The Social Side of College Admissions

4th Annual Facebook in Admissions Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:52:00 +0000

For a 4th consecutive year, Varsity Outreach is conducting the Facebook in Admissions Survey, aimed at highlighting trends among admissions offices in their use of the social network Facebook. We will be releasing the results of our survey in 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 Toronto.

Participate in the Survey

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.

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 Long Will It Take?

The survey should take ~5 minutes to complete.

Start the Survey

4 Lessons from Twitter Office Hours with Federal Student Aid

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:30:00 +0000

I'm always interested in hearing about folks who are trying to push the envelope in how they utilize social media. While you could probably find thousands of articles about social media strategy with a simple Google search, let's be honest… social media is really just in its infancy. We're all still trying to figure out what levers we can pull to effectively reach and engage with our target audiences.

So when I heard about Federal Student Aid (FSA) holding monthly office hours on Twitter, I had to see it for myself first-hand. They were kind enough to let me be a fly on the wall for the February installment of their Twitter office hours.

To be honest, I didn't know what to expect. I'm guessing that the federal government is not a first stop for many of you when it comes to social media inspiration. However, after talking with them a bit and experiencing the action live, I wanted to share some of what I saw that may be useful for many admissions offices navigating their way in the world of social media.

Lesson #1: Have a Clear Plan of Attack

This wasn't the first rodeo for the folks at FSA. This was the 13th installment of their office hours on Twitter, and they were a well-oiled machine. Each person had a clearly defined role. One person was in charge of monitoring incoming questions and putting them into a shared Google Docs spreadsheet that everyone had access to. Two people were busy formulating clear and succinct answers. Remember: 140 characters is not a lot for answering a question about filling out the FAFSA. One person was taking these answers, performing quality checks, and queuing up the responses. And a final person handled the posts to the @FAFSA Twitter account. Everyone was busy, but no one was frantic. Not only did each person know exactly what they were supposed to do, but they also knew what they did not need to worry about. There was clear accountability for each step of the process with very little overlap. This mirrors what we often see with our own partner schools. Things go much smoother when one or two people are in charge of specific tasks. When three people are all managing everything collectively, things seem to slip through the cracks ("I thought you were handling that").

Lesson #2: Listen to Concerns, Don't Try to Squash Criticism

As you can imagine, when you're a federal agency answering a student's question about financial aid, you can't just throw out your best guess. You need to make sure you provide accurate information. Response time to office-hour questions typically took ~5-10 minutes to go through the entire process I just highlighted. In a medium where your feed may be updating with several Tweets every second, this seemed like an eternity to one participant who complained about the response time. The FSA team acknowledged the concern and let the student know they were working on an answer. We created a Storify so you can see how the FSA team handled this participant's complaint. By the end of the back-and-forth, they were exchanging virtual high-fives and kisses.

Lesson #3: Don't Be Afraid to Let Your Hair Down a Little

What surprised me the most (in a good way) was the willingness of the FSA team to be playful on Twitter. They posted a couple photos of themselves during the office hours (one with them blowing kisses) and even used emoticons here and there.

I thought they found the right balance on this front. You don't want to sound like a 15-year-old, but you also don't want to sound like a robot. A little playfulness lets your audience know there are real people behind your organization's social media accounts who care about helping their followers / fans. Personally, there's not much I hate more than dealing with an automated customer service line or with customer service reps following a script. The human element can go a long way toward earning trust.

Lesson #4: Give Your Fans / Followers a Reason to Get the Word Out

One of the really interesting aspects of the FSA's office hours on Twitter was that it seemed to mobilize a number of their followers and partner organizations to get the word out. It was a reason for them to promote the @FAFSA account along with the #AskFAFSA hashtag. They had something useful for them to share. They were not saying, "Hey, can you tell your own followers about the @FAFSA Twitter account again?" They were essentially saying "Hey, we're providing an outlet for your followers to get important financial aid questions answered. Let them know about this event."

Dozens of financial aid offices, high school counselors, and other student-focused organizations were re-tweeting the event announcement to their followers. The office hours on Twitter give these "friends of FSA" a regular opportunity to help promote FSA and its educational efforts. You could argue that this may be the most valuable aspect of these regular office hours.

Thanks again to the great team at FSA for letting me pull back the curtain on this unique initiative and get a glimpse into how it works.

Tough Questions Raised by the Fallout from a Single Tweet

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Many of you have probably already read about how a single tweet led to two people getting fired and plenty of backlash across the internet. In a nutshell, the author of the tweet called out two fellow conference-goers for a comment she overheard and felt was sexist. She didn't just share her outrage, though. She shared a photo of the men who made the comment. Ultimately, two people were fired, including the author of the tweet. If you want more background, take a look at this Forbes story on the incident.

This story caught my eye for two reasons.

First, this tweet had significant real-world costs. Two people lost their jobs and a company was targeted by a cyber-attack as a result of the tweet. I hope those involved were able to learn from the experience and move forward with their lives.

Second, it raises a lot of tough questions about how we approach social media. As a company that helps future students (mostly high-school kids) connect in a virtual environment, these are questions that we think about often.

Public vs. Private

It's amazing (and unsettling, at times) to think of the expanded reach every person has access to because of the internet and social media and the increased velocity with which information is spread. And it's all happened so fast that I think everyone is still learning how to navigate these new tools.

As part of this, there's clearly been a blurring of the line between public and private. In this particular case, the author of the tweet overheard a comment made by two people having a "private" conversation. I put "private" in quotes because it was happening at a tech conference where they were surrounded by dozens of people who were likely within earshot. Are we at the point with the spread of smart phones equipped with cameras and easy access to broadcasting tools like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook where conversations in public spaces should always be considered public?

Look, if you're a public figure, making comments on a radio show or on your Twitter account with 100,000 followers, I think you're fair game. But should you be fair game if you're talking to a friend in a cafe? What about a post in a private Class of 2017 Facebook Group? Anyone in that group can copy-and-paste a post and share it?

I know I approach my posts on my personal Facebook profile with the thought that they might be shared publicly at some point, even though I'm typically only sharing them with my friends. There has been more than one instance where I didn't post something as a result. But am I losing out on sharing memories or having virtual conversations with friends because of this caution? Probably.

Now, imagine you're an 18-year-old senior and everyone is sharing every detail of their life on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. What are you likely to be sharing? Are you equipped to appreciate the implications of sharing information and content about yourself? We only need to look at the recent events in Steubenville, Ohio, to realize many are not.

In-Person Conversations vs. Virtual Conversations

While I've had some really interesting and valuable back-and-forth conversations on social media tools like Twitter or Facebook, let's be honest... it's not the same as having an in-person conversation with a friend.

One of the first things to go in a virtual conversation is nuance. Trying to pare an idea down to a 140-character tweet necessitates the removal of words that often soften a stance. I can't use "sometimes" or "in this particular instance" because those are precious characters I'm giving up. In this case, the tweet didn't include the full comment, just references to "big dongles" and jokes about "forking repo's in a sexual way." No real sense for what made this offensive vs. juvenile humor.

On top of that, you often lose the context and history behind a comment. When I'm talking to my friend, we have shared experiences. We know some of each other's background and have an understanding of where the other person is coming from. I also have visual cues to help me glean a better understanding of these comments. If someone retweets something I said in a back-and-forth exchange, there's no context and history there, no visual cues. Was the comment meant sarcastically or in earnest? Was it referencing a previous conversation? Was it some sort of inside joke?

How do we balance our desire to share our ideas and have virtual conversations with the risk that anything we share can be taken out of context, removed from the conversation and evaluated in isolation (think, retweet)? How do we educate high school students who text hundreds of times a day with friends that a comment on YouTube or Facebook may carry additional risks?

Law of Unintended Consequences

One of the saddest parts of this story is that it seemed to snowball into a much bigger deal than I'm guessing anyone involved could ever have imagined. When you release something into social media, it often takes on a life of its own, for better or for worse.

While I believe she shouldn't have shared a photo of the "offenders"—sharing the comment itself probably would have been enough and funneled any resulting outrage toward the comment and not this person whom she did not seem to know—I doubt her goal was to get anyone fired from their jobs. I doubt she ever could have imagined such a strong backlash against herself, let alone the company she works for.

The whole incident almost leaves my head spinning a bit. Should I never share my thoughts and opinions for fear of some unimaginable consequence? Is this just the new reality for participating in the world of social media? Should we all consider ourselves having been Mirandized when it comes to social media "Anything you say, can and will be used against you in the court of social media and in ways you can't even anticipate"?

Again, bringing it back to the typical target audience for most of our partner schools... how do you teach an 18-year-old high school student to appreciate these risks and to answer these difficult questions for themselves?

How Much Is Too Much? A Closer Look at Post Frequency

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0000

This is the final post in our 4-part series A Look Back at 2012.

One of the biggest challenges that many colleges and universities face is determining how frequently they should post. In our research, we've continually encountered an interesting phenomenon… an inverse relationship between how frequently a Facebook Page posts and the average engagement score of that Facebook Page's posts. In general, the more an institution posts, the less engagement they garner per post. You can see this illustrated in the graph below. We basically grouped pages into tranches of 50, based on how many posts the page made in 2012. For example, the first tranche of pages (i.e. the 50 pages that posted the most frequently out of the 628 pages analyzed) averaged 1,125 posts for 2012 and had an average engagement score of 1.8 for their posts. The second tranche averaged 674 posts with an engagement score of 2.3, and so on.

Post Frequency Ranking	Engagement Score	Avg. Number of Posts	Avg. Number of Fans
1-50	1.845	1,125	65,934
51-100	2.320	674	79,732
101-150	2.872	553	28,051
151-200	3.584	469	41,970
201-250	3.533	390	49,304
251-300	3.674	333	36,653
301-350	3.595	289	35,454
351-400	4.194	248	47,424
401-450	4.845	215	18,418
451-500	4.722	183	23,860
501-550	6.008	138	18,063
551-600	7.523	88	5,912
601-628	6.786	32	10,042

Finding the Right Balance

There's obviously a trade-off that a college or university needs to consider. Each institution is leveraging Facebook to build and maintain relationships with their various audiences (prospects, admits, current students, alumni, sports fans, parents, staff, and more). If you're only posting once a month, how much are you strengthening that relationship, even if those posts are generating more likes, comments, and shares? On the other end of the spectrum, if you're posting 3 times a day, are you over-saturating your fans and risking them tuning out your message altogether? When we talk with colleges and universities, we encourage them to think of themselves in terms of being a friend of your Facebook fan. If someone is a good friend of mine, I'm probably willing to tolerate more posts from her in my Newsfeed. I'm probably more interested in the details of her life and more apt to like and comment on her posts, thereby increasing the likelihood that future posts appear in my Newsfeed. If you're someone who happened to have gone to elementary school with me, my tolerance level is going to be much lower. A college's Facebook Page probably falls somewhere in between.

Obviously, the content of the posts is going to play a big role in what I'm willing to tolerate as well. Even if you're my best friend, I probably don't want to see the details of every meal you eat (unless we're both foodies) or a play-by-play of the sports game you're watching (unless I'm a rabid fan of the team as well). If my elementary school classmate happens to be a world-class travel photographer and shares amazing photos from her trips to exotic locales, I'd probably be a lot more interested in seeing posts from her, even though we may not have talked in the last 15 years.

2012 vs. 2011

When we look at the average posts per page for 2011 and 2012, we see that it has increased in every size category, with the biggest jump (percentagewise) among pages with fewer than 5000 fans.

Average Posts by Page – 2012 vs. 2011

Size Category	2012	2011	% Change
XX Large (75,000+ Facebook fans)	527	494	7%
X Large (20,000-74,999 Facebook fans)	459	431	7%
Large (10,000-19,999 Facebook fans)	388	384	1%
Medium (5,000-9,999 Facebook fans)	352	321	10%
Small (<5,000 Facebook fans)	282	246	14%

Post Frequency of Most Engaging College and University Facebook Pages

Now, when we look at the top 10 most engaging pages in each size category, it's pretty clear that the most engaging pages are posting less frequently than the average institutional page.

Average Posts by Page (2012) – All in Size Category vs. Top 10

Size Category	All	Top 10
XX Large (75,000+ Facebook fans)	527	287
X Large (20,000-74,999 Facebook fans)	459	286
Large (10,000-19,999 Facebook fans)	388	239
Medium (5,000-9,999 Facebook fans)	352	192
Small (<5,000 Facebook fans)	282	105

In fact, of the 50 Facebook Pages that made the top 10 list in each size category, only three posted more frequently than the average for that category. These rare schools were Soka University of America (Medium), Smith College (Large), and Florida State University (XL).

Ultimately, the question boils down to how frequently can a college or university Facebook Page post compelling enough content that will generate strong engagement. We don't have a hard-and-fast answer for you, but we'd highly recommend you taking a look at the college and university Facebook Pages that made our top 10 lists and compare them to your own. You might even consider focusing on the three schools mentioned above. They seem to be uniquely able to keep the engagement high while posting more frequently than pages of comparable size.

The 500 Most Engaging Facebook Posts of 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0000

This is the third post in our 4-part series A Look Back at 2012.

We wanted to focus one of the posts in this series on the best of the best, those posts that generated the highest level of engagement among fans. We took a closer look at the 500 most engaging posts from the entire pool of 236,060 posts for which we calculated an Engagement Score.

Tap into Your Institution's History and Bring Back a Photo from the Archive

Smith College dug into its photo archive to find this black-and-white photo from 1931. They even had a little fun with the caption.
Smith College post

Court a Little Controversy or Debate

This post is a little riskier, soliciting the reaction of fans on the results of the US Presidential election. If you page through the comments, you'll see some heated posts. This strategy is not for the faint of heart.
University of Denver post

Highlight a Sports Achievements and Make it Worth Sharing by Adding a Picture

Unfortunately, we can't all have a Heisman Trophy winner to post about. What we really like about this post by Texas A&M, though, is that they created a quality graphic to go with it. Look how many shares this post had! I bet if they'd just written a status update with the same text, it would not have generated as many shares.
Texas A&M post

Make a National Story Relevant

Morehouse College didn't just post "Go Out and Vote!" They made a national news story relevant to their audience by sharing a post of students in line at the polls.
Morehouse College post

St. Lawrence University marked the anniversary of 9/11 in a more meaningful way for its audience by sharing the names of alumni lost in the tragedy along with a photo of their annual commemorative tradition.
St. Lawrence University post

Showcase a Beautiful Picture of Campus

We're seeing more and more of this on college and university Facebook Pages. So many institutions have beautiful buildings on campus that make great backdrops for photos, especially if the lighting and weather are right. These two photos from Colorado College and Miami of Ohio are both postcard-worthy. No surprise that both generated lots of shares.
Colorado College post
Miami University post

Solicit Their Opinions

A tried and true way to get your fans to comment... just ask them to share their opinions. Northern Arizona asks for feedback on a graphic for their mascot Louie the Lumberjack, while Saint Vincent College encourages fans to share their favorite professor.
Northern Arizona University post
Saint Vincent College post

A Review of When and What Colleges Posted on Facebook in 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0000

This is the second post in our 4-part series A Look Back at 2012.

In our first post in this series, we shared a list of the most engaging college and university Facebook Pages. In this post, we wanted to dig a little deeper into the data and share further insights we were able to glean from our analysis of more than 230,000 posts.

Best Day of the Week to Post

This has been a consistent finding every time we've run analyses on college and university Facebook Pages. The best days to post seem to be Saturdays and Sundays. Not surprisingly, these are also the days on which college and university Facebook Pages post less frequently (Who wants to worry about posting on their days off?). We believe this is probably a mix of a couple factors:

More time and opportunities for fans to check Facebook, many workplaces and schools block Facebook
Weekends are often when major college sporting events occur, especially big-time college football

An Increase in Engagement in the 2nd Half of 2012

We noticed a steady increase in the engagement per post over the second half of 2012. This was mostly due to an increase in the rate of likes and shares per 1,000 fans. This is a trend we'll be keeping an eye on. We don't have a strong rationale for why this growth has occurred, but a few possible explanations (these are just educated guesses): an increase in mobile usage of Facebook, the mandatory shift to Timeline for pages, which occurred in March 2012, or maybe Facebook tweaked its Newsfeed algorithm increasing the exposure of pages.

Month	Engagement Score (# of Posts)
January	1.487 29,075 posts
February	1.768 23,420 posts
March	2.435 17,770 posts
April	1.889 19,914 posts
May	2.672 15,715 posts
June	2.822 15,645 posts
July	3.482 14,970 posts
August	4.842 20,340 posts
September	4.391 22,398 posts
October	3.971 27,051 posts
November	4.604 23,357 posts
December	4.916 6,405 posts

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words... Or At Least More Likes and Shares

Photos still hold the top spot for most engaging type of media on Facebook. Photos are liked more and shared more than any other media type. However, status updates generate more comments per 1,000 fans than any other media type (30 percent more than photos and 190 percent more than videos).

Media Type	Engagement Score (# of Posts)	Likes / 1000 Fans	Comments / 1000 Fans	Shares/ 1000 Fans
Link	1.53 108,406 posts	1.15	0.10	0.08
Photo	5.15 76,239 posts	3.89	0.33	0.30
Status	4.18 37,266 posts	3.17	0.43	0.07
Video	2.45 13,598 posts	1.66	0.15	0.25
Question	0.00 506 posts	0.00	0.00	0.00
Music / Audio	0.73 38 posts	0.61	0.04	0.01
Offer	2.65 7 posts	2.06	0.20	0.09

Most Engaging College Facebook Pages of 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0000

This is the first post in our 4-part series A Look Back at 2012.

We wanted to highlight those colleges and universities that were the most successful at consistently engaging their fan bases on Facebook this past year. We let the data speak for itself, ranking institutional Facebook Pages based on the average Engagement Score across all of their posts in 2012. Find out which colleges and universities topped our lists!

In our rankings, we've grouped each page into a size category based on the number of fans/likes the page had at the end of 2012. We thought this would provide a more apples-to-apples comparison. You can see the top 10 in each category, along with the total posts and average engagement score for each page. We've also limited these lists to those Facebook Pages with a minimum of 12 posts for 2012. We considered an average of one post a month to be the baseline for whether a college or university was actively leveraging Facebook. As a point of reference, the average engagement score across all the posts analyzed (more than 230,000) was 3.16.

Find out how we calculate the Engagement Score.

XX Large (75,000+ Facebook fans)

Rank	School	Engagement Score
1	Texas A&M University (College Station, TX)	11.689 327 posts
2	Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR)	9.528 134 posts
3	Mississippi State University (Starkville, MS)	8.084 262 posts
4	University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI)	7.031 270 posts
5	The University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS)	6.390 231 posts
6	Indiana University (Bloomington, IN)	6.264 191 posts
7	The University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX)	5.635 182 posts
8	University of Georgia (Athens, GA)	4.734 335 posts
9	West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV)	4.555 439 posts
10	The University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK)	4.269 494 posts

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

Rank	School	Engagement Score
1	Utah State University (Logan, UT)	14.490 77 posts
2	Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI)	11.178 18 posts
3	Montana State University (Bozeman, MT)	9.859 233 posts
4	University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Lincoln, NE)	9.476 223 posts
5	Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL)	8.642 506 posts
6	University of Mississippi ~ Ole Miss (Oxford, MS)	8.552 415 posts
7	University of North Alabama (Florence, AL)	8.252 450 posts
8	Capella University (Minneapolis, MN)	7.943 390 posts
9	University of Nevada, Reno (Reno, NV)	7.837 119 posts
10	North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC)	7.093 429 posts

Large (10,000-19,999 Facebook fans)

Rank	School	Engagement Score
1	Siena College (Loudonville, NY)	24.443 67 posts
2	Berry College (Mount Berry, GA)	23.222 207 posts
3	University of Portland (Portland, OR)	11.276 376 posts
4	St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN)	9.731 214 posts
5	University of Dayton (Dayton, OH)	9.544 131 posts
6	Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)	9.121 291 posts
7	University of St. Thomas (Saint Paul, MN)	9.116 254 posts
8	Smith College (Northampton, MA)	9.064 511 posts
9	Marist College (Poughkeepsie, NY)	8.657 210 posts
10	Longwood University (Farmville, VA)	8.199 127 posts

Medium (5,000-9,999 Facebook fans)

Rank	School	Engagement Score
1	Taylor University (Upland, IN)	14.690 133 posts
2	Prairie View A&M University (Prairie View, TX)	13.154 325 posts
3	California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA)	12.083 69 posts
4	Kenyon College (Gambier, OH)	11.652 152 posts
5	Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, PA)	11.275 142 posts
6	University of the South (Sewanee, TN)	11.195 298 posts
7	Merrimack College (North Andover, MA)	10.937 83 posts
8	Soka University of America (Aliso Viejo, CA)	10.449 563 posts
9	Simmons College (Boston, MA)	10.269 113 posts
10	Bethel University (Saint Paul, MN)	9.954 37 posts

Small (<5,000 Facebook fans)

Rank	School	Engagement Score
1	Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, IA)	39.034 67 posts
2	Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, AL)	26.025 199 posts
3	Regis University (Denver, CO)	22.041 132 posts
4	The Citadel Alumni Association (Charleston, SC)	16.699 78 posts
5	Saint Joseph's College (Rensselaer, IN)	14.473 99 posts
6	Shaw University (Raleigh, NC)	13.386 115 posts
7	Capitol College (Laurel, MD)	11.686 112 posts
8	West Liberty University Gary E. West College of Business (West Liberty, WV)	11.166 59 posts
9	Willamette University (Salem, OR)	10.688 101 posts
10	Lasell College (Newton, MA)	10.556 87 posts

A Look Back at 2012: A Four-Part Series on Our Research of College and University Facebook Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0000

We just completed our analysis of more than 600 college and university Facebook Pages. We crunched data for every post by these pages for the year 2012, which totaled more than 230,000 posts. We're sharing our results in a four-part blog series over the next couple weeks.

Part I: Most Engaging College Facebook Pages of 2012
Part II: A Review of When and What Colleges Posted on Facebook in 2012
Part III: Best of the Best – The 500 Most Engaging Facebook Posts of 2012
Part IV: How Much Is Too Much? A Closer Look at Post Frequency

A Quick Look at Our Methodology

We pulled every post available via Facebook's Graph API for every school in our directory of college and university Facebook Pages (627 pages were used in our 2012 analysis). We only analyzed posts made by the Facebook Page itself, not the fans of that page (236,060 posts analyzed). We collected the count of likes, comments, and shares for each post. The data pulls were done during the first week of January 2013. We also pulled the fan data every week for each of the Facebook Pages in our directory, giving us a ballpark approximation of the fan count for a given page when a post was made.

Our Engagement Score

For each post, we used the following formula to determine an Engagement Score:

The Engagement Score is an attempt to quantify how effective a given post is at engaging the audience of an institution's page. We have given each form of engagement a weighting based on how significant that form of engagement is. As you can see, we've given comments and shares twice the weighting of likes. We believe responding with a comment or sharing the post with your friends is a stronger form of engagement than simply clicking a like link. They involve you either contributing content of your own, in the case of a comment, or expanding the distribution of the Facebook Page's content, in the case of a share.

We recognize that this is a rudimentary measurement, but we believe it provides a high-level sense of how engaging a particular post is and a point of comparison when looking for trends and best practices. We also recognize that our metric focuses on particular forms of engagements (likes, comments, and shares). It does not take into account how many views a video may have received, how many click-thrus a link may have garnered, or whether a post led to particular actions by an audience member. We are obviously limited by the data provided by Facebook in its Graph API, but these may be metrics to consider when attempting to analyze your own institution's Facebook Page posts.

Most Engaging Facebook Pages and Posts of 2012... So Far

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:54:00 +0000

With school back in session at most colleges and universities, we figured it would be a good time to take a look at the most engaging pages and posts on Facebook again. We've analyzed all the posts from the 600+ pages in our directory from January 1 to August 31 of this year.

A New Engagement Score Formula

Before we dig into the results, we want to tell you about a new wrinkle in our formula. We're now incorporating the number of shares a posts get into our Engagement Score. As we do with comments, we've given shares twice the weighting of likes. Our rationale is that sharing a post (and thereby giving your own friends an opportunity to see the post in their News Feed) is a more powerful form of engagement than simply liking a post. There's no hard-and-fast science behind these weightings and we definitely welcome any thoughts you may have for improving the weighting.

The 10 Most Engaging Posts of 2012 (January-August)

We have shared the ten posts (among more than 180,000 posts we analyzed) that had the highest engagement score. This is a very small sampling, but it hopefully gives you a glimpse into the type of content that can really spark your audience to like, comment, and share. One point that is worth highlighting is that nine of the 10 posts included a photo.

	School	Post Text
1	University of North Alabama Enagement Score: 2,173 Type: Photo	The University of North Alabama this morning lost a beloved member is its community, celebrated actor and entertainer George Lindsey. Lindsey passed away at 12:05 a.m. at age 83.	Link
2	Regis University Enagement Score: 777 Type: Photo	Share this prayer for Colorado written by President John P. Fitzgibbons, S.J.	Link
3	Miami University Enagement Score: 412 Type: Photo	Gorgeous photo of a snow covered MacCracken Hall taken by Miami University junior, Mike Zatt. Browse more of his great photography here: http://raulzatt.deviantart.com/	Link
4	St. Bonaventure University Enagement Score: 385 Type: Photo	Bonnies flag spotted in the background of The Today Show at the London Olympics! Like this pic if you're a fan of the Bonnies and/or Al Roker in a pink jacket. Thanks to Cassie Orlowski (@cmorlo) for the pic via Twitter! cc: St. Bonaventure Alumni, St. Bonaventure Athletics	Link
5	Temple University Enagement Score: 253 Type: Photo	The BIG EAST welcomes Temple with a huge display in Times Square!	Link
6	Bellarmine University Enagement Score: 244 Type: Photo	Bellarmine Knights get a shout-out on ESPN broadcast, along with some other great Kentucky teams.	Link
7	Buena Vista University Enagement Score: 227 Type: Photo	Check out this old aerial photo of campus - can you guess what year this was taken? Leave your guess in a comment below, and we'll put the correct ones in a drawing for a $10 iTunes gift card.	Link
8	Marist College Enagement Score: 224 Type: Status	Marist. One College. One Community. One Family.	Link
9	Tarleton State University Enagement Score: 221 Type: Photo	Two of our Tarleton employees decided to bake cookies in their cars! A good reminder of how hot temps get inside vehicles. Be safe out there this summer!	Link
10	Tuskegee University Enagement Score: 217 Type: Photo	Tuskegee is my heart. Nothing is as dear to me as Tuskegee- Amelia Boynton Robinson, oldest Tuskegee alumna	Link

Please keep in mind that these scores are related to the size of the fan base for the Facebook Page. There are definitely posts that received more likes, comments, and shares, but they were on Facebook Pages that had larger fan bases, and therefore had lower engagement scores.

Best to Post on the Weekend

Consistent with our previous research, the best days to post seem to be Saturday and Sunday. Interestingly, posts on Sunday were shared more than twice as often as posts on any other day of the week.

Day of Week	Engagement Score	Shares / 1,000 fans
Sunday	3.786 6,940 posts	0.26
Monday	2.609 30,165 posts	0.10
Tuesday	2.620 30,639 posts	0.10
Wednesday	2.731 30,656 posts	0.12
Thursday	2.735 31,158 posts	0.11
Friday	3.009 30,288 posts	0.11
Saturday	3.463 8,676 posts	0.10

Engagement Trending Upward

One trend that surprised us a bit is that engagement has pretty much been on a constant upward trajectory this year. We don't have a clear sense why this may be happening. Are colleges getting shrewder with their Facebook posts? Has Facebook been showing these posts more frequently in News Feeds? Are schools spending more money to promote their posts through Facebook ads? We don't know.

Month	Engagement Score
January	1.822 26,827 posts
February	2.150 24,572 posts
March	2.738 20,499 posts
April	2.170 23,423 posts
May	2.972 19,310 posts
June	3.044 17,889 posts
July	3.485 15,250 posts
August	4.903 20,752 posts

The Most Engaging College & University Facebook Pages of 2012 (January-August)

Here are the top 10 most engaging college and university Facebook pages so far for 2012 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		The University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS)	6.557 198 posts
2		Indiana University (Bloomington, IN)	5.506 145 posts
3		Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR)	5.379 106 posts
4		Liberty University (Lynchburg, VA)	5.136 191 posts
5		Texas A&M University (College Station, TX)	4.807 191 posts
6		University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI)	4.300 230 posts
7		The University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX)	3.889 135 posts
8		UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)	3.825 250 posts
9		West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV)	3.749 329 posts
10		University of Georgia (Athens, GA)	3.427 244 posts

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

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		University of North Alabama (Florence, AL)	9.705 291 posts
2		Utah State University (Logan, UT)	7.850 70 posts
3		North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC)	6.547 334 posts
4		Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI)	6.460 418 posts
5		University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Lincoln, NE)	5.892 146 posts
6		Montana State University (Bozeman, MT)	5.804 152 posts
7		University of Mississippi ~ Ole Miss (Oxford, MS)	5.372 266 posts
8		Xavier University (Cincinnati, OH)	5.370 103 posts
9		Grand Valley State University (Allendale, MI)	5.226 122 posts
10		University of Nevada, Reno (Reno, NV)	5.160 88 posts

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

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Siena College (Loudonville, NY)	20.523 50 posts
2		Kenyon College (Gambier, OH)	12.067 119 posts
3		Prairie View A&M University (Prairie View, TX)	10.702 176 posts
4		Marist College (Poughkeepsie, NY)	9.536 151 posts
5		Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)	9.515 189 posts
6		Berry College (Mount Berry, GA)	9.501 102 posts
7		Denison University (Granville, OH)	8.917 69 posts
8		University of Dayton (Dayton, OH)	8.908 82 posts
9		University of Portland (Portland, OR)	8.639 325 posts
10		Smith College (Northampton, MA)	8.338 434 posts

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

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, IA)	32.098 45 posts
2		Regis University (Denver, CO)	25.082 80 posts
3		Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, AL)	15.236 109 posts
4		The Citadel Alumni Association (Charleston, SC)	15.212 56 posts
5		Shaw University (Raleigh, NC)	14.931 76 posts
6		Martin Luther College (New Ulm, MN)	14.873 51 posts
7		Allegheny College (Meadville, PA)	13.540 64 posts
8		Bethel University (Saint Paul, MN)	12.678 34 posts
9		California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA)	11.039 47 posts
10		Covenant College (Lookout Mountain, GA)	10.669 86 posts

Small (Fewer than 2,500 Facebook fans)

Rank	School		Engagement Score
1		Saint Joseph's College (Rensselaer, IN)	20.940 42 posts
2		West Liberty University Gary E. West College of Business (West Liberty, WV)	12.424 38 posts
3		Lasell College (Newton, MA)	12.044 58 posts
4		Hesston College (Hesston, KS)	11.963 43 posts
5		Capitol College (Laurel, MD)	10.281 59 posts
6		Husson University Admissions (Bangor, ME)	9.822 79 posts
7		Simon Graduate School of Business (Rochester, NY)	9.386 102 posts
8		VCU School of Business (Richmond, VA)	9.265 124 posts
9		Grace University (Omaha, NE)	9.104 50 posts
10		Bellevue University (Bellevue, NE)	8.418 163 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.

The Facebook Opportunity Pyramid: A Framework for Thinking about the Facebook Opportunity in Admissions

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 13:18:00 +0000

We just released our annual Facebook and Admissions white paper. We shared several recommendations in this white paper, but we wanted to highlight one of those recommendations in a blog post.

The Facebook Opportunity Pyramid

We wanted to propose a Facebook Opportunity Pyramid to help admissions offices think about how best to leverage Facebook. The ideas for this framework have been circling around in our heads for a while. We've been refining them as we've worked with dozens of colleges to create and manage communities for prospects and admits on Facebook, as we've combed through the data from our annual surveys, and as we've analyzed more than 200,000 posts by the Facebook pages in our directory.

The Facebook Opportunity Pyramid basically lays out various activity groupings that admissions professionals can engage in on Facebook in a hierarchical manner, with those at the bottom representing unidirectional dialogue and those at the top representing multidirectional dialogue and feedback loops. In our opinion, the most impactful opportunities for leveraging Facebook to help with recruitment and yield occur as an admissions office moves up the pyramid.

Measuring Results /
Collecting Feedback

Enabling Connections
among Audience Members

Sharing "Authentic" Perspectives /
Unofficial Voices

Interacting in a
Reactive Manner

Disseminating Information

The Levels on the Pyramid Explained

Disseminating Information

Using Facebook as another avenue for sharing information with prospects and admits

Examples: Sharing upcoming deadlines, posting links to forms, announcing events

Interacting in a Reactive Manner

Using Facebook as a customer-service tool to address questions and concerns shared by your audience

Examples: Answering questions posted on your wall, pointing students to the correct resources and people when they raise issues

Sharing "Authentic" Perspectives / Unofficial Voices

Leveraging Facebook to enlist others to help you tell your story in a less formal, more authentic manner (i.e. unsolicited customer endorsements)

Examples: Integrating current students and alumni into the experience, posting video and pictures of campus events

Enabling Connections among Audience Members

Creating a community environment where your audience is not only building relationships with your school, but with fellow audience members

Examples: Creating and aggressively promoting targeted communities for your audience, seeding conversations, encouraging ice-breaker games

Measuring Results / Collecting Feedback

Tying activity on Facebook back to larger departmental and institutional goals and using this data to inform future decisions and strategy

Examples: Surveying admits about their Facebook experience, mapping fluctuations in activity on Facebook to specific content and initiatives that drove these changes

Our Rationale for the Facebook Opportunity Pyramid

First off, let me make one thing clear... pursuing activities at the bottom end of the pyramid is not a bad thing. Facebook can be a great place to keep people up-to-date on upcoming deadlines, on events in their area, etc. It can be an effective tool for addressing concerns and answering questions. What we're proposing with this pyramid is that you're only scratching the surface when it comes to the potential of Facebook in your recruitment and yield efforts. You're not fully capitalizing on the strengths of Facebook: it's social and it encourages conversation and sharing. These are strengths that your postcard mailings, your e-mails, and probably your website do not have.

Facebook offers a unique opportunity to bring other constituents of your college or university into the conversation, maybe it's current students or alumni or even some faculty. These constituents can present a viewpoint that prospects and admits will likely perceive as more authentic. The great thing about Facebook is that your current students and alumni are probably already visiting Facebook on a regular basis. And I'd be willing to bet that those most enthusiastic about your school are going to be the ones most willing to participate in conversations on Facebook.

At its best, though, Facebook can help people build and strengthen relationships with each other. It seems reasonable that the more a prospect or admit feels connected to the people at your university and with her potential future classmates the more likely she is to attend your school and to have a positive experience once on campus. Basically, the more you make them feel part of your university's community the better.

So why is Measuring Results / Collecting Feedback at the top of the pyramid? For two reasons. First, your admissions office isn't on Facebook just because it's fun. You're there because you believe it's a useful outreach tool. However, it's competing against lots of other activities you could be busying yourself with on any given day. If you don't have a sense of how Facebook is helping you, how do you justify spending time on Facebook instead of calling prospects, sending e-mails, preparing for college fairs, or the fifty other things you could be doing? Second, Facebook requires, and even encourages, an iterative approach. The better sense you have about what types of posts and what pieces of content work best, the more efficient and effective you can be with your time. You can really hone in on what initiatives will drive the strongest results. One unique feature of Facebook is that it emphasizes recency. If an initiative doesn't catch hold, no problem. It'll eventually be pushed down the wall or newsfeed and you can try something new. It's a lot less effort to post a status update than send off a postcard or make a change on your website. And you tend to get feedback much more quickly as well.

We hope you now have a better understanding of the thought process behind our Facebook Opportunity Pyramid and that it can serve as a useful framework for you when thinking about your office's efforts on the social network.

"Facebook and Admissions" White Paper Released

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:22:00 +0000

The 3rd annual Facebook and Admissions white paper is now out! It contains data collected from 160 colleges and universities about how they use Facebook in their recruitment and yield efforts.

It's packed with great data on:

What admissions offices are doing on Facebook
What resources they are dedicating to these efforts
How schools are using current students
How they're measuring the impact of their Facebook efforts

We also added questions this year to learn:

Where in the admissions funnel schools believe Facebook can have an impact
How significant the impact has actually been

Download the White Paper

Perfect Is the Enemy of Authentic

noreply@blogger.com (Varsity Outreach) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:00:00 +0000

When students interact with your school on social media, they expect a different experience than what they can get on your website. If they want to know your deadline dates or the average SAT scores of your incoming freshmen, they'll probably go to your school's website. On Facebook and Twitter, they want conversation, they want a two-way dialogue, they want authenticity. Remember these are social networks. Social interactions are between people, they're fluid, and they're usually not scripted. One more thing... they're not perfect.

Perfect = Marketing

It seems to be a running joke that every college's brochure has a picture of a diverse group of students hanging out on the College Green on a beautiful, sunny day. The picture seemingly must include an African-American student, an Asian-American student, a Hispanic student, and a white student (with two of the four being women)... a not so subtle "We welcome students of all types here." All are smiling and looking right at the camera... "Isn't college life pure bliss?"

Look, all admission counselors obviously want to present their school in a positive light (if not, you may want to consider a different profession). But nobody's being fooled. Everyone who sees these pictures knows they're getting the edited version of your school, the sanitized version, so to speak. High school students are smart enough to know these pictures are pure marketing material. Not only that, since every school has these same pictures, you're likely blending into the crowd, stripping your school of its uniqueness.

Raw = Real

A little shake in the video, some students caught with an awkward expression in a photo... these are cues to your audience that they're getting the unfiltered version of your school, the gritty, authentic window into what life is "really like" on campus. I'm not saying purposely shake your camera when filming or tell students to contort their face while taking a picture. These will probably come naturally when taking candid photos at an event or filming quick, unstaged interviews with students around campus. I'm encouraging you to capture real student experiences as they unfold through the eyes of your actual students.

Think about how we pick restaurants to eat at, places to visit on trips, even vendors to work with. Sure, we get the official spiel – check out the restaurant's menu, visit a resort's website, or set up a phone call with a salesman from the vendor. We let the seller tell us what they're selling. Then, what do many of us do? We go to Yelp to read what other diners have said, we check out TripAdvisor for reviews, or we call up a customer reference to hear their experiences with the product.

Have you read reviews on Yelp or TripAdvisor? They're not well-written prose. We want raw. We want unfiltered. We want real.

Your future students want the same "Insider's Perspective" and social media can be a great outlet for this type of content.

Give Them What They Want

We wanted to share a few ideas of the types of raw, unfiltered content that could help provide some authenticity.

Student-Recorded Video Tours of Dorm Rooms

Student housing is one of the most-discussed issues we see in our Facebook Communities and on Class of 20XX Groups. And deciding which hall / dorm / building to pick is a hot topic of debate. Help them make this decision. Let 5-10 students record 2-minute videos of their dorm rooms. Have them describe what it's like to live in your residence halls, how they've decorated their room, and what they like most about their particular residence hall.

Share a Trademark Experience

Try to capture a trademark campus experience through the eyes of your students. Are you a big sports school? Have a few freshmen take flipcams to their first football game. Encourage them to take video of tailgaiting, of the kick-off, of the crowd after a touchdown... anything that captures the feel of being at the event as a student. Then, ask them to share a quick a 30-second recap of what it was like.

Student Reviews of Clubs on Campus

Share reviews for your campus clubs, written by actual students in those clubs. What is it really like to be part of the school newspaper staff? How often does the dance club practice and where do they perform? These will help demonstrate the vibrancy of your campus and enable prospects and admits to picture themselves as part of these clubs. This could be ideal to do in a blog format.

These are just a few ideas, but they hopefully help you generate more that work for your particular school. Again, we're not talking about highly edited videos, staged photo shoots, or perfect, edited prose. Capture real students, sharing real opinions, at real places on campus or at real events, in a relatively unfiltered format.

"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 (1,671 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

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.

The Social Side of College Admissions

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4 Lessons from Twitter Office Hours with Federal Student Aid

Lesson #1: Have a Clear Plan of Attack

Lesson #2: Listen to Concerns, Don't Try to Squash Criticism

Lesson #3: Don't Be Afraid to Let Your Hair Down a Little

Lesson #4: Give Your Fans / Followers a Reason to Get the Word Out

Tough Questions Raised by the Fallout from a Single Tweet

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In-Person Conversations vs. Virtual Conversations

Law of Unintended Consequences

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Finding the Right Balance

2012 vs. 2011

Average Posts by Page – 2012 vs. 2011

Post Frequency of Most Engaging College and University Facebook Pages

Average Posts by Page (2012) – All in Size Category vs. Top 10

The 500 Most Engaging Facebook Posts of 2012

Top 500 Posts by Media Type – Photos a Clear #1

Top 500 Posts by Media Type

Top 500 Posts by Content Type – Photos, Sports Scores, and Announcements, Oh My!

Top 500 Posts by Content Type

Content Types

Some Top Posts Worth Sharing

Tap into Your Institution's History and Bring Back a Photo from the Archive

Court a Little Controversy or Debate

Highlight a Sports Achievements and Make it Worth Sharing by Adding a Picture

Make a National Story Relevant

Showcase a Beautiful Picture of Campus

Solicit Their Opinions

A Review of When and What Colleges Posted on Facebook in 2012

Best Day of the Week to Post

An Increase in Engagement in the 2nd Half of 2012

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words... Or At Least More Likes and Shares

Most Engaging College Facebook Pages of 2012

Size Categories

XX Large (75,000+ Facebook fans)

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

Large (10,000-19,999 Facebook fans)

Medium (5,000-9,999 Facebook fans)

Small (<5,000 Facebook fans)

A Look Back at 2012: A Four-Part Series on Our Research of College and University Facebook Pages

A Quick Look at Our Methodology

Our Engagement Score

Most Engaging Facebook Pages and Posts of 2012... So Far

A New Engagement Score Formula

The 10 Most Engaging Posts of 2012 (January-August)

Best to Post on the Weekend

Engagement Trending Upward

The Most Engaging College & University Facebook Pages of 2012 (January-August)

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)

The Facebook Opportunity Pyramid: A Framework for Thinking about the Facebook Opportunity in Admissions

The Facebook Opportunity Pyramid

The Levels on the Pyramid Explained

Disseminating Information

Interacting in a Reactive Manner

Sharing "Authentic" Perspectives / Unofficial Voices

Enabling Connections among Audience Members

Measuring Results / Collecting Feedback

Our Rationale for the Facebook Opportunity Pyramid

"Facebook and Admissions" White Paper Released

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Perfect Is the Enemy of Authentic

Perfect = Marketing

Raw = Real

Give Them What They Want

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Most Engaging College Facebook Pages
(December 2010)