The Social Side of College Admissions

"Facebook in Admissions" Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:14:00 +0000

Complete our Survey

Varsity Outreach is conducting our 3rd annual survey on the use of Facebook in Admissions. Our goal is to uncover developing trends on how schools are using Facebook to reach out to prospective and admitted students.

We will be releasing the results of our survey as a free White Paper to help admissions professionals better understand the most common practices. We will also be sharing results at the annual National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC) Conference in Denver this fall as part of a session on Facebook.

Go to the Survey

Why Participate?

Help us develop a big-picture look at trends in the use of Facebook in recruitment and yield efforts, which we'll share as part of a free White Paper
Gain early access to a summary of our survey results—we'll give participants an early look at our findings before we release them publicly
We'll be giving away two $50 AmEx gift cards (or a $50 donation to a charity of your choice) to two lucky survey participants

How Is the Data Used?

All data will be shown in the aggregate. Answers from individual schools will not be released and will remain confidential.

A Quick Look at the New Groups for Schools on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:19:00 +0000

So there's been a lot of buzz about the new Groups for Schools feature that Facebook just announced yesterday. Many have dubbed it as Facebook's attempts to reconnect with its roots, the college student population.

We figured we'd offer our own brief analysis of how these groups seem to differ from your "run-of-the-mill" groups on Facebook. As with anything on Facebook, this is what we've noticed about the Groups for Schools feature as of 9am on April 13, 2012. It's possible, if not highly likely, that Groups for Schools will undergo changes in the next few months, if not the next few weeks.

Groups for Schools Structure

So the new Groups for Schools has a two-tiered structure. There is the umbrella group that you can join after validating your .edu e-mail address for the school. Once you've joined you can then join individual groups under this umbrella group (e.g., for clubs, Class of 20XX, etc.). The umbrella group isn't a group in the traditional Facebook sense. There's no wall for the umbrella group. It's basically a directory for the individual groups within it.

A Re-Introduction of Network-Like Capabilities

In our opinion, the new Groups for Schools feature seems a bit like a re-introduction of the old Networks functionality (which Facebook phased out a little while back) on top of the existing group structure. Through the Groups for Schools, you now have improved access on Facebook to people that are part of your school (e.g., according to Facebook's Help center, "You can message any confirmed member of your school community without being friends first.").

No Institutional Control for Your College or University

When we've talked with schools that had early access, it doesn't sound like there's any special administrative capabilities / privileges for the schools themselves, and nothing in the documents would indicate this. There's even a disclaimer on the About page (Note: Facebook Groups at _______ is not affiliated with or endorsed by ________.)

Differences Between Groups for Schools and traditional Facebook Groups

For the most part, Groups for Schools seem to work in a similar fashion to traditional Facebook groups, with a few extra wrinkles:

1. Membership Limited to .EDU E-mail Account Holders

You can only join a Group for School if you've already validated your school e-mail address and joined the umbrella group. This may offer an extra level of security, but it can also be a limiting factor (e.g., if an organization encompasses not only current students but alumni, those alumni need to have .edu e-mail accounts to access the group).

2. File Uploads

Group members can upload files up to 25MB to share with the group (I assume Facebook has things like course notes in mind for this feature). Facebook claims that sharing of copyrighted material like mp3 music files will be prevented via internal checks.

3. Messaging

It seems to offer a more granular chat capability than traditional groups. You can target your message/chat to specific members of the group and you don't have to be friends with those group members. In a traditional group, your options are to post on the wall or to join a group-wide chat.

4. Browse Capabilities

If anything, this seems like the biggest differentiator for setting up a Group for Schools instead of a regular Facebook group. It will likely be easier for people to serendipitously discover a Group for Schools. For regular groups, you pretty much have to actively search for a group (or notice it because a friend joined it). You have to know it exists or have a sense of what it would be named if it did exist (e.g., I just got admitted and I do a search for a "University of ____ Class of 20XX" group). When you visit the main Groups for Schools page for your university, you can browse through groups. It opens up the possibility of stumbling across a random group centered around a campus organization, a hobby, or some other connective attribute that might interest you.

5. Adding Non-Friends to a Group

With traditional groups, you can only add your own friends to a group. With a Group for Schools, you can add your friends (they have to have an .edu e-mail to actually join, though) AND anyone who has already joined the umbrella group for the entire school. Personally, this feature seems a little odd. Do I want people I may not know adding me to a group? Couldn't they just message me with a link to the group? Ok, that may be our own personal biases creeping through.

We strongly encourage you to check out the post by Ma'ayan Plaut from Oberlin. They are one of the campuses to receive Groups for Schools ahead of the public roll-out:
https://oncampus.oberlin.edu/webteam/2012/04/groups-oberlin-revisiting

For those of you with a developer's bent, there currently are no public hooks for these groups in the Graph API. We asked Facebook about this when it was still in the pilot phase and they responded that they'll be built once the product is decently "baked". With the speed at which Facebook moves, we imagine that won't be too long.

On Facebook, Content Is Not King

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:19:00 +0000

In the web space, we hear the mantra "Content is king" a lot, urging us to provide our audiences with interesting / entertaining / useful / compelling content. Sure, that can be a useful roadmap to success on the web. Google allows us to type a few words in a text box and get hundreds of results back organized by relevancy (that's definitely useful content). YouTube provides us millions of hours of video to help us entertain ourselves for a few minutes now and then. The New York Times site gives us access to their world-class news coverage and spices it up with eye-catching infographics. That's all great if you're building a destination on the web, but when it comes to promoting your school on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, content is not king, engagement is.

Unless you're already a content producer or aggregator (like the New York Times, YouTube, or the Washington Post), creating consistently great content that your audience wants to read and to share is likely going to be an uphill battle.

Lecture Approach vs. Seminar Approach

Think of your Facebook audience like students in a classroom. If you focus primarily on content with your Facebook page, you're taking what I think is a "Lecture" approach. If you focus on engagement, you're taking a "Seminar" approach.

Lecture Approach

Let's extend that analogy. Being a professor lecturing 300 students in a classroom is a real challenge. It's typically boring to hear someone lecture, right? To be successful as a lecturer, you need to wow your audience by presenting the material in an interesting way. You need to include real-world examples, impactful imagery, and maybe even a cool demonstration (think, science experiment full of bangs and smoke). It takes a lot of work to keep an audience engaged in a large lecture room. And how do you keep your audience coming back? In a college classroom environment, your audience typically has a grade riding on the class. That's pretty good motivation for them to show up, even if the lectures are dry. You don't have that luxury as a Facebook Page, Group, or Application administrator.

Seminar Approach

Now, think about a seminar class. What makes for a successful seminar? Participation, debate, interaction... that is, engagement in the classroom material by your audience. In a seminar, the professor is a facilitator. They help frame the conversation, but they encourage students to share their views and analysis. When a topic is exhausted or conversation dies down, the professor may interject a new question or pose a new idea to get things moving forward again. In a really successful seminar, the students do most of the talking.

Why the Seminar Approach Is Better

The Seminar approach is a more sustainable one for most administrators of a Facebook presence, especially at colleges and universities. You don't have to keep churning out high-quality content that your users will appreciate. You just need to provide a little spark to get the dialogue going. Even better, this is a formula that is rewarded by Facebook. The more users like or comment on your content, the more likely they are to see your future posts in their News Feed.

A lecture style approach might have you spending hours and hours producing a rap video with your school's a capella group touting all your school has to offer, in verse. Sure, it could catch fire and go viral, but that's a lot of work and the payoff is definitely not guaranteed (what if the video turns out to be a real dud?). A seminar style approach might have you announcing an upcoming admitted student weekend and asking your Class of 20XX Group "Who's coming?" Coming up with that question doesn't take a ton of effort. If it fails, you can quickly move on and try something else.

Tips for an Engagement-First Approach

1.Put Yourself in Your Audiences' Shoes

Think about why someone is a fan of your Page, a member of your Group, or a user of your Application. What do they want out of the experience? How are they connected to your school? What will get them to participate? If it's not relevant to your audience, they're unlikely to engage.

2. Ask Specific Questions

When possible, add a question to the end of your posts. Don't just say "We beat State 85-81 in basketball!" Provide a spark for participation by asking "Who watched the game?" or "Who do you think was the Player of the Game?" A question gives your audience a little nudge to participate. And make the questions specific. Don't just add "What do you think?" or "Any questions?" to the end of the post. The more specific the question, the easier it is for someone to answer.

3. Make It Easy to Consume Your Post

If you want your audience to engage with your posts, reduce the effort required to do so. It's easier to look at a picture than watch a video, for example. As a result, you're likely to get more likes and comments when you post pictures. Another bonus for pictures: they stand out more in a user's News Feed than a simple status update.

Now you're ready to give this mantra a try... "Engagement is King!"

The Most Engaging College & University Facebook Posts & Pages - A Look Back at 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:56:00 +0000

We've been gathering data for over a year now on college and university Facebook Pages, specifically tracking the likes and comments that all the posts by these pages receive. These efforts help us learn more about what types of content and what topics generate the greatest response from a school's audience on Facebook. As we kick off 2012, we decided to take a look back at data we collected on more than 200,000 posts in 2011.

Throughout this and previous analyses of posts by Facebook pages, we've used a simple measure of engagement:

Engagement Score

Frequency of Posting

We did an initial cut when looking at school-specific data. Our analysis focused on Facebook Pages in our directory that had at least 12 posts (basically 1 post per month) by the page in 2011. We considered this a base-line measure of whether the page was even an active page. This left us with 602 Facebook Pages that we used for our analysis below. If you want a closer look at some of the data, you can access an Excel document with these 602 schools listed along with summary data for each school.

Data on Page Post Frequency

Pages that Posted 12+ Times in 2011:	602
Average Posts for 2011:	339 or 28 per Month
Top 5 Most Frequent Posters:	University of South Carolina (2,218 Posts = 185 per Month) Louisiana State University (2,018 Posts = 168 per Month) Penn State University (1,691 Posts = 141 per Month) Lone Star College-North Harris (,1671 Posts = 139 per Month) Louisiana Tech University (1,396 Posts = 116 per Month)

We wanted to know if post frequency translated into engagement. Below are our findings, with schools grouped by their post frequency ranking (along with the average number of posts for 2011 and the average fan base of the Facebook Page in a particular grouping).

Engagement by Post Frequency

Please Note: For this chart, the average engagement score is represented by the green bars and the average number of posts for a group is represented by the blue line.

Post Frequency Ranking	Engagement Score	Avg. Number of Posts	Avg. Number of Fans
1-50	1.143	1,017	45,590
51-100	1.563	621	28,895
101-150	1.991	462	24,662
151-200	2.030	382	41,655
201-250	2.298	332	30,483
251-300	2.194	291	40,923
301-350	2.608	255	21,627
351-400	2.337	220	33,652
401-450	2.897	181	19,412
451-500	3.184	153	7,344
501-550	3.657	111	7,916
551-602	3.479	54	6,393

Interestingly, there seemed to be an inverse relationship between frequency and engagement. To be fair, some of the drop-off in engagement may also have to do with fan counts. As you can see, pages with large fan bases tended to post more frequently.

What to Post – A Look at Engagement by Media Type

We then took a look at what types of posts do best. The data is pretty consistent with what we've found in previous studies. Photos generate the most engagement (as measured by likes and comments). It's our hypothesis that photos are more likely to grab a user's attention when viewing the News Feed and are easy to consume (no reading required, just looking at a picture). Conversely, links drive you off the Facebook site and require you to return to the page to comment on or like the post. This isn't inherently a bad thing (obviously generating a new visitor for your site is a plus), but it does likely translate into fewer comments and likes per post.

Media Type	Engagement Score
Link	1.209 115,985 posts
Status	2.879 48,183 posts
Photo	3.383 29,102 posts
Video	1.944 11,254 posts
Music/Audio	0.469 116 posts

The Most Engaging Posts – A Look at the Top 500 Posts of 2011

We decided to do a deeper dive into the top 500 posts of 2011, categorizing them based on what the post was about. We grouped each of these posts into one of 9 categories. Each post was given only one category. We made a judgment call if a post fit into more than one about which aspect of the post seemed to be driving more of the likes and comments (e.g., a post announcing a school winning an athletic championship with a photo of the winning team would have been categorized as a Score / Result / Pre-Game rather than a Photo). If you want to see our categorizations or do your own analysis, we've shared our Excel document for anyone to download.

Score / Result / Pre-Game—Relating to a school's athletic teams, whether it was a score, an upcoming game, or a big win over a rival
Announcements / News / Shout-Outs—Announcing upcoming events, achievements by faculty or alumni, important dates, or general news about the university
Contest—Offering a prize if fans like or post a comment
Photo—Typically a photo of campus, an event, or alumni
Question—Posing an open-ended question or a prompt ("Tell us your favorite...")
Weather / Closure—Alerting students to important weather updates or to the school's status as open or closed due to inclement weather
Stat / Fact / Ranking—Highlighting a school's inclusion in a ranking list (e.g., US News) or a fun fact about the school
Video—Incorporating a video attachment
Miscellaneous—Catch-all for posts that did not neatly fit into one of the other categories

Breakdown of Top 500 Posts by Content Category

Clearly, school affinity is closely tied with sports fandom at many schools. More than a quarter of the 500 most-engaging posts related to a school's sports teams. Examples included posts leading up to a rivalry game or highlighting a win over a nationally-ranked opponent.

Not surprisingly, contests accounted for 16 percent of the top 500. A good way to motivate your fans to post and like is to offer them the chance to win something if they do. We all like winning free stuff, right? In fact, nearly a third of the top 50 posts were contests. And, in most cases, these prizes did not have hefty cash values. The prospect of winning a t-shirt or a video game was often enough to rev up a fan base.

When we looked at the media type of these 500 posts, we noticed again that photos definitely help generate engagement. Nearly a third of these posts included a photo.

Breakdown of Top 500 Posts by Media Type

The Most Engaging College & University Facebook Pages of 2011

Here are the top 10 most engaging college and university Facebook pages for 2011 by size category. We've broken them up into size categories so the comparison is more of an apples-to-apples one.

XX Large (75,000+ Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Texas A&M University (College Station, TX)	4.457 332 posts
2		The University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS)	3.685 214 posts
3		University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI)	3.624 252 posts
4		Auburn University (Auburn, AL)	3.281 213 posts
5		Clemson University (Clemson, SC)	2.779 321 posts
6		Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)	2.591 226 posts
7		Indiana University (Bloomington, IN)	2.499 182 posts
8		University of Phoenix (Phoenix, AZ)	2.381 692 posts
9		UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)	2.289 291 posts
10		Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR)	2.182 119 posts

X Large (20,000-74,999 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Lincoln, NE)	5.268 306 posts
2		University of Iowa (Iowa City, IA)	4.633 630 posts
3		North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC)	4.422 154 posts
4		Johnson and Wales University (Multiple Locations)	4.185 16 posts
5		Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Carbondale, IL)	3.670 318 posts
6		California State University, Northridge (Northridge, CA)	3.548 208 posts
7		SMU (Dallas, TX)	3.330 258 posts
8		Georgia Southern University (Statesboro, GA)	3.255 375 posts
9		Walden University (Online)	3.200 372 posts
10		Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA)	3.076 367 posts

Large (7,500-19,999 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Siena College (Loudonville, NY)	8.599 78 posts
2		Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)	6.599 255 posts
3		University of St. Thomas (Saint Paul, MN)	6.314 354 posts
4		The University of Montana (Missoula, MT)	5.584 53 posts
5		Ross University (Multiple Locations)	5.418 93 posts
6		Brigham Young University - Alumni (Provo, UT)	4.906 301 posts
7		Smith College (Northampton, MA)	4.630 493 posts
8		UT Arlington (Arlington, TX)	4.508 76 posts
9		St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN)	4.388 160 posts
10		University of Nevada, Reno (Reno, NV)	4.316 199 posts

Medium (2,500-7,499 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Merrimack College (North Andover, MA)	10.926 84 posts
2		Shaw University (Raleigh, NC)	7.983 97 posts
3		Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, IA)	7.982 124 posts
4		California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA)	6.966 25 posts
5		Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA)	6.689 163 posts
6		Kalamazoo College (Kalamazoo, MI)	6.684 165 posts
7		The Citadel Alumni Association (Charleston, SC)	6.441 159 posts
8		Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, PA)	6.346 146 posts
9		University of the South (Sewanee, TN)	6.201 257 posts
10		Taylor University (Upland, IN)	5.911 95 posts

Small (Fewer than 2,500 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Indiana University Kokomo Admissions Office (Kokomo, IN)	14.872 41 posts
2		VCU School of Business (Richmond, VA)	13.875 106 posts
3		University of Minnesota Rochester (Rochester, MN)	9.461 151 posts
4		Holyoke Community College (Holyoke, MA)	8.512 430 posts
5		Neumont University (South Jordan, UT)	8.394 180 posts
6		Dallas County Community College District (Dallas, TX)	7.957 188 posts
7		Saint Joseph's College (Rensselaer, IN)	6.767 35 posts
8		Hesston College (Hesston, KS)	6.683 26 posts
9		California State University, Chico (Chico, CA)	5.914 156 posts
10		Waynesburg University (Waynesburg, PA)	5.802 23 posts

Research Note: While we have made efforts to include a wide range of schools, we do admit that our directory is not an exhaustive list of college and university Facebook Pages. If your college or university is not in our directory and you'd like it to be included, simply contact us and provide a link to your official Facebook page. We're happy to add you to the directory and include your school in future studies.

Please Note: If you take a closer look at the top 500 posts as well as the most engaging pages, you may notice that not all of the engagement was positive. A few posts and a couple pages made these lists because they ended up serving as lightning rods for criticism of the school.

Our "Facebook and Admissions" White Paper is Out

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:29:00 +0000

We just released our Facebook and Admissions white paper. It contains the results from our 2nd annual survey into how colleges and universities are using Facebook in their recruitment and yield efforts. We had 150 schools participate in this year's survey.

It's packed with great data on what admissions offices are doing on Facebook, what resources they are dedicating to these efforts, how they are promoting their presence, and what sort of impact they feel this presence has had. This year, we also added questions to find out how schools are using current students and how they're measuring the impact of their Facebook efforts.

A Few Key Findings

Facebook Use Continues to Grow
Compared to last year's results, more schools have an admissions-specific presence on Facebook (66% in 2010 vs. 79% in 2011).

E-mail Still Top Method for Promoting a School's Facebook Presence
Nearly every school (97%) that uses dedicated e-mail blasts to promote their Facebook presence considers it to be somewhat or very effective.

Allowing Customers to Tell the Story
A majority of schools are using current students to help manage their Facebook presence, including posting new content and monitoring walls.

Most Schools Are Happy with Their Results
Nine out of ten respondents agreed that they are "happy with the results of their Facebook presence."

Making an Effort to Measure Performance
Seven out of ten respondents are measuring the performance of their Facebook efforts in some way. The most prevalent methods focus on monitoring counts of Likes / Fans / Group members or leveraging Facebook’s own Insights analytics.

Download a free PDF Copy

#NACACTU: Come Out for a Tweetup at the NACAC Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:57:00 +0000

Do you know what a hashtag is? Are you part of the higher ed twitterati?

Come out and meet fellow tweeters in the admissions community for a #NACAC11 Tweetup.

Location: Ernst Cafe
Date: Thursday, September 22
Time: 8:30-?
Hashtag to use: #NACACTU
Organizers: @VarsityOutreach, @ScvngrU, @Zehno, @Zinch

No speakers, just an opportunity to network with other admissions professionals you may already follow on Twitter.

Tweet us at @VarsityOutreach with any questions.

Most Engaging Facebook Pages: June 1 through August 31, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:54:00 +0000

As summer comes to a close, we figured it was about time to release another installment of our most engaging Facebook Pages.

As before, we have grouped the pages in our directory into 4 categories for our analysis:

Very Large: More than 25,000 fans / likes
Large: 7,501-25,000 fans / likes
Medium: 2,501-7,500 fans / likes
Small: 2,500 or fewer fans / likes

Because of the growth of some of the largest Facebook Pages, we may have to shift these cut-offs the next time we run this analysis.

We continue to use the following formula to measure the engagement of these posts:

Please Note: We required a minimum of 15 posts over this 3-month period to be included in our rankings.

Quantity Doesn't Translate Into Engagement

There were 45 schools in our database that posted 150 or more times to their Facebook Page over this 3-month period. Only 2 (Graceland University and the University of Phoenix) made any of our Top 10 lists. The average engagement score for these 45 schools was 1.42. Nearly half (22) had an engagement score for this 3-month period under 1.00.

Very Large (25,000+ Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Texas A&M University (College Station, TX)	4.201 45 posts
2		Liberty University (Lynchburg, VA)	3.979 99 posts
3		California State University, Northridge (Northridge, CA)	3.967 52 posts
4		Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Carbondale, IL)	3.813 77 posts
5		Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)	3.024 75 posts
6		Yale University (New Haven, CT)	2.929 54 posts
7		University of Phoenix (Phoenix, AZ)	2.866 180 posts
8		Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI)	2.766 25 posts
9		North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC)	2.605 33 posts
10		Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO)	2.542 132 posts

Large (7,501-25,000 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)	8.237 52 posts
2		Brigham Young University - Alumni (Provo, UT)	5.490 73 posts
3		University of Portland (Portland, OR)	5.057 94 posts
4		UT Arlington (Arlington, TX)	4.965 27 posts
5		Smith College (Northampton, MA)	4.755 115 posts
6		St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN)	4.268 28 posts
7		La Trobe University (Melbourne, )	4.187 40 posts
8		Oklahoma Christian University (Edmond, OK)	3.948 30 posts
9		Cleveland State University (Cleveland, OH)	3.937 37 posts
10		California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA)	3.809 94 posts

Medium (2,501-7,500 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, IA)	10.089 29 posts
2		Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA)	8.952 68 posts
3		Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA)	7.505 41 posts
4		Sweet Briar College (Sweet Briar, VA)	6.830 21 posts
5		Southwestern University (Georgetown, TX)	6.598 34 posts
6		Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, PA)	6.565 48 posts
7		Stephens College (Columbia, MO)	5.988 27 posts
8		Graceland University (Lamoni, IA)	5.912 181 posts
9		Ross University (Dominica, West Indies)	5.861 19 posts
10		Point Loma Nazarene University (San Diego, CA)	5.809 55 posts

Small (2,500 or fewer Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		VCU School of Business (Richmond, VA)	17.842 27 posts
2		Dallas County Community College District (Dallas, TX)	15.885 44 posts
3		Scripps College (Claremont, CA)	10.380 20 posts
4		Holyoke Community College (Holyoke, MA)	9.958 100 posts
5		University of Minnesota Rochester (Rochester, MN)	9.548 47 posts
6		Haskayne School of Business (Calgary, AB)	7.005 32 posts
7		California State University, Chico (Chico, CA)	7.005 60 posts
8		Neumont University (South Jordan, UT)	6.418 48 posts
9		Capitol College (Laurel, MD)	6.351 15 posts
10		Central Methodist University (Fayette, MO)	5.918 72 posts

Posts and Engagement by Media Type

No surprise here... photos continue to be the most engaging type of post for college Facebook pages. We believe it's because they stand out in a user's News Feed and are easy form of content to consume (it doesn't require a click like a link or video). It also looks like colleges and universities are getting better at engaging their audience through traditional status posts. The engagement for this media type has gone up since our last analysis. When we took a closer look at some of the most engaging posts, we noticed the top 20 dominated by contests. The prizes tended to be fairly modest (a sweatshirt, a t-shirt, or a mug), for the most part. A few schools tapped into college students love of video games and technology, giving away an iPad2, PS3/XBox, or a video game. Beyond contests, posts with questions (essentially asking your users to comment) also popped up again and again throughout the Top 200 most-engaging posts.

Media Type	Engagement Score
Photo	3.575 5,918 posts
Status	3.171 8,574 posts
Video	1.790 2,199 posts
Link	1.277 24,970 posts
Music/Audio	0.252 22 posts

Posts and Engagement by Day of the Week

It's still the case that posts on the weekend (Saturdays and Sundays) have the highest level of engagement. Although this figure is down since our last analysis, we expect it to rise again as we head into college football and basketball seasons.

Day of Week	Engagement Score
Sunday	2.252 1,216 posts
Monday	1.913 7,856 posts
Tuesday	1.991 7,907 posts
Wednesday	2.018 8,350 posts
Thursday	1.984 7,635 posts
Friday	2.092 7,289 posts
Saturday	2.382 1,430 posts

Is Google+ a Facebook Killer?

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:51:00 +0000

The tech world (and major news outlets) has been aflutter with news regarding the launch of Google+, Google's latest attempt to chip away at Facebook's (and Twitter's) dominance in the social space. Some people are hailing the privacy controls afforded by the Circles feature as the silver bullet for Google+. Others are touting the Hangouts feature which lets you video chat with up to 10 friends at once.

Critics point to Google's failed efforts with Buzz and Wave and figure Google+ will likely be end up with a similar fate: Lots of hype, little impact.

Personally, I think the truth lies somewhere in between. First off, I don't see a mass exodus from Facebook.

Switching Costs Are High

Do we really think that someone who's built up a list of 500 friends, uploaded dozens of pictures, and posted hundreds of status updates is just going to dump that to start anew on Google+? Do you know anyone that has completely eschewed Facebook for Google+? It's not like switching your brand of toothpaste. You not only have to decide to switch, but you also need to convince your friends to switch.

Where's the Killer Feature?

I'm still waiting to see the killer feature from Google+, that one thing it so clearly does better than Facebook that I've been dying to have. A lot has been written about Circles, which allows you to categorize your connections. These Circles can then be used for targeting posts and viewing a subset of your stream. People seem to be missing the fact that this has been available on Facebook for a while in the form of friend lists. I will say that the Circles interface is much slicker than creating a friend list on Facebook and is much easier to find when targeting posts, but the real question is "Will people spend the time and effort to keep their Circles up to date?"... something they haven't seemed to do with friend lists (hence the roll-out of the updated Groups functionality). And is this enough to get people to switch?

Google+ Will Make Facebook Raise Their Game

While I'd be surprised if Google+ supplants Facebook as the dominant social network anytime soon, I do think Google+'s presence will force Facebook to raise its game. Google+ is the first alternative that people seem to deem as credible, and it has the resources behind it for continued improvements. A little competition for Facebook should benefit users, in the form of new features, improved privacy controls, and more. Facebook need only look at MySpace to find out what happens when you stop innovating and you focus primarily on monetizing your user base rather than serving them.

Google+ May Find a Different Niche

I think it might even be possible for Google+ to find its own niche in the world of social networking, just like Twitter has. For me, Facebook serves as a way to connect with people I know (i.e. I've actually met them in person and am, at the very least, acquaintances with them). And Twitter allows me to connect with a professional community, most of whom I have never met in person and probably never will. Clearly, Google has shown an aptitude for developing algorithmic solutions to sorting through information (the backbone of its search business). With more and more people broadcasting their thoughts and ideas, we probably need better ways to sort through the clutter for the gems. To be honest, I wonder if Twitter should be more worried about Google+ than Facebook.

Anyway, this is just my two cents. Do you agree or disagree? Has Google+ supplanted Facebook as your primary social network?

Ranking of Most Engaging Facebook Pages: 4 Months of Data on 65,000+ Facebook Page Posts

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 02 May 2011 20:06:00 +0000

We recently analyzed data on all the wall posts between January 1 and May 1, 2011, by Facebook Pages in our directory. This analysis covered more than 65,000 posts by these pages. We hope this provides an objective look at the most engaging college & university Facebook Pages.

We have grouped the pages in our directory into 4 categories for our analysis:

Very Large: More than 25,000 fans / likes
Large: 7,501-25,000 fans / likes
Medium: 2,501-7,500 fans / likes
Small: 2,500 or fewer fans / likes

We continue to use the following formula to measure the engagement of these posts:

Please Note: We required a minimum of 15 posts over this 4-month period to be included in our rankings.

Very Large (25,000+ Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Auburn University (Auburn, AL)	6.770 71 posts
2		The University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS)	6.434 66 posts
3		Texas A&M University (College Station, TX)	3.853 163 posts
4		University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI)	3.542 75 posts
5		Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA)	3.388 72 posts
6		Northwestern University (Evanston, IL)	3.130 80 posts
7		Xavier University (Cincinnati, OH)	3.056 131 posts
8		Kaplan University (Fort Lauderdale, FL)	3.036 85 posts
9		George Mason University (Fairfax, VA)	2.930 115 posts
10		The New York Institute of Photography (New York, NY)	2.882 51 posts

Large (7,501-25,000 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Siena College (Loudonville, NY)	9.580 30 posts
2		Brigham Young University - Alumni (Provo, UT)	6.329 89 posts
3		Eastern Washington University (Cheney, WA)	5.603 99 posts
4		Walden University (Online)	5.104 43 posts
5		Capella University (Online)	4.744 62 posts
6		Smith College (Northampton, MA)	4.328 179 posts
7		Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Carbondale, IL)	4.191 103 posts
8		Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI)	4.153 157 posts
9		Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA)	4.040 78 posts
10		The University of Montana (Missoula, MT)	4.028 20 posts

Medium (2,501-7,500 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Merrimack College (North Andover, MA)	10.564 32 posts
2		Shaw University (Raleigh, NC)	8.276 73 posts
3		College of Wooster (Wooster, OH)	7.000 48 posts
4		Sweet Briar College (Sweet Briar, VA)	6.971 27 posts
5		Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)	6.879 88 posts
6		The Citadel Alumni Association (Charleston, SC)	6.853 66 posts
7		Denison University (Granville, OH)	6.499 24 posts
8		University of the South (Sewanee, TN)	6.449 80 posts
9		McPherson College (McPherson, KS)	6.446 43 posts
10		University of St. Thomas (Saint Paul, MN)	6.224 130 posts

Small (2,500 or fewer Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Indiana University Kokomo Admissions Office (Kokomo, IN)	15.610 29 posts
2		VCU School of Business (Richmond, VA)	13.475 50 posts
3		Neumont University (South Jordan, UT)	10.272 56 posts
4		University of Minnesota Rochester (Rochester, MN)	9.838 38 posts
5		University of Scranton Admissions (Scranton, PA)	7.011 30 posts
6		Hesston College (Hesston, KS)	6.623 16 posts
7		Midway College (Midway, KY)	6.450 15 posts
8		Holyoke Community College (Holyoke, MA)	6.397 147 posts
9		College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, ME)	6.289 42 posts
10		Biola University Crowell School Of Business (La Mirada, CA)	5.690 17 posts

Posts and Engagement by Media Type

Media Type	Engagement Score
Link	1.230 37,012 posts
Status	2.574 18,514 posts
Photo	3.430 7,949 posts
Video	2.020 3,423 posts
Music/Audio	0.602 38 posts

Posts and Engagement by Day of the Week

Day of Week	Engagement Score
Sunday	2.963 2,293 posts
Monday	1.766 12,371 posts
Tuesday	1.773 12,586 posts
Wednesday	1.802 12,597 posts
Thursday	1.821 12,272 posts
Friday	1.914 11,985 posts
Saturday	2.978 2,832 posts

Hitting the Road: Find Us at These Conferences in 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:49:00 +0000

We're gearing up for a busy spring and summer for 2011. We're going to be presenting and exhibiting at a number of conferences. We hope to put faces to names, meet and network with dynamic admissions professionals, and share what we've learned about the intersection of Facebook and admissions.

Here's where you can find us:

Texas Association for College Admission Counseling (TACAC) - April 4
Irving, TX
Educational Session - Facebook and Admissions
National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals (NAGAP) - April 6-9
Washington, DC
We'll be exhibiting. Stop by Booth #20 to say hello and to talk with us about what you're doing on Facebook.
New England Association for College Admission Counseling (NEACAC) - June 9
Stonehill College - Brockton, MA
Educational Session - Facebook and Admissions
The Princeton Review's 10th Annual Higher Ed Marketing Seminar - June 20
Boston, MA
Educational Session - Facebook and Admissions
National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) - September 22-24
New Orleans, LA
We'll be doing an educational session on Facebook and Admissions with admissions staff from the University of Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina - Wilmington, St. Lawrence University, and the University of California, San Diego. We'll also be exhibiting at Booth #225.

We may be adding a couple more stops so stay tuned.

Facebook's Page Upgrade

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 14:41:00 +0000

Yesterday, Facebook rolled out an upgrade to its Fan Page system. Some of you may have caught a glimpse of these upgrades already when a temporary bug allowed admins to see this new design a few months back. We're going to highlight some of the significant changes and what they mean for colleges.

New Layout

The new Facebook page layout mirrors the changes Facebook recently implemented to the personal profiles. Gone are the tabs up top. In their place, Facebook has added a navigation menu on the left-hand side of the page. Personally, they feel a little less prominent to me, but we'll see how it plays out.

Switch Between Page Profile and Personal Profile

You can now switch between your personal profile and your role as the page admin. This means that you can now post on a page that you administer as yourself (i.e. as "John Doe" instead of "The University of XXXX"). It also means you can now post on or like other Facebook Pages as your own Facebook Page. So, for example, a college's main Facebook Page could like the Facebook Page of the School's athletic program (or vice versa). It essentially allows you to participate in conversations outside your own Facebook Page as your school's brand. You can essentially browse through Facebook, not as yourself, but as your Facebook Page.

Email Notifications

This is something that probably should have been put in place a while ago. As a page admin, you can now receive e-mail notifications when people post or comment on your Facebook Page. This should be a really helpful feature, especially for folks responsible for a lot of different social media / marketing outlets. For me, this may be the best feature of the new Facebook Pages.

Photos

Similar to the shift on the personal profile, there is now a photo banner at the top of the Facebook Page (I'm only seeing this on the admin view for the Varsity Outreach page, but I assume it's just a bug that will be resolved). It gives more prominence to your photos, which are often the most engaging feature on a Facebook Page.

Facebook Ads

I'm guessing one of the main reasons Facebook is making this shift is to boost the prominence of their ads. The right-hand column of the page, where ads typically appear is significantly wider now (234px on the new layout vs. 147px on the old layout). You can see the size difference below.

Shift to i-Frame tabs from FBML

Up to now, all page tabs used Facebook's version of HTML called FBML. Additionally, the use of javascript was pretty limited on these FBML tabs. On March 11, Facebook will be moving to a system where all new page tabs will be i-frames. This should provide more flexibility to incorporate functionality, to manage design of the tabs, and more. However, it will likely require a little more technical knowledge to use this functionality. Additionally, new static FBML tabs will not be possible. Many colleges have used static FBML tabs to create custom landing pages or to create pages with links and pictures for admissions. Existing static FBML tabs should continue to work. However, one thing we've noticed with our experiences on Facebook, once they stop allowing for the creation of new versions of a feature, the support for existing versions of that feature seems to drop off dramatically. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook announced the elimination of FBML tags within the next 6-12 months.

Good for Colleges & Universities

All in all, I think the upgrades to Facebook Pages are positive for colleges and universities. If you're a page admin, you can preview these updates and even switch your page over immediately to the new layout. According to Facebook, on March 11, all Facebook Pages will be transitioned to the new layout.

Free Webinar: Facebook in Admissions

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 19:42:00 +0000

Varsity Outreach will be hosting a free webinar for admissions professionals on Facebook. The webinar will take place on Thursday, February 17, at 2pm ET. During this half-hour webinar, we'll be focusing specifically on:

The role Facebook can play in recruitment and yield efforts
New Facebook Groups vs. Old Facebook Groups
Strategies for engaging your audience

To sign up, visit:
http://www.varsityoutreach.com/FreeWebinar.aspx

Space is limited and spots will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

College Facebook Pages - Most Active / Most Engaging for December 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:15:00 +0000

We continue to monitor hundreds of college Facebook pages, collecting data on each post for these pages. As part of our ongoing research, we're again releasing the most engaging and most active college Facebook pages out of the 600+ pages in our Directory of College & University Facebook Pages. All the data in this blog post is for posts occurring during December 2010 only.

Most Engaging College Facebook Pages
(December 2010)

We've broken down pages by fan base so we are better comparing apples-to-apples. Here is how we calculate the Engagement Scores you see:

Engagement Score

We only included schools that had at least 5 posts over the month of December 2010 in our rankings.

Very Large (25,000+ Facebook fans)

Auburn took the top spot among very large Facebook pages. A post about Cam Newton winning the Heisman trophy provided them with a huge boost to their score.

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Auburn University (Auburn, AL)	19.440 13 posts
2		University of Washington (Seattle, WA)	8.771 16 posts
3		Kaplan University (Fort Lauderdale, FL)	5.528 15 posts
4		University of Oregon (Eugene, OR)	5.179 29 posts
5		Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR)	4.482 13 posts
6		The University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS)	4.164 14 posts
7		Stanford University (Stanford, CA)	4.096 14 posts
8		The University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK)	3.751 17 posts
9		Mississippi State University (Starkville, MS)	3.535 17 posts
10		University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI)	3.534 28 posts

Large (7,500-24,999 Facebook fans)

In the large Facebook page category, SUNY Geneseo came out on top for December 2010. A photo of the first snowfall of the season proved to be its most engaging post.

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		SUNY Geneseo (Geneseo, NY)	9.978 6 posts
2		Siena College (Loudonville, NY)	8.389 7 posts
3		North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC)	6.086 23 posts
4		New Mexico State University (Las Cruces, NM)	5.781 7 posts
5		Georgia Southern University (Statesboro, GA)	5.743 24 posts
6		Smith College (Northampton, MA)	5.422 23 posts
7		Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL)	4.879 46 posts
8		Eastern Washington University (Cheney, WA)	4.878 36 posts
9		Capella University (Online, 0)	4.653 16 posts
10		Georgetown University (Washington, DC)	4.549 7 posts

Medium (2,500-7,499 Facebook fans)

Akron's post after the men's soccer team won the NCAA national championship helped make its Facebook page the most engaging in this category. An impressive 1 out of every 18 fans of the Akron page liked this post.

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		The University of Akron (Akron, OH)	13.069 11 posts
2		Kenyon College (Gambier, OH)	9.793 14 posts
3		Taylor University (Upland, IN)	8.137 10 posts
4		College of Wooster (Wooster, OH)	7.938 8 posts
5		University of the South (Sewanee, TN)	7.752 7 posts
6		Kaplan College (Multiple Locations)	7.411 7 posts
7		Lynchburg College (Lynchburg, VA)	7.336 6 posts
8		Brandeis University (Waltham, MA)	7.312 5 posts
9		Alfred University (Alfred, NY)	6.915 8 posts
10		Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, PA)	6.650 19 posts

Small (<2,500 Facebook fans)

Neumont University used a contest to help it reach the top spot in the small Facebook page category.

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Neumont University (South Jordan, UT)	19.842 21 posts
2		University of Minnesota Rochester (Rochester, MN)	15.106 6 posts
3		Metropolitan College of New York (New York, NY)	11.833 7 posts
4		Elon University Admissions (Elon, NC)	11.161 6 posts
5		Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth (Hanover, NH)	9.482 10 posts
6		Marylhurst University (Marylhurst, OR)	9.134 16 posts
7		DeSales University (Center Valley, PA)	8.936 9 posts
8		The University of Advancing Technology (Tempe, AZ)	8.763 11 posts
9		Holyoke Community College (Holyoke, MA)	7.597 26 posts
10		Martin Luther College (New Ulm, MN)	7.453 9 posts

Most Active College Facebook Pages
(December 2010)

These schools are doing the most sharing on Facebook. The top 2 schools managed to average more than 6 posts per day. Interestingly, only 2 schools in any of our four Top 10 most engaging lists averaged more than 1 post per day. Among the most active, only Old Dominion managed an average engagement score above 3.

Rank	School		Posts
1		Official University of South Carolina Page (Columbia, SC) Average Engagement Score: 1.122	190 posts
2		Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY) Average Engagement Score: 0.985	188 posts
3		LSU (Baton Rouge, LA) Average Engagement Score: 0.434	163 posts
4 (tie)		Western Carolina University (Cullowhee, NC) Average Engagement Score: 1.797	107 posts
4 (tie)		The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) Average Engagement Score: 1.697	107 posts
6 (tie)		UWGB (Green Bay, WI) Average Engagement Score: 1.502	98 posts
6 (tie)		Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA) Average Engagement Score: 3.807	98 posts
8		Harding University (Searcy, AR) Average Engagement Score: 0.519	94 posts
9 (tie)		Gonzaga University (Spokane, WA) Average Engagement Score: 0.837	89 posts
9 (tie)		Penn State (University Park, PA) Average Engagement Score: 0.654	89 posts
11		Binghamton University (Binghamton, NY) Average Engagement Score: 0.661	79 posts
12 (tie)		Newman University (Wichita, KS) Average Engagement Score: 0.353	76 posts
12 (tie)		Quinnipiac University (Hamden, CT) Average Engagement Score: 1.034	76 posts
14 (tie)		Northwest Missouri State University (Maryville, MO) Average Engagement Score: 1.323	74 posts
14 (tie)		Taylor University Trojans (Upland, IN) Average Engagement Score: 1.607	74 posts
16		University of Michigan-Flint (Flint, MI) Average Engagement Score: 1.654	73 posts
17		Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago, IL) Average Engagement Score: 2.879	69 posts
18 (tie)		Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) Average Engagement Score: 2.311	65 posts
18 (tie)		The University of Chicago Law School (Chicago, IL) Average Engagement Score: 0.780	65 posts
20 (tie)		Portland State University (Portland, OR) Average Engagement Score: 2.851	62 posts
20 (tie)		The University of New Mexico - UNM (Albuquerque, NM) Average Engagement Score: 1.584	62 posts

Please Note: We rely on the Facebook API for our data. We have noticed periodic issues, namely inconsistencies, with the data returned. As a result, we cannot guarantee the complete accuracy of this data. Going forward, we have switched over to the newest version of the Facebook API (the Graph API) and hope these issues will be eliminated or, at the very least, mitigated.

More Data on College Facebook Pages - Most Active and Engaging Colleges

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:00:00 +0000

The data in this post has been updated, as of November 16, 2010. Due to data limitations from the Facebook API, the original data pull had not been complete. We re-pulled the data for the 4-week period October 17-November 13, 2010 and re-ran our analysis.

As a company that focuses on the intersection of higher education and social networking, specifically Facebook, Varsity Outreach has been tracking the performance of college Facebook Pages for over a year now. You can visit our Directory of College Facebook Pages to see trends in growth of fans (or likes, depending on which term you prefer). Recently, we've begun analyzing the posts that are shared on these college Facebook Pages. A couple months ago, we shared some analysis we did on 601 U.S. college Facebook Pages, trying to uncover some general trends around engagement.

Now, we're releasing some additional findings on college Facebook Pages. Unless otherwise specified, the data shared is for October 17, 2010, to November 13, 2010.

Most Active College Facebook Pages

First, we wanted to see which schools were doing their best to keep their Facebook Pages fresh with a constant flow of content. Below are the top 20 college Facebook Pages by the number of posts over this 4-week period. We only counted posts from the page itself, not from fans. All of these schools averaged more than two posts per day on their Facebook Page, with the top school, South Carolina, averaging a whopping 14.5 posts per day.

Rank	School		Posts
1		Official University of South Carolina Page (Columbia, SC) Average Engagement Score: 0.915	408 posts
2		Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY) Average Engagement Score: 0.796	231 posts
3		Harding University (Searcy, AR) Average Engagement Score: 0.550	142 posts
4		Jackson State University (Jackson, MS) Average Engagement Score: 0.915	138 posts
5		Taylor University Trojans (Upland, IN) Average Engagement Score: 1.173	128 posts
6		Northwest Missouri State University (Maryville, MO) Average Engagement Score: 0.650	124 posts
7		LSU (Baton Rouge, LA) Average Engagement Score: 0.854	120 posts
8		Westminster College (New Wilmington, PA) Average Engagement Score: 0.461	118 posts
9		McNeese State University (Lake Charles, LA) Average Engagement Score: 0.585	115 posts
10		Eastern Illinois University (Charleston, IL) Average Engagement Score: 0.255	113 posts
11		Penn State (University Park, PA) Average Engagement Score: 0.766	106 posts
12		The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) Average Engagement Score: 1.181	101 posts
13		Brock University (Saint Catharines, ON) Average Engagement Score: 0.591	97 posts
14		UWGB (Green Bay, WI) Average Engagement Score: 1.232	92 posts
15		Howard University (Washington, DC) Average Engagement Score: 0.503	92 posts
16		University of Michigan-Flint (Flint, MI) Average Engagement Score: 0.941	91 posts
17		Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago, IL) Average Engagement Score: 2.616	87 posts
18		Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, FL) Average Engagement Score: 1.768	86 posts
19		University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL) Average Engagement Score: 1.995	81 posts
20		Missouri State University (Springfield, MO) Average Engagement Score: 0.368	79 posts

Most Engaging College Facebook Pages

We also wanted to see which schools had the most engagement over this month-and-a-half long period. We used the same formula to track engagement that we used in our previous analysis:

Engagement Score

We have only included college Facebook Pages with at least 5 posts during this period. We have also broken them out into four categories based on the size of their fan base so that the comparisons were more apples-to-apples.

Very Large (25,000+ Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Texas A&M University (College Station, TX)	5.877 38 posts
2		The University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS)	4.942 11 posts
3		Auburn University (Auburn, AL)	4.618 14 posts
4		Kaplan University (Fort Lauderdale, FL)	4.503 16 posts
5		Mississippi State University (Starkville, MS)	4.470 34 posts
6		Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR)	4.184 15 posts
7		Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, OK)	3.945 39 posts
8		Indiana University (Bloomington, IN)	3.705 8 posts
9		University of Oregon (Eugene, OR)	3.511 27 posts
10		University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI)	3.337 18 posts

Large (7,500-24,999 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Siena College (Loudonville, NY)	11.576 10 posts
2		New Mexico State University (Las Cruces, NM)	8.653 6 posts
3		North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University (Greensboro, NC)	7.522 6 posts
4		Capella University (Online)	7.326 14 posts
5		Tarleton State University (Stephenville, TX)	5.626 17 posts
6		Smith College (Northampton, MA)	5.459 34 posts
7		Northwestern University (Evanston, IL)	5.437 26 posts
8		California State University, Northridge (Northridge, CA)	5.021 15 posts
9		North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC)	4.922 37 posts
10		Miami University (Oxford, OH)	4.570 9 posts

Medium (2,500-7,499 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		SUNY New Paltz (New Paltz, NY)	8.701 8 posts
2		California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA)	6.343 8 posts
3		Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, PA)	6.249 15 posts
4		Kenyon College (Gambier, OH)	5.727 16 posts
5		Dixie State College (Saint George, UT)	5.696 17 posts
6		Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA)	5.519 17 posts
7		University of St. Thomas (Saint Paul, MN)	5.515 38 posts
8		Iowa State University (Ames, IA)	5.182 10 posts
9		Hollins University (Roanoke, VA)	5.078 28 posts
10		Winston-Salem State University (Winston-Salem, NC)	5.031 10 posts

Small (<2,500 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		McPherson College (McPherson, KS)	10.451 15 posts
2		University of Minnesota Rochester (Rochester, MN)	9.636 13 posts
3		Marylhurst University (Marylhurst, OR)	8.335 18 posts
4		VCU School of Business (Richmond, VA)	7.485 7 posts
5		The Citadel Alumni Association (Charleston, SC)	7.331 29 posts
6		College of the Rockies (Cranbrook, BC)	7.184 7 posts
7		Elon University Admissions (Elon, NC)	7.135 7 posts
8		New Mexico Tech (Socorro, NM)	7.118 29 posts
9		Kaplan College (Multiple Locations)	6.988 5 posts
10		Paul Smith's College Admissions (Paul Smiths, NY)	6.687 14 posts

When Colleges Post on Facebook

This last chart highlights when colleges post on Facebook by day of the week. As you'd expect, colleges don't do a lot of posting on the weekends. However, posts on the weekends seem to be the most engaging (especially on Saturday, which may have to do with college football, given the period we analyzed).

Post and Engagement by Day of the Week

We'll continue to share periodic updates regarding the data we collect on colleges and Facebook. We'd love to hear any insights or interesting anecdotes that you have to share in the comments.

Part III: Auto-Pilot Leads to Crash and Burn - Community-Building Lessons from NACAC 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:00:00 +0000

This is the third and final post about the lessons learned from our educational session, entitled Facebook 101, at this year's NACAC Conference. You might want to check out our previous two posts (Seed Your Community and Provide a Clear Structure).

One of the main things I noticed about our panelists was that there were a lot of differences in their specific approaches. There was no magic bullet. In fact, each seemed to be utilizing Facebook in very different ways.

Butler has taken a very open approach. They seem to have numerous ways that prospects can interact with their school on Facebook. Several departments have Facebook Pages, as does the university as a whole, the athletics program, and the admissions department.

High Point, on the other hand, creates a private Class of 20XX group for admitted students. Users have to be approved to join the group and, if they decline the admissions offer, they are removed from the community.

Susquehanna has taken a bit of a hybrid approach, utilizing our Facebook Application, which includes a walled-off section for admitted students, as well as Facebook Groups.

However, the one consistency was the resources and effort dedicated to Facebook. All the schools on our panel were taking an active role in cultivating relationships with prospects and admits on Facebook and were improving their efforts on an on-going basis.

Butler posts something every 1-3 days on Facebook. High Point has run a variety of contests and has a staff member constantly checking Facebook. Susquehanna monitors data on use of its Facebook Application and runs group chats among its community members on Facebook.

Each has prioritized Facebook as a viable outreach tool. And, moreover, none were satisfied with the status quo. One of the cool things I noticed after the panel was that each had picked up an idea or two from their fellow panel members, from our survey findings and research, and from audience members. These were schools that were consistently experimenting with new tactics and revisiting existing practices.

None of these schools is on auto-pilot. While their specific tactics may vary, they're all tinkering and tweaking, trying to figure out where their efforts are having an impact and where they're less effective.

Part II: Provide a Clear Structure - Community-Building Lessons from NACAC 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 13:00:00 +0000

This is the second post about the lessons learned from our educational session, entitled Facebook 101, at this year's NACAC Conference. You might want to check out our previous post (Seed Your Community).

I really liked a point made by Stephanie Elpers at Butler in our educational session. When they've run video contests with current students, they've focused on specific subject areas. They don't just say make a video about Butler. They ask current students to create a video showing their Butler "crib" or their favorite spot on campus.

She's providing structure. It's important to do the same in your communities. By defining a clear understanding of how members can engage in the community, you lower the barriers to engagement. By creating boundaries, you actually give users more freedom to interact.

Specific, detailed questions are much easier to answer than broad, general questions. Think about it. If someone asked you to "Define yourself", you'd probably have to think about that one for a while. You have to think about what the question means to you, then decide what criteria you are going to use to answer the question. Not only that, you probably would have a different answer for this question depending on who asked it (e.g., your boss at work, your religious leader, your spouse or child).

If someone asked you to name your favorite football team or TV show, you'd probably be able to conjure up a response pretty quickly. The question is pretty straight-forward. There's not a whole lot of room for interpretation.

Now think about these two questions for prospective students:

What's your favorite thing about College X?
Where are you from?

For a community centered around College X, the first question would seem more relevant, right? But I bet the second question is going to elicit many more responses.

Here's why I think so:

The first question can have multiple interpretations. What's my favorite thing about the campus? the academics? the student body? Also, my answer may depend on who the audience is. If it's my friend, I may say the parties. If it's an admissions officer, I may respond that it's the top-notch biology program. There's really only one answer to the second question.

Creating a structure may seem heavy-handed, like you're trying to control the community. In fact, it's the opposite. You're helping to remove ambiguity. You're quickly establishing norms, letting your users focus less effort on understanding what they should and should not do in the community and more effort on actually building relationships.

A quick word of warning: Providing a structure does not mean dictating the conversation. If your community members take the conversation in unexpected directions, let it happen (unless it's inappropriate, of course). By creating a clear structure for the community, you're providing the canvas, the paints, the brushes, and some inspiration. However, you need to let your community members paint the picture they want. If not, they'll go elsewhere.

Facebook's New Groups: Is It the End of Class of 20XX Groups for Colleges and Universities?

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 13:01:00 +0000

Yesterday, Facebook rolled out a makeover for their Group functionality. It's a pretty major shift for Groups, seeming to emphasize small, more personal collections of individuals rather than large, more anonymous groups. This intent was made clear in Facebook's blog:

"[Groups are] a simple way to stay up to date with small groups of your friends and to share things with only them in a private space."

I'm still trying to wrap my head around whether this will have a positive or negative impact on colleges' Class of 20XX Groups for incoming freshmen, but I figured I'd share my thoughts.

Chat

It seems natural to start with what is probably the most powerful new feature. The new group chat functionality looks like it could be a great tool for admitted students to take advantage of. It offers the potential of real-time interaction with future classmates, a really positive way for these admits to form stronger bonds with each other. Another nice twist is that group members don't have to be Facebook friends to chat with each other.

Potential Spoiler: While there has been no official word from Facebook, some blogs have reported that chat functionality may go away for Groups with more than 250 members.

Powerful E-mail List

The new Groups might be best viewed as the next generation of e-mail lists. By default, a Group will send all its members an e-mail every time someone posts. Previously, the Group admins were the only ones that could trigger messages to every member. Moreover, you can give the Group an e-mail address so that you can share new posts via e-mail without coming back to Facebook.

I'm not sure if this functionality is a blessing or a curse for Class of 20XX Groups.

For a small personal Group (like a family, a close-knit collection of friends, study groups), this could be a great replacement for e-mail blasts to share photos, to update classmates about assignments, or to coordinate plans for a future trip, for example. However, will your admits find it overwhelming for an active Class of 20XX with several hundred, maybe even more than a thousand, members? This also gives Group spammers more potential to be disruptive in large Class of 20XX groups.

Group notifications are a setting that can be changed by Group members. They can choose not to receive e-mails and even limit which notifications they receive to the following triggers:

A member posts or comments
A member posts
A friend posts
Never notify me

Admin Features Limited

Admins are not able to customize Groups like they were before. You can't control what functionality is available (e.g., enabling or disabling videos or photos, limiting who could post photos, links, or videos). As I mentioned before, you are no longer the only person that can message the entire group.

Approving Group Members

One shift that I think will make managing large Class of 20XX Groups more challenging is that all Group members must be approved by an admin. Until approved, they cannot post or comment in the Group. Previously, you could set a Group as open, allowing anybody to join without approval.

If I'm an admitted student or a counselor on the road, is approving every member going to be an onerous task?

Privacy

There will be no indication on your Facebook profile of which Groups you are a member. Additionally, when you join a Group, it will not show up in the news stream of your Facebook friends. I could see this being a big benefit among graduate students, who may not want to let their work friends know they are applying.

Old Facebook Groups

Existing Groups will continue to function like they always have. Currently, there is no way to shift old Facebook Groups to the new Group system.

The Future of Colleges' Class of 20XX Groups

Does Facebook's new Group feature signal the end of Class of 20XX at colleges and universities? Probably not. The Group chat functionality is a pretty compelling new feature that could really help future students get to know each other. However, Facebook's new Groups do seem to be intended for smaller groups where most of the members know each other. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out for the Class of 2015.

Part I: Seed Your Community - Community-Building Lessons from NACAC 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:00:00 +0000

I may be a little biased, but I think the Facebook 101 session we put on at NACAC with 3 great admissions professionals went really well. The attendees had some great questions and my fellow panelists offered some valuable tips from their own experiences using Facebook to reach out to prospective and admitted students.

For those of you who couldn't be at the NACAC Conference in St. Louis or were there, but couldn't make the session, I figured I'd share a few of the insights shared by our panelists (from Susquehanna University, High Point University, and Butler University) and from our audience in a three-part series of blog posts. While the focus of the session was on Facebook, I think these lessons apply to community-building in general.

Plant Some Seeds to Grow Your Community

One of the things we heard several times from the panelists was the importance of seeding the community with content. You don't want your first wave of students to join your community with nothing to do. You'll have wasted all that effort getting them to the community with no payoff.

Think of it like a party. You want to welcome the early visitors. Make sure they "feel at home" and have a good time. The more fun they're having at the party, the more likely the next wave of visitors will have fun. If the first visitors start dancing, I bet the second wave of visitors is more likely to dance. If they're sitting bored on a couch, your second wave of visitors may not stay too long.

Some ideas for seeding your community:

Start a few discussion topics before launching the community
You probably know the types of questions and information your prospects and admits want. Define some space in the community for interacting around those topics. If you've got a great Study Abroad program, start a topic, list the countries where students can go, and ask community members to share which country they'd like to visit.
Solicit their input
A successful community encourages users to share their thoughts and questions. Provide some easy hooks for getting involved. Ask new members to introduce themselves. Post questions often. I think that a blank wall is an uninviting wall.
Be Ready to Respond
Have a team of admission counselors and/or current students waiting to answer questions and to post replies. You want to make the community feel lively even for the first 10 members to join.

An Analysis of One Week of Posts by 601 College Facebook Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:27:00 +0000

We've been working hard to prepare for our educational session, Facebook 101: Practical Tips for Using Facebook in Admission, at the upcoming NACAC Conference. As part of this preparation, we decided to run a quick analysis. We took a look at all the posts for a single week made by the 601 U.S. colleges and universities in our Facebook Page Directory. We wanted to see what sorts of patterns we could uncover about these posts and their engagement levels.

What We Measured

The 7-day period we selected was September 9-16. For each of the 601 Facebook pages, we specifically focused on engagement (i.e. the number of likes and comments). We really liked the simplicity of the BlueFuego formula for engagement, so we borrowed it with a slight tweak. We gave comments double the weight of "likes", believing that actually typing in a comment represented a greater level of engagement than simply liking something. We then multiplied it by 1,000 so we were dealing with more manageable numbers (not 5 decimal places). Ultimately, you end up with an Engagement Score per 1,000 fans.

So here's the details of how we calculated our Engagement Score for each Facebook post:

Engagement Score

Our Findings of Facebook Page Engagement

First, let's look at how many Pages had a post and how many posts they had.

Pages that Posted: 494 out of 601 (82%)

Average # of Posts per Page: 2.3 (only includes the 494 Pages that posted)

Pages w/ 15+ posts: 55 (The University of South Carolina had 93 posts)

In addition to analyzing the Engagement Score of each post, we broke the results down based on the media attachments included in each post. Those posts containing a photo had much higher Engagement Scores. Posts containing video also performed well.

Average Engagement Score

All Posts:	2.27
Posts with a photo attached:	3.62
Posts with a video attached:	2.99
Posts with no media attached:	2.35
Posts with a link attached:	1.67
Posts with music/sound file attached:	1.14

A Look at the Most Engaging Posts

We wanted to better understand what was the "special sauce" that made something highly engaging. To do that, we decided to take a closer look at the top 100 posts based on Engagement Score for September 9-16. We categorized them based on their content. Each post seemed to fall into one of 8 categories.

100 'Most Engaging' Posts by Category

Score / Result / Pre-Game – Relating to a school's athletic teams, whether it was a score, an upcoming game, or a big win over a rival
Announcements / Shout-Outs – Announcing upcoming events, achievements by faculty or alumni, important dates (Because of the week we selected, several posts related to 9/11).
Photo – Typically a photo of campus, an event, or alumni
Stat / Fact / Ranking – Highlighting a school's inclusion in a ranking list (e.g., US News) or a fun fact about the school or an alumnus
Question – Posing an open-ended question or a prompt ("Tell us your favorite...")
Link – Linking to an outside news story or press release
Video – Incorporating a video attachment
Giveaway – Offering a prize if fans take some action or post a comment

A Look at the Most Commented-On Posts

We don't want to discount "Likes", but we believe that a comment is a more desirable reaction to a post from your Page. It not only signals engagement, but it adds new content to your Page and can propel the conversation among your Pages' fans forward. Because of this, we also decided to look at the posts that had the most comments per 1,000 fans (We used this measure so we didn't end up analyzing posts just from the largest Facebook Pages).

100 'Most Commented-On' Posts by Category

While there is definitely overlap with the Top 100 most engaging posts, you'll also notice a shift in the breakdown by categories. Sports-related posts figure less prominently in this list, while posts with questions make up a much larger share.

Fostering Engagement among Your Facebook Fans

We only took a look at one week's worth of data, but some trends do start to appear.

Visual posts are more effective at grabbing your fans' attention. When possible, consider attaching a photo to the posts on your Facebook Page. One of my favorite campaigns is the O-H-I-O campaign on Ohio State's Facebook Page. It basically consists of photos sent in by alumni forming human O-H-I-Os in tons of exotic locales and in unusual ways (e.g., Old Faithful forms the "I" in one picture).

Don't just push out information to your fans. Solicit their feedback and responses. Posting a question can be a really effective way to get your Facebook fans involved and take some of the burden of creating new content off your shoulders.

Hopefully, this data will help a little as you continue to refine your school's Facebook strategy and create a more engaging experience for your fans. If you're going to be at NACAC in St. Louis, we hope to see you there!

New White Paper: Facebook and Admissions

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:00:00 +0000

In the spring, we conducted a survey of 226 admissions and marketing professionals at 226 colleges and universities across the US. We asked them a series of questions related to how they were using Facebook to reach out to prospects and admits.

We compiled our findings into a data-packed white paper, entitled Facebook and Admissions: A Closer Look at How College Admission Offices Use Facebook. Some of the key findings included:

Facebook is the most important and most used social media outlet for admission offices, ahead of blogs, YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace.
Most admission offices have a dedicated presence on Facebook, typically utilizing Facebook pages or Facebook groups. Many have more than one presence on Facebook.
An admission office’s Facebook presence is typically managed by a small group of individuals (1-3 people) who spend 4 hours or less per week on this task. More than half of admission offices place primary responsibility for this task in the hands of a junior admissions staff member with less than 5 years of experience.
Most admission offices are happy with the results of their Facebook presence, yet less than half agree that their presence has had a significant impact on recruitment or yield efforts.

This last finding was of particular interest to us. It highlighted one of the biggest challenges of Facebook and social media, in general—measuring success.

We'd love to hear your thoughts about how your school defines success on Facebook. Is it the number of fans your Pages have or the number of members that have joined your Groups? How do these metrics translate into impact on larger goals of increasing enrollment, improving the quality of applicants and enrolled students, and increasing awareness of and affinity with your school?

Be the Catalyst You Want to See in Your Facebook Presence

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:36:00 +0000

I've decided to butcher the famous Mahatma Gandhi quote "Be the Change You Want to See in the World" and repurpose it for use as a mantra for those of you responsible for your school's Facebook presence.

I've talked to a lot of colleges and universities about how they use Facebook, and it seems that there are two competing urges that they try to reconcile when managing their Facebook presence. The first urge is to push out lots of information about their school, creating a constant stream of content for their fans, group members, likers (is that the right term? I'm going to call them "followers" from here on out). The second urge is to let their followers drive the boat and take a fairly hands-off approach. They don't want their followers to feel like they are being "sold" or that their social space is being invaded.

If you follow the first urge exclusively, you may end up flooding your followers with information. This may drive them away or cause them to tune out your message completely. If you follow the second urge exclusively, you may end up with a lackluster presence, where little conversation occurs and your followers are left wanting more.

The real challenge is effectively balancing these two urges. I like to tell the schools we partner with on our Facebook Application to be catalysts for conversation. You want to keep the community active without dominating the interaction.

Here are some tips for being an effective catalyst:

Seed the Conversation

When you set up your Group, Page, or Application, make sure there is content for those first followers. Have something there for them to react to, whether it's a video, some pictures, or some interesting or informative links. We recommend posting a few simple questions on the wall or on a discussion board that followers can answer. For prospects and admits, you might ask "Where are you from?" or "What major are you interested in?" For alumni, it might be "When did you graduate?" or "Where do you live now?" These are easy questions for people to answer. They don't require a lot of thought, but they can be great jumping off points for interactions. It's easy to see how two people interested in the same major or from the same town could start a back-and-forth on the wall or on a discussion board.

Breathe Life into Dying Conversations

When you see the momentum dying on a conversation, a well-timed reply can help resuscitate it. You might consider bringing a new twist or direction to the conversation that encourages more interaction. For example, if followers have been discussing the sports they want to play on your campus, you may want to post links to video highlights from the current athletic season. Sometimes, it may be as simple as adding a new post to a discussion thread to bring up back up to the top of the page, where new followers can see it and add their own two cents.

Don't Drown Out Your Followers

If the last five posts on the wall are from you, then you're probably overdoing it. Your followers are coming to your Facebook presence to be part of your school's community and to interact, not only with the school, but with each other. The more they see posts and content generated by fellow followers, the more likely they are to contribute themselves. By overposting, you're pushing your follower's content off the front page and creating the feeling that your Facebook presence is a one-way dialogue, not a two-way conversation.

A First for Me: My Interview on Twitter (aka Twitterview)

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:26:00 +0000

Well, I had a first yesterday. I did my first Twitterview (I guess that's the term for an interview on Twitter). Shelley Wetzel grilled me with questions about the intersection of admissions and social networking, specifically Facebook. Ok, grilled may be overstating it, but it was definitely different than I had expected, much more exhausting. Jumping from window to window, I kept an eye out for Shelley's next question by monitoring a twitter search for the hashtag #eduweb. Simultaneously, I was crafting answers to previous questions in 140-character chunks (which is not as easy as it sounds).

Shelley has been kind enough to share the transcript of the Twitterview on the website for the eduWeb Conference:

Full Transcript of My Twitterview (April 7, 2010)

It was an interesting format, and it reinforced for me some of the strengths and weaknesses of many forms of social media. The Twitterview allowed for a couple people to jump in with comments, which would not have happened with a traditional interview. However, as hard as I tried, I had some trouble packing a lot of information in a single tweet. You have to strip out some nuance and to scale back on detail. In the rush to social media, I think this is something that can get lost. A status update or a 140-character tweet is at best a highly simplified idea, a witty aside, or a single data point. While it definitely allows for conversations on a much larger scale and easier / faster sharing than would otherwise be possible, it often does so at the expense of some depth. I wonder if others using social media have the same feeling as I did yesterday, that 140 characters just isn't enough sometimes.

While I'm talking about my Twitterview with Shelley, it seems only fitting to let you know we'll be exhibiting at the eduWeb Conference she runs. The conference is in Chicago July 26-28, 2010. If you're going to be there, definitely stop in and say hello.

Social Media Strategy: Channel Your Inner Improv Comedian

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Have you ever been to an improv comedy show before? It can be really impressive to watch someone improvise an entire scene, maybe several scenes, based on a single suggestion from the audience. For me, the process was fascinating enough that over the last several years, I've taken 8 improv comedy classes in Boston and New York.

What I've learned is that there is a method to the madness. There are basic rules that help provide a structure for the on-the-spot creativity you see on display. As I've gotten my hands dirty with social media, helping colleges create online communities in Facebook, I've noticed that many of these same rules apply.

Rule #1: Listen

There's no script in improv comedy so listening to everything your scene partners say is essential. Every sentence provides information on who we are, where we are, what we're doing, what our relationship is, and more. You don't want to miss when your partner calls you "Dad" because that is key information that informs the scene. He's communicated that you are a father and son.

Listening is one of the most important skills in social media. With a traditional website, it can be difficult for your audience to interact with your school. That's not the case with social media. They can post on your Facebook Pages, comment on your blogs, and re-tweet your updates on Twitter. Make sure you tune in to what they're saying. Don't try to monopolize the conversation. Use what they are telling you to improve your social media efforts. Take advantage of the highly responsive feedback loop that social media offers. What information does your audience want? What types of posts generate the greatest response? What concerns pop up again and again on your walls and discussion boards?

Rule #2: Yes and...

"Yes and..." is a fundamental building block of improv. It basically means that you embrace what your scene partner offers you and you build on it. It requires you to not only acknowledge what your partner is saying or doing, but to also add new information so that the scene is constantly building. We want to be learning new things all the time about our scene. So if my partner says that we're in a forest, I might add that we're on a hike. I've defined why we're in the forest.

I think this applies to social media as well. You want to be moving the conversation forward, re-engaging your audience. If someone posts that they're a fan of your basketball team, maybe you respond with a link to the season schedule. If someone shares their enthusiasm about a club on campus, use that as an opportunity to communicate more information about that club.

I think these lessons are especially apt for admissions offices. You're trying to help prospects and admits build a more complete, more robust picture of your school. Applying the "Yes and..." technique can help you transform a simple comment into an opportunity to showcase your school.

Rule #3: Take Risks

I can't imagine a more boring improv scene than one where two people are so worried about looking like idiots that they just have a regular conversation. You've got to be willing to talk with an accent if you're playing someone from a foreign country, to sing a song if you're supposed to be a rock star, or to show some dance moves if your scene is at a night club.

Social media is a new arena for pretty much everyone. There's not 20 years of best practices and data to back up every decision. You need to push the envelope a little to find out what works and what doesn't. And that means you're going to do some stuff that flat-out doesn't work. That's fine. You learn from it and you do it better the next time. There is so much content on the Internet that's vying for the attention of your audience. If you're not bringing some creativity, some personality to the table, it's going to be much more difficult to grab their attention.

Social media is a much more improvisational experience than traditional forms of electronic media (e.g., your website and e-mails). Applying some basic rules of improv comedy may help you maximize the potential of this space.

Facebook in Admissions Webinar

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:40:00 +0000

Thank you to everyone that joined our webinar today, entitled Facebook in Admissions. We hope you found it helpful and were able to take away lessons that you could apply in your own admissions office.

We have made the both the video and the Powerpoint from the webinar available.

Watch the Video

Download the Presentation

The presentation is available in PDF format. It is a large file and may take a moment to download.

Facebook in Admissions PowerPoint (1.8MB)

Comparing Options on Facebook for Admissions Offices

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:40:00 +0000

For lots of admissions offices, the decision has been made to use Facebook in recruitment and yield efforts. The opportunity to reach such a large number of prospects in one place has become hard to ignore. However, many are not fully aware of the various options they have for promoting their school on Facebook and what the pros and cons of each option are.

We've pulled together a brief look at the various options for creating a presence on Facebook for your school and admissions office. We hope this helps you get started and make a more informed decision.

The 4 main options on Facebook are (in order of customizability):

Personal Profile
Group
Fan Page
Application

Personal Profile

A personal profile is meant to represent an individual on Facebook. Anyone can set up a personal profile. All you need is an e-mail address.

Pros

It's free
Easy to set up
Status updates show up in the News Feed on a user's homepage

Cons

Meant for individuals not institutions
No access to user data in easily digestible format
"Friend"ing is the main form of connecting with prospects and admits

How Profiles Are Used by Colleges

Admissions officers will often set up a separate profile for professional use. Many will use this profile to friend students they meet on recruitment trips, at college fairs, and elsewhere. Some universities have set up personal profiles for mascots or with the name of the university.

Challenges and Risks to Consider for Facebook Personal Profiles

First off, there is a limit of 5,000 friends for an individual profile. Second, Facebook profiles are meant for (real) individuals only. We have heard about several instances where a personal profile that represented a mascot or the school itself was shut down by Facebook because they were not individuals. Finally, some students may find a friend request from an admissions officer a little awkward. Adding someone as a friend typically gives them access to view your full profile, including status updates, uploaded pictures, and more. Students might worry that a picture from last Friday night's party will come back to haunt them. Many schools have stated that Facebook is fair game for use in the admissions process (even if they do not actively check Facebook profiles)

Group

Individuals can join groups on Facebook to interact with each other around some common interest, shared experience, common cause, or other attribute.

Pros

It's free
Easy to set up
Group admins can message group members (as long as the group has fewer than 5,000 members)
Admin can control access to group (Open / Closed / Secret)
Users can upload videos and photos and admins create Facebook events

Cons

Limited customization
No access to 3rd party applications (e.g., accessing Twitter feed, linking YouTube video channel)
No audience segmentation (messages go to all members, and all group members see the same information within the group)
Size limitations (lost functionality when membership reaches 5,000)
No access to user data (can only see a non-exportable list of group members)

How Groups Are Used by Colleges

The most common use for groups by admissions offices has been for "Class of 20XX" groups. In many cases, prospective and admitted students will set these groups up on their own. Some schools will create more specific groups for international students, for minority students, or for specific programs (e.g., study abroad) where prospects may face unique challenges, have unique needs, or have more specific questions.

Challenges and Risks to Consider for Facebook Groups

FacebookGate (2009 version and 2010 version), which involved companies setting up "Class of 20XX" groups, has garnered a lot of press and is something to be aware of. If you are not the admin of the group, you will not be able to moderate wall posts for objectionable or incorrect statements, and you will not have the ability to message all members, one of the biggest benefits of groups. This is definitely something to keep in mind if you are letting prospects and admits take the lead in Facebook. Additionally, while you can limit access to a group, it can be time-consuming to approve new members one-by-one.

Fan Page

Facebook Fan Pages could best be described as profiles for institutions. Individuals become "Fans" of your institution.

Pros

It's free
No size limitations
Access to 3rd party applications (e.g., incorporating YouTube channel, twitter or RSS feeds, static FBML)
Basic Traffic / Usage Data via Facebook Insights
Status updates show up in the News Feed on a user's homepage

Cons

Limited customization of design
Limited audience segmentation (all fans see the same information, limited targeting for status updates based on geography, gender, or age ranges)
Limited access to user data (can only see a non-exportable list of fans and limited demographic breakdowns)

How Pages Are Used by Colleges

By now, most colleges and universities have a Facebook Fan Page for their institution. Many have set up Pages for the admissions office, for specific departments, or for the athletics program as well. They can be an effective tool for broadcasting information and creating a way for Facebook users to connect with your school.

Challenges and Risks to Consider for Facebook Fan Pages

Most Fan pages are geared toward current students and alumni, and the information posted on these pages primarily reflects the interests of these audiences. While it can be interesting for prospective and admitted students to see this discussion, their needs are often not met by a university-wide presence. Think of most university websites, prospective and admitted students often have sections dedicated to them. Trying to address too many audiences with a single university presence can be a major challenge.

Application

Applications are akin to building a dynamic website within the Facebook environment. Applications have a variety of ways that they plug into the Facebook environment (e.g., Applications can access user data, enable user-to-user interactions, invite users to Facebook events).

Pros

Access to user data (subject to Facebook's privacy controls and Facebook's terms of service)
Traffic / Usage Data (can incorporate Google Analytics or almost any other method available to a regular website)
Customization of design (e.g., CSS stylesheets can be used, school branding and color scheme can be incorporated)
Audience segmentation (can adapt Application based on data from Facebook profile or other data collected by the Application)
For example, our Application adapts depending on whether someone is a prospective or admitted student and what term they plan on enrolling.
Can create unique functionality (incorporate forms, offer searches, export user data for use in CRM / SIS systems)
Can do almost anything you can do with a website

Cons

Cost and effort to build and maintain
-OR-
Cost to license
No direct access to News Feed – Wall posts and notifications must be triggered by user actions (e.g., give a friend a virtual gift, share a video with a friend)

How Applications Are Used by Colleges

Several colleges have begun utilizing applications to create communities in Facebook for various audiences. We have helped nearly two dozen schools create communities for prospective and admitted students. Other companies have worked with schools to create communities where current students can connect with each other and the university's faculty and staff. These communities provide additional functionality to users and typically allow for improved metrics and data gathering.

Challenges and Risks to Consider for Facebook Applications

While applications usually provide superior functionality and features, they usually come with a price tag (either a development fee or an annual licensing fee or man-hours from your IT/web team). The continued utility of the application will depend on future upgrades of the application. The Facebook Platform is a constantly evolving environment. Working with a company or having an in-house team that stays on top of these changes and continues to innovate around them is a must.

The Social Side of College Admissions

"Facebook in Admissions" Survey

Complete our Survey

Why Participate?

How Is the Data Used?

A Quick Look at the New Groups for Schools on Facebook

Groups for Schools Structure

A Re-Introduction of Network-Like Capabilities

No Institutional Control for Your College or University

Differences Between Groups for Schools and traditional Facebook Groups

1. Membership Limited to .EDU E-mail Account Holders

2. File Uploads

3. Messaging

4. Browse Capabilities

5. Adding Non-Friends to a Group

On Facebook, Content Is Not King

Lecture Approach vs. Seminar Approach

Lecture Approach

Seminar Approach

Why the Seminar Approach Is Better

Tips for an Engagement-First Approach

1.Put Yourself in Your Audiences' Shoes

2. Ask Specific Questions

3. Make It Easy to Consume Your Post

The Most Engaging College & University Facebook Posts & Pages - A Look Back at 2011

Engagement Score

Frequency of Posting

Data on Page Post Frequency

What to Post – A Look at Engagement by Media Type

The Most Engaging Posts – A Look at the Top 500 Posts of 2011

The Most Engaging College & University Facebook Pages of 2011

XX Large (75,000+ Facebook fans)

X Large (20,000-74,999 Facebook fans)

Large (7,500-19,999 Facebook fans)

Medium (2,500-7,499 Facebook fans)

Small (Fewer than 2,500 Facebook fans)

Our "Facebook and Admissions" White Paper is Out

A Few Key Findings

#NACACTU: Come Out for a Tweetup at the NACAC Conference

Most Engaging Facebook Pages: June 1 through August 31, 2011

Quantity Doesn't Translate Into Engagement

Very Large (25,000+ Facebook fans)

Large (7,501-25,000 Facebook fans)

Medium (2,501-7,500 Facebook fans)

Small (2,500 or fewer Facebook fans)

Posts and Engagement by Media Type

Posts and Engagement by Day of the Week

Is Google+ a Facebook Killer?

Switching Costs Are High

Where's the Killer Feature?

Google+ Will Make Facebook Raise Their Game

Google+ May Find a Different Niche

Ranking of Most Engaging Facebook Pages: 4 Months of Data on 65,000+ Facebook Page Posts

Very Large (25,000+ Facebook fans)

Large (7,501-25,000 Facebook fans)

Medium (2,501-7,500 Facebook fans)

Small (2,500 or fewer Facebook fans)

Posts and Engagement by Media Type

Posts and Engagement by Day of the Week

Hitting the Road: Find Us at These Conferences in 2011

Facebook's Page Upgrade

New Layout

Switch Between Page Profile and Personal Profile

Email Notifications

Photos

Facebook Ads

Shift to i-Frame tabs from FBML

Good for Colleges & Universities

Free Webinar: Facebook in Admissions

College Facebook Pages - Most Active / Most Engaging for December 2010

Most Engaging College Facebook Pages(December 2010)

Engagement Score

Very Large (25,000+ Facebook fans)

Large (7,500-24,999 Facebook fans)

Medium (2,500-7,499 Facebook fans)

Small (<2,500 Facebook fans)

Most Active College Facebook Pages(December 2010)

More Data on College Facebook Pages - Most Active and Engaging Colleges

Most Active College Facebook Pages

Most Engaging College Facebook Pages

Most Engaging College Facebook Pages
(December 2010)

Most Active College Facebook Pages
(December 2010)