Nick Cifuentes

You always knew it was going to happen eventually – colleges and universities nationwide using social media to find new students. Looking for that edge to find the top candidates, schools are reverting to social networking sites, message boards, online video and podcasts to bring the talent!

It makes a great amount of sense to do such a thing.  You have to go where the audience is, and with millions of people going on social networking websites daily, it’s only obvious to attack such a market.

I used to be a college student, and working in social media, sometimes feel like I still am – but that is the medium where you KNOW students will go daily.  There is less chance they will open a college/university email, newsletter, mail brochure, or go to high school college fairs – chances are – you will absolutely find them on Facebook.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling said that nearly 29 percent of colleges use blogs as recruitment tools, while the percentage of colleges using online chat rooms jumped 12 percent in 2002 to nearly 35 percent in 2006.

Alliant International University recently ran a Facebook ad for its Center for Forensic Studies.  The ad targeted users with bachelor’s degrees in psychology that watched the show “Criminal Minds.” And because Facebook allows you to target users in ads using the specific information they list in their profiles, such as favorite TV shows and education – this allows advertisers to target very specific users.

Through the ad, Alliant asked users to take an online quiz to find out how much they knew about serial killers.  The answer page gave them the choice of joining the forensic program’s Facebook group or linking to the program’s home page.

When all was said and done, almost 5,000 people took the quiz and nearly 500 of them made it all the way to the how-to apply page on the university website.

Now, some experts have said that allocating too many resources, (aka $$$$$), to social media efforts does not prove its return.  I beg to differ – not that I have evidence to prove such a statement, but based on the basic philosophy behind social media and its effect – clearly there is only a win-win situation involved here.  Such as this, if your going to establish a blog network to promote recruiting – make sure your website is up to par with what you are doing on the social media side.  The last thing you want to do is have a kick-ass blog, and then turn students to a poorly built college/university homepage.

If you are going to operate podcasts and video through places such as iTunes, YouTube, etc…make sure you try and implement that technology on your regular website as well.  This is where branding becomes an issue – and a possible students views the entrance page on the blog, video, or podcast area as great, and then quickly ‘bounce’ as soon as they reach your regular website.

One example of a college website that does it well, in terms of how their ‘regular’ home page/ entrance page looks is Bryant University in Rhode Island.  They successfully integrated a ‘tour’ entrance page, in addition to their normal homepage, that uses their current students into a ‘video-friendly’ format that ‘pops’ in terms of functionality and is useful for actual information necessary for a student to make a decision – taking them to the ‘regular’ admissions home page.  Schools should consider this outline when thinking about organizing their recruiting approach.