Internet and web – Page 19

I just finished watching the PBS Frontline documentary Generation Like. Here’s the trailer:

Generation Like is the latest project by author and mediasphere commentator Douglas Rushkoff, and if you have an hour to spare I think you’ll find it worth watching. Anyone who’s interested in a better understanding of how today’s adolescents — tomorrow’s college students — are coming of age in such a rich digital-media environment ought to watch at least some of this video.

The premise of this documentary, in Rushkoff’s own words (around the 5:48 mark), is that “likes, follows, friends, retweets — they’re the social currency of this generation.” And that social currency can translate into actual currency for many corporations. Generation Like, says Rushkoff on his website, “explores how the perennial teen quest for identity and connection has migrated to social media — and exposes the game of cat-and-mouse that corporations are playing with these young consumers.”

I’m still trying to process what Rushkoff’s documentary all means for higher education — from a branding and marketing standpoint as well as from the perspective of our educational missions — so I don’t have much commentary to add at the moment. I will say that some of the concerns expressed in the film will probably turn out to be overblown. That’s typically the case with documentaries that try to critique or analyze a cultural shift as the shift is happening. It’s like trying to analyze the damage of an earthquake while the ground is still shaking. But this seemingly insatiable hunger for likes and recognition in the digital sphere does have major implications for how adolescents are marketed to — and how they can become brand ambassadors for those entities they “like” in the social sphere.

I think this program offers some valuable perspectives for those of who are responsible for communicating with future college students. They, like us, are affected by the culture around them, and their quest for identity is being affected by the digital world. And as one corporate marketer interviewed by Rushkoff says, “To stand on the sidelines is not an option.”

(Hat tip to Kevin Wood for pointing me to Mitch Joel’s post about Generation Like.)

This week’s Friday Five comes to you thanks to Mallory Wood of mStoner, who recently shared (via mStoner’s “Intelligence” e-newsletter) some key points from the 2014 Social Admissions Report from Chegg, Zinch and Uversity. In her email, Mallory shares five great data points from the research, all of which support her assertion that admissions marketers should “put your visitors (prospective students) in direct contact with current students, other admitted students, and admission counselors” through your social media channels, rather than trying to mediate the relationship through more traditional PR and marketing approaches like “second-hand stories and student testimonials.”

From the #SocAdm14 report: How often prospective students report using various social media platforms. Instagram and Twitter come out on top. LinkedIn and Snapchat are practically irrelevant. — From the #SocAdm14 report: How often prospective students report using various social media platforms. Use of Instagram exploded between 2012 and 2013.

But it would be too easy to merely repost mStoner’s five points. So I dug into the data to bring you five other interesting takeaways from that report. As for mStoner’s five takeaways, they’re embedded in this post by Michael Stoner, who got a sneak peek at the data prior to release. (He has connections.) But you should also sign up for mStoner’s Intelligence newsletter so you don’t miss out next time. That’s the intelligent thing to do.

Key takeaways: 2014 Social Admissions Report

Prospective students are connecting to your institution on social media. The percentage of students who follow official social media accounts grew by nearly 47 percent between 2012 and 2013 (from 49 percent to 72 percent). That would suggest that your official social media presence is important for student recruitment.
They’re checking you out on mobile, too. Ninety-seven percent of the prospective students surveyed for this report say they’ve looked at a college or university’s website on a smartphone or tablet. (OK, I did re-use one of Mallory’s bullet points. But it was worth repeating.) As the report says, “Mobile is not the future. Mobile is now.”
McKayla Maroney makes a cameo appearance in the report.

But they are not impressed. According to this research, nearly two-thirds of those students who viewed our websites on mobile devices said the experience was “OK” at best or “challenging.”
Ditch the mobile app. Three-quarters of the students said they wouldn’t download an app for a school they were researching. So don’t bother.
They’d rather talk to students and counselors. Nearly three-quarters of students (74 percent) surveyed said it was either important or very important for them to talk to currently enrolled students in social media. Sixty-nine percent said the same about admissions counselors. They don’t care that much about talking to faculty, alumni or administrators.

Want to talk about this research on Twitter? Or see what others are saying about it? Use the hashtag #SocAdm14.