Innovative is a word that gets flung around a lot.
innovative
adjective
1. ahead of the times; "the advanced teaching methods"; "had advanced views on the subject"; "a forward-looking corporation"; "is British industry innovative enough?" [syn: advanced]
2. being or producing something like nothing done or experienced or created before; "stylistically innovative works"; "innovative members of the artistic community"; "a mind so innovational, so original"
Given that definition, I think it's fair to say that, although it could have been many years ago, the time to classify higher ed marketing on a social network as innovative has passed. It's been at least three years since MySpace and Facebook became widespread and anything that happens three years after the fact can hardly be called forward-thinking. Yet it seems to be one of the most discussed things out there right now. I'm going to make a bold statement and say it's not NEARLY worth this much hype. What college out there can document an increase in applications, enrollments or gifts steaming from a social network? And why would you expect such a thing to happen? "Well, I wasn't REALLY going to apply or enroll at your school....but you have a FACEBOOK PAGE now so sign me up!" It just doesn't work that way.
"But Karlyn, we use it to COMMUNICATE with them over their medium of choice." That's a valid point but I would still argue that students who communicate with you on there are probably the same students who IM you every single day and participate in every live chat you have. Don't get me wrong - I think it is a worthwhile venture to have a presence on the larger sites if a student suddenly has a burning question while surfing MySpace that he just can't be bothered to email you with, but let's be honest here folks: It's not going to change the way recruiting is done because, really, is this even the tool you want to try to be innovative with? You do it because, to a certain extent, its expected (like blogs a this point) but you should spend any more time on it than absolutely necessary because there are bigger fish to fry.
(And those of you who maintain these things for current students....well, I just don't understand. You're all in the same geographic area right? I know many of us live our lives behind a computer screen but do we really want to encourage current college students to eliminate actual social interaction altogether?)
Let's assume for a second, that it's four or five years ago and you were the first college to get your school's "official" presence on MySpace or Facebook. So? At my last job, we were one of the first colleges (that I know of) to have an official MySpace page, a bit over two years ago. I put a lot of time and effort into that page and here's what I found: Accepted students loved putting us in their top friends once they decided they were going to enroll but really didn't use the page to any significant degree to communicate with us. The real communication with students who were inclined to use the web came over IM. And, yes, this data comes from hard numbers. So I dropped a lot of my time and my assistant's time to create/maintain a presence on MySpace that no one really used and that energy could have easily been expended elsewhere for better results. It's what my good friend Rob calls "Return on Effort" (ROE). Running a page on a social networking site takes effort and doesn't really produce any results that couldn't have been obtained through previously implemented tactics. Now, add to that the fact that the new "big thing" seems to be creating your own social network. I hope you have a full-time interactive person on staff who does not carry a caseload (and even then, they had better be willing to work overtime)! I think if done properly, this idea could work but I also know that it's going to take a ridiculous amount of effort to get/keep that network engaging.
One final thought - I posted on this earlier, but when are we going to hit social network/Web 2.0 fatigue? I don't think it's far off. How many accounts is too many? At what point do you just decide to bag the whole thing entirely because between work/school, sleep and having some sort of an actually SOCIAL life, it just gets to the point of being too much? Do you really want to force your audience to add one more account to that list or do you want to make life easier for your users and go where they already are? Just some food for thought....if you really want to be innovative you need to start asking yourself "what's next" and "where is this stuff really doing". Asking yourself what you mainstream user really wants is not a bad idea either...
4 comments:
This is hilarious because I've been put as the lead on a sort of feasibility group to examine using this for our school.
I've been wracking my brain for about a month on the best way to utilize SNS and I'm not throughly convinced that it is the way to go. At least not the way they want to do it.
Hi Nick,
I think social networking can be really effective for certain things (ie set up a social network for students who have deposited for them to communicate with each other over the summer). Here's the question I have: Social networks are going to appeal to your super-excited users right? Well, are they really an audience that you have to spend time on, if they are going to enroll anyway?
Karlyn
I understand your point very well.
One audience I had actually thought might profit from this is freshmen. A SNS that would carry students from acceptance letter through their first year.
The downside that I haven't solved yet...getting them out of the network after that. Either it will snowball into a current student network, or it will seem like we're kicking them out. I'm still thinking though.
That is definitely a tricky one! Though would it really be a bad thing if the current students stayed on and then you also used it for incoming students? I think that would be a great forum...talk about authenticity!
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