Social Media Marketing to graduate students

Good morning and welcome to the weekend!

As you take a look at statistics, prospective graduate students are using social media more and more to find their schools. The current stat is right at 52%. source: NAGAP)

So I know what you are thinking, how do you put your school's best foot forward and draw graduate students using social media. Here are some practical tips:

- do not respond right away to negative posts (very hard not to, always respond with a cool head)
- do target geographic members within 50 miles of your campus (various sites have tools to do that)
- do join graduate students online communities, have one member of your staff coordinate all social media activities
- set up a twitter page, and tweet regularly (new class announcements, app deadlines, consistent messages across the board)
- do join sites such as college confidential.com as representatives of your university, regularly engage graduate students in online discussion
- hold bi-weekly chats on graduate studies on various online forums
- encourage and offer incentives to current grad students to engage these individuals (ones currently studying marketing!), remember current students are your best salespeople
-promote the message of health insurance (if you have), discounted tuition, and consistent academic excellence across the board

Also look for more tips at my expert author page on ezine.com

http://ezinearticles.com/?Graduate-School-Marketing-Tips&id=4272081

enjoy your day!

marketmpb

Sensing Bias in Social Media

(great blog post by one of my favorite graduate marketers Davina Gould)

source:gradschoolmarketer.blogspot.com

Recognizing your bias in social media
As university communicators, we're paid to love and promote our institutions. We not only read our own press; we write it. Even though we all know that our colleges and universities aren't perfect, we wouldn't thrive in our positions if we didn't believe in the mission and leadership of our organizations.

This professional bias leads us to tread a difficult line when it comes to social media. If we're doing a good job of monitoring our brand online, we will inevitably see something negative at some point. Jessica Krywosa at the .eduGuru blog authored a post on her recent experience with negative Facebook comments, which also includes helpful comments on handling such issues.

But beyond our official social media channels also lies a wide range of forums, blogs and other social resources in which our institutions have no voice. Yes, we could respond as individuals to negative attacks when we see them on discussion forums or blogs, but we need to resist the urge to do so lightheartedly or in the heat of the moment. Most readers will immediately discredit comments that smell like they've been authored by a company representative. Some social media sources specifically ban biased responses (i.e., Wikipedia). At bare minimum, PR-sounding responses will be unwelcome in most any online community.

Most professional communicators know to pause and think before responding publicly to negative press. But while marketing professionals may know these protocols, we must remember that everyone in our organizations has the same publishing access to social media that we do. Not only do we need to be disciplined and not act prematurely, we must educate our internal audiences about these issues as well.

enjoy your Friday!

matt

DVR's effect on advertising revenue

Good morning!

One of my readers inspired me (DJD) to write this blog about the effect on DVRs on advertising revenue and how that "changes the game".

First, let us take a look at some demographics. Currently, there are around 25% of the households in the United States that owns a DVR (source S&P). Another interesting demographic to take a look at would be the most likely programs to be "Tivo'd, etc...

Amobi and James Peters, S&P's advertising and publishing equity analyst, reports that news and sporting events are least likely to be TiVo'd, whereas prime-time dramas and comedies are most likely to "get the TiVo treatment." (source Businessweek.com)

Morning and evening news are increasingly driving broadcasters' profits. I do not like to Tivo sports events because someone will tell me the score or I will inadvertently find the score on the Web. Broadcasters are making conscious attempts to improved programming that is likely to not be "Tivo'd".

I strongly feel that the Tivo effect will be felt negatively in advertising revenues within primetime dramas and comedies. According to S&P, these are the two most likely shows to be "Tivo'd".

One other thing we should examine here is "alternative media" and its effects. As you know alternative media has been aggressively courting advertisers across the nation. Some examples of these would include supermarket video displays, shopping cart advertisements, video kiosks in shopping malls, business publications, trade journals, flyers, and telephone directories. Certainly networks should be concerned with this threat as well.

I had a client tell me that the best advertising he did was on a luggage rotunda rack at the airport.

Most importantly, DVR and alternative media sources pose a serious threat to networks bottom lines and this threat should not be taken lightly!

enjoy your afternoon,

marketmpb

Importance of Video Marketing

(great blog entry by James Lisi that I wanted to share)

source:articlestars.com

If you have not been using videos on your website as a way to increase visibility and market your business and Orange County ecommerce website, what have you been waiting for? While we do not advocate throwing videos on your site just to have them up there, we are fairly certain that you can find a way to incorporate video into your plan to improve search engine positioning.

Here are our top three tips for using video on your website:

1. Keep it simple – A lot of people get in front of a camera and get a little goofy. If you are just beginning to use video, you can get more elaborate as you go. For now, keep your video short and to the point. Start with just one person talking in front of a simple background.

2. Tell people why they are watching – We have started to watch many a video online and been unclear as to the purpose of the video. State the reason you made the video and what you want people to do (order a product, attend a seminar, etc.).

3. Ask people to comment on your video – You do not want your video to be a static thing that just sits on your site; you want it to be part of a dialogue. So encourage people to leave comments because then they will feel as if they are connected to your organization and other people who use the site. Some people may come back to your site to read the comments of others. It takes different mediums to reach different people. Someone who may not comment on a blog, may have something to say about a video and what they say may give your organization insight into how to do more to connect with your customers and the community.

Now you need to publicize the videos. Just because you put a video up on your website does not guarantee people will look at it. If you want to improve your SEO, you will have to not only create a video, you will also need to direct people to it.

Spread the word about your video – Write articles that relate to your video and include a link to the video. Just as we advised for the video: keep it simple. You want to get people's attention and have them move on to the video.

If you have a blog, do not forget to mention the video on your blog. You would be surprised at the number of organizations that do not do this, as if there is some reason they need to separate these two promotional mediums.

Again, make the blog post a simple call to action that encourages people to click on a link and watch the video. You can do this periodically or whenever there is something in the news that relates to the topic discussed in the video.

If you use any social networking sites (such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn) and belong to industry-specific listservs, you can also use these forums to let people know about your video or video series.

And of course, anything you do to publicize the videos on your website will help improve your overall search engine positioning.

Take the video offline – You can take the video you made for your website and put it on a DVD as a giveaway. Be certain that somewhere on the packaging, you include your website address. That way people who watch the video (or even those that just get the website off of the package) will know how to find you online.

Social media usage to be 70% by 2014

Good afternoon!

I was reading a statistic earlier today that was very poignant. It told me that Social media usage is to be 70% of people in the US ages 35-44 by 2014. Currently, there is over 400 million users on Facebook, which makes it one of the most popular social media marketing sites in the country. I do not believe for one second that social media is a dying fad.

Here are some trends that I have seen and will continue in 2010-2011:
-Social Media ROI will be key (especially in higher ed, due to budgets)
-Corporate security (firewalls) will start allowing social media, higher ed already does
-Facebook usage will grow to close to 750 million users by 2011
-brand managers and marketers will more closely monitor social media chatter, and take it more seriously!
-mobile marketing will be much more in place, (iphone,etc)
-more advertising on social gaming utilities (my wife loves that Farmville game on Facebook)

may God bless you and your family!

marketmpb

The Power of YouTube Marketing

As I sat and watched reruns of "The Office" tonight, i was hit with a Toyota Sienna commercial that asked me to watch the release of the new Sienna on YouTube. I was somewhat surprised by this, but than started to think and do some research on the power of YouTube.

YouTube can be a goldmine to advertisers, and currently there are over 1 billion views per day. Their current conversion rates are between .75% and 2.0% (source officialwire.com) and that is outstanding. The average current conversion rates are between .07 and .08%.

As I looked further into it, I discovered that usocial.net are selling targeted youtube views, what an outstanding idea! What strikes me is that you can utilize these huge amounts of views and specifically target certain industries (higher ed, business, etc)

So lets pretend you are a college/university with a targeted demographic to reach. How about purchasing youtube views targeted at all 14-18 year old users in your geographic audience? How is that for power? Do remember that you will want to have videos made (think of it as a concurrent branding campaign)to your leads that you purchase.

Here are some other tips to market with YouTube:
-make sure your video appeals to your demographic audience
-make sure all video content is up to date (no promoting past events!)
-invite people to subscribe to the video
-post the video on various social media (digg, forums, online communities)
-mention your college or business homepage in the video

enjoy your night,

marketmpb

International Student Marketing

I thought with the NAFSA (nafsa.org) conference this week, it would be a good time to discuss some international marketing tips/strategies. The Chronicle of Higher Edcucation stated it very well this morning... "all schools want to internationalize".

But how do you do it? How do you market out to prospective international students?

First, continuously reinforce your university's image through consistent messaging, using various media outlets. Next, focus on your international demographic audience, whoever that may be.

It is very important to showcase your campuses cultural diversity, especially targeted at the countries you are going after. For example, if you are targeting China, India, or South Korea, make sure there is a strong online presence of these students on your website and with any advertisers you may use (petersons, zinch, etc...).

Do consider marketing to the fastest growing countries, which are China, Vietnam, Korea, India, and Kuwait. It is very interesting to note that the Kuwaiti government is now providing full tuition for a student who wants to study English as a second language. Kuwait is a very oil rich nation.

Higher Ed marketers might have also noticed in the last couple of years that the role of agents has exploded. A couple of years back you would have not thought to use or not trusted to use an agent. However, today the game has changed, and agents are playing really a vital role to your international recruitment strategy. My advice here would be to talk to a vendor who works with a network of agents in the countries you are interested in targeting.

It certainly makes sense to lay out a strategic plan and involve senior leadership in all advertising allocations. Here it would be important to consider a branding initiative (placements on international websites), and purchasing international leads from a reputable vendor. Do ask if they are shared or single source leads as well.

It is also important to have all of your dedicated "international" student sections on your website up to date and again showing cultural diversity, international students want to feel as if they part of a community.

Lastly, consult with others in your field who have had successful international marketing campaigns or feel free to email me, I would be happy to answer any questions you had, free of charge!

contact me at: marketmpb@rocketmail.com or feel free to leave comments...

enjoy your day!

marketmpb