O hai there, gentle blog readers!
Hello? *Taps mic* Is this thing on?
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything. Hope you’re still there.
Let’s just dust off this blog and toss out an easy Friday Five “by the numbers” edition. Continue reading “Friday Five: By the numbers, June 2015 edition”
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.”
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.
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.”
Want to talk about this research on Twitter? Or see what others are saying about it? Use the hashtag #SocAdm14.
I had the chance to soak up some wisdom from one of higher ed’s brightest people when it comes to the mobile web, Dave Olsen, during the opening day of HighEdWeb Arkansas. I’ve known Dave virtually for a long time now, and have always found him to be very generous with his ideas, resources and knowledge. I found out that Dave is just as generous and knowledgeable in person.
Dave’s workshop presentation was about making your organization future-friendly, and, at least during the first hour of his session — that is, until Twitter decided to shut down — those of us in attendance were doing a good job relaying Dave’s bits of wisdom to the twitterverse via the #hewebar hashtag.
Oh, well. I was planning to do a wrap-up on Dave’s session for this week’s Friday Five anyway. The absence of Twitter just forced me to do things differently. I had to write things down from Dave’s session — with a pen, on paper — rather than tweet them in the moment, stream-of-consciouslike. These written-down things include a bunch of URLs to great resources that can help you make your organization (and web presence) more future-friendly. Here are five links worth sharing.
P.S. — In an effort to more purposefully think and behave in a future-friendly way (something Olsen suggests), I bring you this Friday Five on a Thursday. You’re not really reading this in the future, it just seems that way. [Mind=blown]
Dave’s HEWebAR presentation in its entirety will be posted on his Slideshare site as well as on EDUniverse (along with all the other HEWebAR presentations).
Since reading Tim Nekritz’s recent post about creating a campus presence on Foursquare, my head has been buzzing with thoughts about how to incorporate this platform into our campus’s social media efforts. I don’t necessarily have any solid ideas to share right now, but I thought I’d throw a few things out there that I’ve learned in the process of digging into this location-based social network.
Even though a few universities have created official outposts on Foursquare (like SUNY Oswego, thanks to Tim’s efforts), the platform is still largely uncharted territory for higher ed. According to aboutfoursquare.com, Harvard, Texas A&M and Stanford all have official Foursquare partnerships. A fourth campus, Cornell also appears to have a Foursquare partnership. (Thanks to @LoriPA for pointing out the Cornell site.)
The Harvard arrangement with Foursquare was picked up by Mashable last January. “The primary idea behind the collaboration,” Mashable reported, “is to encourage students to connect more with friends and professors through location-based game play, as well as to inspire campus visitors to explore the grounds and uncover tips or share to-dos.”
Even before the Harvard announcement, though, the auxiliary services department at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte announced it was using the platform “to spread dining services information and promotions to students, faculty, staff and campus visitors.”
So, what can a campus do with a Foursquare presence?
An aboutfoursquare.com post from a few weeks ago suggests that the platform is a natural for our highly mobile student populations. “Students are usually in close proximity to each other, so the hot spot where your friends are checking in is usually only a short walk away. Changing your mind as you see other friends at a different venue typically doesn’t require a long car ride.”
The article suggests a couple of ways campuses can take advantage of Foursquare to solidify relationships and build a sense of community:
The aboutfoursquare.com article provides a good primer on getting started on Foursquare. But if you want a broader perspective on geotagging platforms in general (since Foursquare isn’t the only game in town), check a series of posts by Tim Nekritz from earlier this year (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). Another good resource is Shane Haggerty’s 10 suggestions for using Foursquare in educational marketing. And if you want to find out where the hot spots are on your campus for several geotagging platforms (including Foursquare), check out Checkin Mania.
One of the latest Foursquare innovations is the ability for subscribers of official Foursquare sites to add “layers,” or tips from third-party sources that Foursquare users could subscribe to. This recent ReadWriteWeb article discusses how two online organizations — the Independent Film Channel and the Huffington Post — are using Foursquare to push tips for people who want to see locations the way these organizations and their fans choose to annotate information. This idea of “location as platform” could open new possibilities for colleges and universities.
Is your campus doing anything with Foursquare? If so, I’d like to know about it. Please leave a note in the comments below.
A longtime blogging buddy in the UK recently posted what he called a blogpost of no consequence. It was, of course, nothing of the sort, as it was filled with all sorts of interesting links and even a fun YouTube video. It was a post of random observations, and randomness is not without consequence.
Today’s post is random. The only thing not random about it is that it follows the order of five things, as is my custom for Friday blog posts. So let’s get to it:
Happy Weekend, everyone.
P.S. – Celtics in six.
