Speaker: The illustrious Brad J Ward

Full time admissions e-comm coordinator - sits on the internet in admissions 40 hours a week. 

slides: http://bradjward.com/presenting/stamats08

it’s basically a concept of brick and mortar and finite inventory versus internet and unlimited inventory. 

How does it apply to admissions? 

80/20 rule: http://go.butler.edu/cs (cs stands for community server) 

Brad uses the twitter to pull in status updates onto student blogs. 

First two weeks of October: 117 new members; 301 forum posts; 62 blog comments; accounted for 29% of the total admissions site traffic.  It may amount to a small percentage of page views but those kids are getting exactly what they are looking for. 

The conversation is in the long tail. The conversation is use-generated. As participation increases, so does content and engagement. 

He lets his bloggers post directly do the website, without moderation and hasn’t had a problem.  He puts a major catholic guilt trip on them. there have been a few “grey” situations where they weren’t sure if the post was appropriate but they never asked them to talk it down. 

Twitter is “between the blog posts”….it’s the little stuff that’s a part of college but that you don’t necessarily want to write about. At this point in time, twitter is not the tool for recruiting, but pulling in the feed does add a new dimension to the blogs.  Users don’t know its twitter and don’t need an account to see it. 

A struggle for him is to get others to see the value of it.  Counselors don’t promote it. 

What is social media?  To him, it’s people having conversations online.  Don’t get into this stuff until your .edu website is solid!

Return on conversation: what value are you adding or subjecting to your conversation by joining it?

Its about creating and assembling a collection of tools that captures the attention of people who truly care.

Example: Butler’s online application broke.  No one called the office to say it was down. No one emailed their counselor.  But a prospect student did comment on Twitter about Butler’s website being retarded. What would have happened if he hadn’t been listening? 

Secrets to Long Tail Recruitment: 

  • Think niche
  • Lose control
  • Crowdsource
  • Thank “and”, not “or”
  • Understand “free”