for Independent School Admissions Emily H.L. Surovick Director of Lower School Admission, Chestnut Hill Academy Vincent H. Valenzuela Director of Admission, Chestnut Hill Academy in Many Forms Blogging Message Boards Photo Sharing Podcasts Video Sharing 1
The Stats: Facebook just surpassed 300 million members, with more than 300,000 businesses. LinkedIn has over 47 million members. A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second and executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members. YouTube- People are watching hundreds of millions of videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Sources: http://www.youtube.com/t/fact_sheet, http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics, http://press.linkedin.com/about 2
Just to Compare. Years to Reach 50 Millions Users: Radio (38 Years) TV (13 Years) Internet (4 Years) ipod (3 Years) Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months Why Your School Should Consider The internet is where people are going more and more FIRST to get updated and accurate information. People trust the recommendations of their friends before an ad. Social networking sites allow for people to rate/ comment about their experience. People trust customer reviews- schools can recruit parents to comment about their experience. Social networking sites allow for faster word of mouth marketing- most schools would agree that word of mouth is their biggest marketing tool! And. 3
Why Your School Should Consider If you don t create a site for your school, someone else will!! They may already have! Facebook Facebook is a free global social networking website that was originally designed for college students and is now open to anyone over the age of 13. Facebook users create a profile page where they can add photos, video and information about themselves and share this information easily with friends. 4
Facebook Facebook provides an easy way for friends to keep in touch and for individuals to have a presence on the Web without needing to build a website. The Facebook Stats In July, 2009 USA Facebook users= 69,378,980. This is a 150% growth over January, 2008. 20% of the adult US population is on Facebook. The 35-54 year old demographic is growing fastest, with a 276.4% growth rate from July 2008-Jan. 2009 The 55+ demo has a 194.3% growth rate The 25-34 year old population on Facebook is doubling every 6 months There are more females (55.7%) than males (42.2%) on Facebook 2.2% are of unknown gender. What does this mean for schools?... Source: istrategylabs: 2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report, Jan. 2009 5
Facebook Stats Parents and professionals are rapidly adopting Facebook. This is our target market!!! Issues to Resolve Before You Facebook What happens on Facebook, STAYS on Facebook 6
Issues to Resolve Before You Facebook How many pages do you want for your school?- One page for entire school? one for Admissions? just Lower School Admissions?... Name of page- too specific makes it harder to search. Also, you can not change the name once it is set. Who at your school will have administrator functions? What parameters will you set as far as what can be posted and what can t? t?ie: student tfirst/ t/last names, grades, photos, etc. How often should it be updated? How much do you want your page to direct people to your school website or substitute for your website? Do you want to create a page or a group? And. Issues to Resolve Before You Facebook Schools need to be prepared to lose some control! 7
Issues to Resolve Before You Facebook Effective social network recruiting allows would-be customers to generate their own content. The danger for institutions is in loosing control of their image once it s thrown into the hands of the public. - The Ottawa Citizen Source: The Ottawa Citizen, Universities Turn to Sites to Hook Recruits, Dec. 15, 2008 A Really Cool Idea!: The University of New Brunswick In 2008, the University of New Brunswick challenged prospective students to create Facebook groups about why they wanted to go to UNB. The winner received a year s tuition. There were a total of 90 Facebook groups created for the contest with over 11,000 members/fans. 8
Facebook 101: How does it work? Facebook: Page or Group? 9
Facebook: Page or Group? Pages- Operate like personal profiles that everyone on Facebook can access. Fans can post comments to pages. Pages allow for more direct interaction with fans. Pages are designed for administrators to maintain a personal/ professional distinction on Faceboook. If a page administrator posts a comment, it appears as if it is coming from the school/ organization, not an individual. There is no limit on the number of fans a page can have. Facebook: Page or Group? Groups- Maintained by an individual person. When you send notices to your group, those messages will appear to come from a person, not the organization. Groups are also good for when you Groups are also good for when you want to limit access to your group and you want it to be more personalized. Admin messages are limited to 5,000 members. 10
Facebook Pages: Some School Examples Northfield Mount Hermon- a basic site, but they have loads of fans. A great example to follow in terms of information posted. Chestnut Hill Academy-Lower School Admissions- Lower School/ Admissions-focused. We have embedded our YouTube channel and our Twitter stream to our page. We have also created a sidebar for Application materials and a link to an interactive online viewbook. Calvert School- has a great online catalogue and virtual fieldtrip tab. Louisiana State University- SU has 117,000 fans- they got it by getting into a competition with Texas A&M for Facebook fans. Gonzaga University- great idea for Development. Also, they are utilizing the poll function- great way to drive traffic! Check out edsocialmedia s facebook page- each week they nominate a different Facebook page of the week and they have great notes. Search schools you know and see what they are doing. Twitter What is it? It sounds kinda silly. 11
Twitter Twitter is an online service that allows you to share status updates with other users by answering one simple question: What are you doing? in 140 characters or less. Twitter Usage is Growing! 12
A Twitter Vocab Lesson Tweet - When you post or write your 140 characters on twitter and hit send Handle Your twitter name, eg: @ChesnutHillAcd Follow The act of adding someone to your list of people you are following this makes their tweets show up on your homepage. DM This is a message that is sent directly to another user. A tool for private messages. Hashtag A way people categorize tweets so that others might use the same tag and create a way for people to view related tweets. Eg: #iran A Look at Twitter 13
Twitter- It still doesn t sound that great. Your alums are probably the ones that are going to find you first. Twitter s potential lies in word of mouth marketing. Highlight the great things your school is doing and word will spread, especially as Twitter usage grows. Twitter- Still to Come. Twitter to soon launch a new locationaware feature. People will be able to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. People could read tweets from anyone in their neighborhood or city. It remains to be seen how this plays out, but there is significant potential for schools with this new feature. 14
YouTube Create a YouTube Channel for your school and upload videos. Link this channel to your school s website and to your school s Facebook page. Ask students/ parents to create videos about your school and post them to YouTube. Create a virtual campus tour. like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti8j50e6pxo Another YouTube Use for Schools CHA s Development Office recently used YouTube in its Annual Fund appeal. Humor is a great marketing strategy! 15
Facebook Advertising- What a Great Idea! Cheap! Easy-to-create. (You don t need to be a savvy design/ marketing person) Micro-targeted Instant tracking and feedback! Click-throughs can go to a Facebook page or to your school s webpage People can also become a fan of your page directly from the ad or they can RSVP to an event directly from the ad. Facebook Ads- Micro-targeting Facebook is like no other publication in the way you can target your audience. Let s try.. http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?src=pf 16
To help protect your privacy, PowerPoint prevented this external picture from being automatically downloaded. To download and display this picture, click Options in the Message Bar, and then click Enable external content. SSATB 2009 Annual Meeting Anatomy of a Facebook Ad CHA Open House April 23 rd Ad title is limited to 25 characters. Only one photo/ image permitted. Chestnut Hill Academy Open House April 23 rd, 7PM. Tour our campus, visit our new science center and meet faculty, students and parents. Body text limited to 135 characters. Facebook Ads: Tracking Facebook automatically tracks your ads for you. You can see impressions, click-throughs and they even chart your ad s success for you! 17
Once You re Feeling Confident Some Other Sites For You to Consider www.slideshare.com Share student work/ projects Share expertise of faculty www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com Create a free blog for your school. Blogging- WordPress.com 18
How to Promote Your Facebook/ YouTube/Twitter Pages- Basic Put Find Us on Facebook and Follow Us on Twitter links (with logos) on your website. Put logos in your viewbooks Get current parents fanning your pages- it will show up on their friends pages Parent newsletters Use Facebook ads and link your ads to your Facebook page Once Your Up and Running Some Other Ideas to Consider Video Contest Why I Love CHA! Detail a student project through tweets Learn FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and create some custom tabs for your page Encourage parents/ kids to post their favorite pictures of your school on your site Look into Facebook Connect 19
In Conclusion. Remember that most schools are new to socialnetworking, so feel free to experiment and get creative. The potential for its use is growing as its popularity grows. Wherever possible, engage user participation, not just readership/ viewership. Audience Participation: Comments/ Questions? 20
Social-Networking: What More Can We Say? 21