Not Just Journals - Another Way of Using Blogs for Admissions
In my post last week about the state of admissions websites, I took quite a bit of flack for the mere suggestion that maybe…just MAYBE…blogs could be used for something other than student journals. I was really hoping that someone would step up in the comments and start throwing some ideas out there, but alas people seem to be totally in love with the idea of journals.
Turns out, I wasn’t just throwing ideas out there - I was talking from experience. By 2006, when I still worked in admissions, I was already right bored with student blogs and wanted to experiment with the medium. This led to the first “new students blog” (I know, not the most creative name in the world), which was a publication just for students who were enrolling at the school I was working at. I kept it up from June through the end of August, when students arrived on campus. The first year went well, but I wanted to take it to the next level the following year, so it 2007 the new student’s blog was updated literally every day of the week (including weekends) with answers to questions that incoming students were asking, videos of the counseling staff offering their tips and advice (at least one new video was posted a week), profiles of members of the new class and admissions announcements. Here are a few screenshots:
You can view an archived version of the blog here (I make no guarantees on if the videos will still work or how long it will be up, as I no longer work there).
Because it was just for new students, this blog had a maximum audience of 650 (the size of the incoming class). If we wanted to be really generous, we could add two parents for each new student, and say the max audience was just under 2,000. In the three months that this blog was live on the website, it got well over 20,000 visits. Not pageviews. Visits. That means that people were coming back to this thing time and time again to see the new content that was up. I considered it an undeniable success.
I hope this gets people’s creative juices flowing as to how else you can use blogs as a tool. Remember, it’s nothing more than a content management system with certain special features and has an unlimited amount of possibilities. Journals are great - you should definitely do them. But don’t stop at that. Think outside of the box.
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February 3rd, 2009
OSU’s Admissions Blog is a variety pack of informational tidbits:
http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/blog/
February 3rd, 2009
Karlyn,
It seems almost as if the blog was functioning somewhat as a FAQ page or roughly like a forum for questions or ideas. Did it start to take on that type of roll at all, or was it ever an intention for the blog to act in that sort of way? We’ve been throwing the idea of creating a FAQ sheet since we did away with the forums last year, and I’ve toyed with the idea of having an admissions blog similar to this (I’ve had trouble with buy-in though). Were you the only one to contribute, or did you have a team of people? What do you think?
February 3rd, 2009
Jeremy - exactly. The primary goal of it was to disseminate information specifically to this audience, which for a school like Norwich in particular (military thing) tends to get uppity over the summer before they arrive. It’s an FAQ in a more interesting way. Plus all the questions were actually taken from students - not just stuff we thought they thought was important. The counseling staff kept logs of all the questions that they were asked on the phone and that’s how we came up with the content. The counseling staff were also responsible for identifying the students for the profiles, as well as coming up with the tips. Then my intern and I would write the profiles and shoot the video/edit it and such. By spreading it over so many people (probably 6 or 7), the workload wasn’t really that much. I would always recommend trying it and just seeing how it goes.
February 3rd, 2009
Since you called me out on twitter…
“take that @tsand + (link to this blog post)”
Then start this post with…
“took quite a bit of flack for the mere suggestion that maybe…just MAYBE…blogs could be used for something other than student journals”
Are you suggesting I am of the opinion that blogs can only be used as student journals?
February 3rd, 2009
You did seem to argue with me tooth and nail about it
February 3rd, 2009
Copy/paste the comment where I claim that blogs can only be used as student journals… I can’t seem to find it.
February 3rd, 2009
Todd, I meant this as more of a ha ha thing, but if you want to take it seriously then go back and read my comments on the other blog. My contention the ENTIRE TIME was not that journals were bad, but that since every college had them, they were no longer a differentiator and that colleges could do more creative things and you and I went round for round.
February 3rd, 2009
Yeah, well maybe I can use your blog as an example. I’ve got most people on board, but like I said, it’s getting people to help with the content. There’s a point where one just has to move forward with a project. However, one person can’t do everything, haha. Thanks!
February 3rd, 2009
@Jeremy - I had the support of the director of admissions when I did this, so she basically charged the counseling staff with adding it to their workload or suffer the consequences….plus i bugged them a lot. they didn’t like me much.
February 3rd, 2009
Cool, thanks for clearing that up.
February 4th, 2009
At Colby, we have an admissions blog called “Behind the Decision” . It’s written by an admissions counselor with the main goal of demystifying the actual mechanics and timing of the admissions cycle. It includes stories about the College and about students, but it mostly describes, in a very informal and straightforward way, what happens with all of those information requests, college visits, college fairs, and (most importantly) applications between the time they are sent in and the time decision letters are mailed out.
February 4th, 2009
Oops. URL for the Behind the Decision blog didn’t show up. Trying again: http://bit.ly/viG7
February 20th, 2009
Totally agree, I started blogging about analytics for a mostly internal audience at the University but as soon as I posted about tuition fees (which are soon to arrive here in Sweden)I suddenly found a whole new audience of students. My blog enables me to give them information for which, currently, there is no real other source.
April 27th, 2009
Sorry I’m just seeing this blog post now. Hope it’s okay to add my comments despite the date…
I started my admission blog without publicity in 2005 with the goal that it would not be newsletter. I had heard a prominent local blogger say that without discussion, a blog is just a journal and I wanted to incite conversation.
For the first two years, traffic only came from Google. When I sent around analytics that showed that my blog was getting more traffic and unique visitors that my office’s website, my colleagues bought into it.
People often tell me that no other school to which they applied had a blog. I know this isn’t true. I interpret those comments as an indication of the quality of the blogging being done by some schools.
I always thought my blog would evolve into a team blog, but that hasn’t happened. It is a huge effort (I probably post more often than most), but it’s been well worth it when ASQs come back with my name in the comments and when people call me and my dog (the blog mascot) by our nicknames.