PS&L Blog

Marketers from all industries are talking about the big 3 for 2011 – social, mobile and local.

That’s as in social media, mobile platforms and buying local.

If those in higher ed marketing and enrollment don’t think this applies to them, they are surely mistaken.

Let’s start with the social marketing piece.

Facebook is about to reach the 600 million subscriber plateau. While Twitter (closing in on 200 million users) and LinkedIn (closing in on 100 million members) have also experienced substantial growth, for the prospective college student, Facebook and to a lesser degree MySpace are the social networks of choice. Facebook’s largest growth is coming from the 35 and older crowd – prime alumni donors.

Facebook is improving its offerings for marketers constantly. Any college or university that’s not taking full advantage of what Facebook can offer through is fan/company pages is missing out on a big opportunity.

In addition to the wall, info, and photo indexes, colleges and universities can create unique welcome pages that can guide visitors to a number of different locations, either on their Facebook page or to their website.

To give you an example, let’s go to where Facebook started – Harvard. When you search on Facebook for Harvard http://www.facebook.com/Harvard you are taken to a welcome page.

While there is a lot to view here, there are two things to notice. First, with its big image and multiple links, it looks a lot like a web page and that’s on purpose. Second, check out how many people “like” this page – 211,249! You might be thinking, well this is an Ivy League school and so on, but lets take a look at Yale http://www.facebook.com/YaleU. They only have 17,152 and all they offer is a wall and info. Princeton http://www.facebook.com/PrincetonU does a little more, but no branded welcome page. They have 30,713.

In addition to a branded page, you can:
• Create separate landing pages to promote unique events
• Create discussion groups
• Post YouTube Videos
• Create individual alumni pages and have them centered on your main Facebook page

And most importantly of all you can engage in ongoing discussion with those who signed up or who want to have a dialogue with you.

I’ve gone through countless Facebook college and university pages, and it’s amazing how unsuccessful most of them are at building their fan base. I would say the average ranges between a few hundred to two thousand. What’s disheartening is that colleges and universities are ideally suited for social marketing. They have an audience that ardently supports social media, and they can offer information to an audience that wants to engage.

For 2011, building a Facebook fan base should be a priority especially when you consider the looming threat of Facebook’s new messaging system. Email and social media companies like Blue Sky Factory are already talking about how Facebook Messages will be the first of its kind of whitelist email marketing where messages will bounce unless you are already friends. http://www.onlinemarketingconnect.com/frame/index.php?url=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheThinkingInbox/~3/uvjlJZbh9hU/&link=2

What that means is that if your prospects or alumni choose to use Facebook for their emails, and you want to reach them on their Facebook account, you will have to be already linked to them in some way.

There is a lot more to social media marketing than Facebook, but it has become a critical component in higher education marketing.

In my next blog post, I’ll be talking about mobile marketing and its impact on the college market.