:

1. Keep your messages short.

If only all messages were 140 characters or less!  I often say higher ed tech folks are doubly blessed (or cursed) with academic overspeak and IT jargon.  If the message is shrouded in jargon, it’s easy to not to act on it.  Some people may honestly misunderstand and be too afraid to ask.  Others may throw language parroting the jargon of the day to feign activity.  But a short message is easy for people to follow or not follow.  And when it’s clear who isn’t, you can single them out and have the conversation to get them on board.

2. Expand and diversify your network.

Get to know as many people as possible.  Don’t limit yourself to people in your department and/or in your field.  Ideas and support can come from the most unlikely places.  Shelby Thayer’s thoughts on analytics gave me perspective on my own needs assessment for staff training.  And I work with people in human resources on a regular basis as well.  Forget about someone’s place in the organizational chart, someone’s educational background, and someone’s reputation for being critical.  Get to know as many people as you can.  Everyone has a place and serves a purpose in your network.

3. Listen.

I spend a lot of my time on twitter just listening to people.  Often getting to know people on a personal level has led to professional relationships later.  The same goes for the real world.  We are over-scheduled people.  Build time into your calendar for networking events so that you get to know people in your department and on campus.  We’ve had tweet-ups, karaoke nights, burrito-eating contests, battery-life contests, and an ice-cream social with the sole purpose of proving that root beer floats are not the best float flavor.  You never know what you may be able to do for one another.

4. Give more than you get.

Shannon Ritter, a.k.a. @micala, talks about how annoying it is that lately we’ve been spamming our friends to just to get free stuff. In twitter if we use our friends and colleagues, we lose them.   It works in real life too.  In campus politics there is official authority, the organization hierarchy, and unofficial authority.  That unofficial authority is the kind build from building a network of trust, from being a resources for others, and from doing a few favors.  It’s like a special currency that’s worth more in the bank than cashed in, you should be building your unofficial authority on favors more than spending it on them.

I’ll be presenting “Twitter Me This?”  with Robin Smail next week at eduWEB.

Church Sign photo by Wisely Woven

Related posts:

1. Are Teens on Twitter? And a Bunch of Other Related Data
2. Making a case for Twitter
3. Authenticity: What I learned on my winter vacation

Anyway let’s get back to the big story here.  According to PMN’s data:

“99 percent of this same group reports having an active profile on at least one social networking site”

How can you ignore that data?  We are talking about practically every undergraduate student that you have!  Some of the other really interesting findings include:

- Online social networks are hot for Gen Y
- 99 percent have a profile on a social networking site
- 89 percent have downloaded an application to their profile page
- Photos (89 percent), Games (53 percent), Entertainment
(51 percent), News (32 percent) and Weather (29 percent) are
the most popular applications

- Mobile social networking is heating up for Gen Y
- 38 percent have an iPhone or iPod Touch
- Games (53 percent), Entertainment (35 percent), Lifestyle
(31 percent), Financial – Free (28 percent), Financial – Paid
(7 percent) are the most popular mobile applications
- More than one quarter (26 percent) indicated none

Now what?

So the question now is what are you going to do knowing this data?  I know that we all run into cases where it can be difficult to convince administrators of the importance of social media, so hopefully you can bookmark this data to help make your case a little more compelling next time around.  Also be sure to check out the associated graphs that can be downloaded and printed at the end of the PMN press release.

Related posts:

1. Division III Releases Social Networking Rule Change for Communicating with Prospective Student-Athletes
2. Ridiculously Backward Rules for Limiting Your Social Network
3. Is Social Media A Fad? Social Media Revolution Video

Since my last update a few months ago about Café New Paltz, our online Ning community for fall 2009 accepted students, we’ve completed this year’s traditional recruitment cycle. We’re extremely pleased with the results and continued growth of this community.

The community continued to grow from February through the mid-April, as our undergraduate admissions office sent email invitations every couple of weeks to the latest batch of students accepted to our university.

At the end of April we had a slight mishap that we ended up turning into a great opportunity. During one of our routine exports from Banner, our student record system where we pull email addresses for the latest batch of accepted students, we accidentally included “all” accepted students, not just first-year students. This resulted in inviting 400 recently accepted transfer students. A large majority ended up accepting our invitation and started forming their own groups organically. While we initially panicked, we realized this was a good thing. They have many of the same concerns as first year students – meeting new people, starting classes at a brand new campus, figuring out the maze of offices to contact for various questions/concerns, etc. The only major difference is that we don’t provide on-campus housing to transfer students — and this turned into an excellent opportunity they seized by starting groups related to finding off-campus housing and roommates.

We continued to provide video updates by our two baristas throughout the semester. According to Ning’s usage stats, their viewership was not significantly high enough for us to want to put a great deal of resources (time, human and money) into this effort in the future, should we do this again.

My love letter to Ning

Ning makes it very hard for us to measure our success in a quantitative way. We have tied in our Google Analytics account for basic Web stats. Within Ning, I’ve been able to grab oodles of qualitative tid-bits I’ve been able to grab from various forum posts, live chats and direct messages, but I want more. Here is my kind request to Ning:

Dear Ning,

It would mean the world to me if you would give us access to member usage data. My wish list includes the ability to track the most active member(s), the least active member(s), percentages showing how often people log in (x daily, x weekly, x monthly), and how many times they’ve logged in overall.

We love you dearly and are grateful for all you’ve helped us accomplish, but we need more.

With much love and respect,
Rachel & her colleagues

May 1st was the national deposit deadline, which we also use. I was interested to see how the membership data correlated with the statistics of those students who paid their pre-enrollment deposit (PED).

Since Ning does not connect directly with our student records system, I was still determined to find a way to get some data out of the email address export I can get from Ning. I worked with my colleague in undergraduate admissions and our Web Programmer, and developed a list of areas I wanted to be able to report on by matching email addresses exported from Ning with email addresses in Banner. Here’s what we were able to get from the list of 690 members we exported from Ning on May 4:

• Paid PED: 357 – 52%
• Did not pay PED: 283 – 41%

70 % of the members of our Ning community who paid their PED were from our highest admission selectivity group. The yield of our highest selectivity group took a significant jump from 30% last year to 37% this year. The Ning community was one our largest efforts to increase the yield of this highly selective group and based on the participation in the Ning and our significant increase in yield for this group we would consider it a great success.

I was also able to get three separate e-mail lists: first-year students (742) and transfer students (526) who paid their PED but did not become a member of Café New Paltz, so we can send them a special re-invite; and those accepted students who joined Café New Paltz but opted not to pay their PED or attend SUNY New Paltz (283). We will use that final list to purge members from the Café. Unfortunately, this is another limitation of Ning – we have to do this manually, one-by-one. To give these numbers a bit of context, we have roughly 15,000 freshmen applications, accept around 5,000, and our first year class for fall 2009 will be around 1,100 students. We received about 3,200 transfer applications, accepted about 1,100 and just over 600 will be joining us this fall.

Next Steps

We started a forum in mid-March asking the members to tell us if they wanted Café New Paltz to continue to be available, and we received about 30 responses strongly encouraging us to keep it open at least through summer orientation, and some requested to continue through their entire first year. Undergraduate Admissions is turning over their role to the Student Affairs division, whose efforts will be largely led by their Coordinator of First Year Programs. Café New Paltz will continue to exist at least through the end of this calendar year at this point. We’re going to re-evaluate its use and effectiveness in October/November to determine whether it is worth continuing for the spring 2010 semester.

Our two current baristas are moving on — one graduated from graduate school with his MBA, and the other will continue his active membership in many student organizations and being a student ambassador. He’s also going to be a blogger for us next year on http://npbloggers.newpaltz.edu. The Coordinator of First Year Programs will take the lead on the occasion that responses will be helpful from staff at the college, and she will be joined by a few other students later in the summer that will fill in the barista role. One student is an international student from China who will cater specifically to international students in the Café. The other two are this summer’s senior orientation leaders that all first-year students will meet throughout the summer.

Will we do this again?

Good question! Café New Paltz has exceeded our wildest expectations. We have no regrets and could absolutely forsee doing this again. However, we won’t decide until October/November. January 1, 2010 is too far ahead to plan in this social media space, in my opinion. Who knows what the next best thing will be then…

Related posts:

1. Café New Paltz – One month update
2. Café New Paltz – 5 days in
3. Creating an exclusive online community for fall 2009 accepted students

A few years ago, when I was about 31, I was at a meeting with faculty for a graduate program.  I offered up examples of how we were reworking some of our existing course tools to give them elements of social media.  Before I got too far, I was stopped in my tracks: “Our students are not teenagers,” they chided me, “Our students are working professionals.”

So in honor of all of you “working professionals”, in honor of the rest of the misunderstood, I give you…

3 Social Media Assumptions Not to Make

(because we all know what happens when you assume)

1. Twitter is dead. Maybe not.  People may just not understand how to use it right away.  I got my account in February 2007 and didn’t do much with it until March of 2008.  My use looked like this or sounded like this discussion on TWIT (~1:18:00-1:25:00).
2. Social media is all about narcissistic people who want to talk about themselves. Not exactly.  It all depends on how people use the tools.  Most people will not reach a certain level of success without giving back to the community and having a dialog.
3. Everyone is just like you. No, people use technology in different ways and for different reasons.  They may use different tools.  They may embrace change more or less readily than you.

Image adapted from Fail 7900 by timcaynes.

Related posts:

1. Is Social Media A Fad? Social Media Revolution Video
2. Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive social media presence
3. A Friendly Reminder: Social Media Is Social

I suppose I could give you examples of nasty comments or alphageekery I have personally received, but what would be the point? We all know what it looks like when we get these socially inept messages fired (or perhaps misfired) at us. We all know what it feels like to be hit by one of them.

I try to remind myself not to put goals before people, because it’s in the getting-things-done mode that we seem to lose touch with our connections to people.  Call me naive, but I suspect that most antisocial behavior is unintentional.  Before we ever realize what we have done, we’ve accidentally made asses of ourselves for the whole Internet to witness. Like me:

Someone who contributes a great deal to my university’s community was tweeting some valuable resources this week as she always does.  When she shared the link to our style manual, which had styles for technology, I was very interested.  I have wanted to provide training for people in my department on using a consistent style for our technical documentation and had even looked at ]style guides elsewhere.

When I looked at our university’s style guide, I questioned the choice of italics for menu items and hyperlinks.  Because I respected this person and wanted to get a feel for if I was off-base in my opinion on question of this style, I tweeted this: “not a fan of the choice for italics for hyperlinks & buttons in Tech Style Guide–makes it harder for users to scan documentation.”

The problem was, I was interested in my personal goal, I was seduced by the 140 character limit, and I had not reread my tweet.  This is someone who should be thanked for bringing this information to us, and my tweet sounded like I was shooting the messenger for a style guide she didn’t create.  (Luckily, this person did not take it in that way: a credit to her character, not mine.)

The truth is sometimes I wanted to believe all bad behavior is caused by other people wanting to make their mark by any means necessary.  Sometimes I forget that the “other people” are really us: people who forget to think of others first and who later decide to write a blog post as apology and parable.

Related posts:

1. 3 Social Media Assumptions Not to Make
2. Is Social Media A Fad? Social Media Revolution Video
3. Bonus Social Media Story: Show Me Yours and I’ll Show You Mine!

This presentation was jam packed with great insights and nuggets that I found enlightening, and some rather surprising. 

Demographics:

• 250 from each of the four geographic regions in the U.S.
• 50/50 male/female
• 53% caucasian, 16% African-American/Black, 10% Hispanic/Latino, 9% multiple ethnicities, 4% Asian, 3% Indian/Native American, 3% declined, 1% other
• Grades: A – 39%, B – 48%, C – 12%
• Family income: 25% less than $50k, 23% between $50-75k, 11% between $75-100k, 7% between %100-$125k, 4% more than $125k, 29% don’t know/refused
• 77% connect via DSL or cable, 11% phone modem, 3% handheld device.

When asked if the current economic crisis caused them to reconsider the schools they were applying to or may attend, 64% said no. 

62% said their parents/family are helping them with research and/or paperwork. Of that group, 21% say they help them look at Web sites and go on campus visits with them.

Content is king! Prospects are taking time to read details about cost and processes. 

50% said colleges and universities should use young, edgy and bold designs for their sites. 43% said schools should take a more traditional approach with their site design. When I tweeted this tid-bit, @KarlynM said it would be interesting to find out these students definition of body and edgy. 

Navigation and information architecture is so important. 85% report the links should take me right to the answers to their questions, where 15% said they don’t pay much attention to the link choices and head straight for the search box or site index. Either way – making information easily findable and searchable is key.

41% found your school via Google or another search site by typing in your school’s name. 38% use services like Zinch, MyCollegeOptions or College Board to match them to your school. Only 13% referred to a printed document with your URL on it. May be time to re-think handouts, such as postcards, just to advertise specific Web sites.

They want to do fun stuff. 42% say they want to find more to do on a college site than just click and read. 

What do they want to do most? I’m most shocked by “RSS feeds with admissions info and campus activities,” and where it fares in the list! They actually know what RSS feeds are? I’ve gotten the impression from other articles and survey results I’ve read that most don’t know, that RSS is just the plumbing behind the scenes. They may be using it, but they aren’t aware of it. Maybe they are, now?

Social Networking

And, the ever-popular Facebook vs. MySpace debate. 50% listed being on Facebook and 52% said MySpace. For the Facebook group, 56% were A students, 47% B students, 41% C students. Northeast, midwest and south all more likely to be on Facebook than MySpace. For the MySpace group, 65% black, 70% latino vs. 44% white and 43% Asian. 47% were B students, 58% were C students, and 44% were A students. Only 2% reported not participating in social networking. When asked if colleges and universities should create a presence within social networks/communities to promote their programs, 70% said yes! In addition, 75% said schools should create their own private communities, like Cafe New Paltz, that are password protected and for invited students only. 51% said they wouldn’t mind school representatives contacting them directly via a social network.

What content will make a different to them on a social network? They’re most interested in discussions about courses and academics (3.74, mean 1-5), student activities and extracurricular options (3.65), and insight into the school’s culture and diversity (3.37). They’re interested in communication with current students and faculty (3.10), communication with prospective students (3.01), profiles of current students and faculty (2.88), and posting profiles as a student who may attend (2.88).

Very few reported text messaging as a method they’d prefer for admissions transactions such as answers to questions or  acceptance notices. For all transactions, their preferred method was online over in person, phone, mail or text.

87% are willing to give their e-mail address to a school to communicate with them. 45% of them do it at the inquiry stage, 28% when they’re ready to apply to the school, 15% after they’ve been accepted, and 9% after they make their final decision.

Summary:

• Economic issues mean that Web sites will have to work harder in lieu of visits to ensure prospects see value and compelling details.
• Parents and families are inextricably linked and we should be talking directly to them — and often!
• The experience prospects have on our site matters in their decision whether to probe further into your programs and offerings, and how they’d fit on our campus.
• We need to focus more on content. Content, content, content. Make it readable, printable, referenceable, searchable. 
• Focus on your navigation. Test it with college-bound students. Don’t use internal lingo. 
• Focus on your design. Take a leap. Go bold.
• Find your place on social networks. Be social. Be helpful. Find the right fit for your campus with the various tools out there. Re-read the demographics above – different sites work for different institutions, depending on their typical student base.

Related posts:

1. Live Blogging AMA Higher Ed: The E-Expectations of College Bound Seniors
2. Show Me The Conversions
3. eduWeb 2009 LiveBlog – Web Wide Architecture

Twitter has become one of the most popular and quickest social networks to integrate your university or business with. You would think the simple 140 character limit messaging service would be available to all but there are a few issues that are hindering a certain user group in this powerful network. This group is not intentionally neglected online but because programmers are more concerned with adding features that require a certain level of ability and managers are more concerned with saving a buck or a few hours of time this group gets overlooked.

The issues with twitter.com are not as crippling as an “all flash” site but these small details show when developers understand accessibility and have an attention to detail. Don’t get me wrong, twitter.com is far more accessible than a great deal of sites out there. Below is a list of a few of those details, you might not agree with all of them but its these details which make the difference.

Some Twitter.com Accessibility Issues

• No keyboard access to favorite/reply/delete
• Lack of headings
• Favoriting requires Javascript
• Custom colors may not be readable
• Code doesn’t validate
• Code could use better semantics
• Password field is missing a label;select lang missing label
• Fieldsets used without legends
• Layout width is static not flexible; doesn’t “stretch” with browser width
• JavaScript required for details on latest tweet (time, in reply to)

A great site created by Denis Lembree which is currently in alpha stage aims to fix these issues. Using purely the public twitter API Dennis has created an accessible version of Twitter. The site http://accessibletwitter.com/ aims to fix all of the issues above and continue to support and advocate for twitter to be accessible to all. Below is the current progress of the project.

Items Implemented

• All links are keyboard accessible
• Simple, consistent layout and navigation
• Works with or without JavaScript
• Large default text size and high color contrast
• Looks great in high or low resolution
• Forms are marked up for optimal accessibility
• Code is semantic, light, and adheres to Web Standards
• + More every day

Are these issues going to hinder Twitter from going mainstream? No, but our job as web professionals is to be the best at our craft and that means including everyone. Take a look at the recent Yahoo! article WebAIM Survey Shines Light on Screen Reader Usage to get an idea of the usage of these elements by screen reader users. Most web developers/project managers have never seen a user use a screen reader on their site, if you are interested in watching one there is a video available from the November 19th Refresh Detroit meeting, it’s pretty interesting stuff.

A users experience goes beyond their visit to your site, if something is hard to use they will tell their friends, make sure ever users experience on your site is a positive one, they will thank you.

Checkout Accessible Twitter at: http://accessibletwitter.com/

Related posts:

1. Are Teens on Twitter? And a Bunch of Other Related Data
2. Web Development Tools. What’s in your web toolbelt?
3. Web Development: Progressive Enhancement – Part 1

This week, it’s time to expand our .eduGuru network and yours with the first (of hopefully more) Guru Interviews.  Shelby Thayer is a Marketing Associate for Penn State University and the blogger behind http:///www.trendingupward.net.  You can follow her on twitter at @shelbythayer.

Nikki: Can you talk a little about your current position in higher ed? What’s your current role? How does it fit into the larger organization?

Shelby: I am a Marketing Associate for Penn State World Campus. In that role I maintain the World Campus website (strategy, usability, analytics, maintenance).  World Campus is a Penn State campus. We offer more than 60 degrees and certificates, all entirely online. You can get a Penn State master, bachelor, or associate degree through the World Campus. This degree is exactly the same as a degree you would receive if you were a resident student at Penn State. There is no difference. Although we don’t offer every program now, we are continually adding degrees and certificates to our offerings.

We launched the World Campus in 1998.

[Disclosure: Shelby and I both met when we both worked together at World Campus briefly, though in different departments.]

Nikki: What are some of the strategies that might be unique to a campus that exists entirely online?

Shelby: Hmm …that’s a good question. Obviously tech support is very important for an online campus. The World Campus has our own tech support helpdesk above and beyond that of Penn State.  We also have to think differently about the services we offer to students.

For example, our students can’t walk into the Bursar or Registrar.  So we have our own student services team (Adult Learner Enrollment Services) who are here to help our applicants and students. They help walk them through admissions process. We have our own advisers as well to help our students.  We have a large student services section on our website, that can help students get information they may need.  We also work with the library to help our distance users utilize our library resources.  If they can’t find the information on our website, our Adult Learner Enrollment Services department is here from 8am – 8pm.  Obviously learning at a distance is a bit more difficult (service-wise) than being on campus. With all of our services, our goal is to make the online learner feel they have any service that the resident student has.

Nikki: I like reading your blog, Trending Upward.  When you blog, do you blog for an audience of marketing/analytics gurus, higher ed people, or do you go with what interests you?

Shelby: Thanks. Well, it’s funny you should ask that. One thing my blog has forced me to do is get good with Google Analytics.  We use Omniture here and, although the theory is the same, the way it’s done is different.  Most higher ed sites use Google Analytics, so it’s really forced me to do my research and test on my site.

I’d say my primary audience is Higher Ed because I’m constantly thinking about how what I say would relate to them. Otherwise I’d just write posts about Omniture tips, tricks and such.  I do find myself wanting to do that, though, for the analytics community. That’s why sometimes I stick to theory. Again, the theory is the same. The implementation is a bit different.

Sometimes I do find myself being too granular.  The analytics community in general is very complex in how they use analytics (e-commerce, etc.). Higher ed isn’t that complex.  Another thing I run into is that I’m not sure the higher ed community has embraced WA yet, either.

I find that explaining web analytics to higher ed folks from a usability standpoint gets better buy in than strictly from an ROI standpoint. In the private sector, WA is very much about ROI. Not so in higher ed. A public company advertises all over the place (print, web, email subscriptions, tv, radio, etc.). All of that is trackable via WA. Higher ed doesn’t have “widgits” to sell. It’s not e-commerce, so the approach to WA is a bit different: Whereas in e-commerce it’s about driving they eye toward the “buy now” button in WA, it’s about creating a page that drives users to where their information is.

It’s really the same concept.  It’s just not all about buying gadgets off a website.  It’s more about giving students the best information, helping them fill out an online application, creating a great search form for the course catalog, or getting around a large library website easily.  Again, I’m not saying that it’s not about conversion. It certainly is.  I’m just saying that when you say “conversion” to some higher ed folks, their eyes glaze over, when, in fact, getting someone to the correct course they searched ofr is a conversion!

A “conversion” can be anything you want it to be. It’s what the goal of a page is: Be it submitting an application. Or arriving at the correct journal article when you search.  That’s why usability and WA are so intermingled.  You can’t have one without the other. I’m trying to get higher ed peeps to see it as a priority.  Because it can help them create better website.  More usable websites.  Better functioning websites. And ultimately serve our customers (prospects and students) better.

Nikki: Before coming to Penn State you worked in private industry, right?

Shelby: Yes.  At a computer networking company in Syracuse.

Nikki: For .eduGuru readers who recently transitioned from the private sector, do you have any final advice for adapting?

Shelby: Higher ed is committeed (is that even a word) to death. Consequently, higher ed talks a lot, but sometimes doesn’t get a lot done.  It’s funny [when I am] reading reading your posts and a post that Karlyn had a while back about committees.  One thing I try to do, when going into meetings (even committee meetings) is always come away with action items. I find that if we have clear action items, things get done quicker. That’s not really related to higher ed per se, but I think it’s even more important in higher ed because there are so many silos sometimes it’s not always clear who will be doing the work. Clear, concise action items. It works.

Related posts:

1. [Results] State of the University Web Department survey
2. 5 min survey: State of the university Web department
3. [Guru Survey] Are Classes In Your Toolbox?