Student blogs (2006)

Communications consult – Jay Collier, 8/18/06

• Client: Bates Admissions Office
• Project manager/editor: Leigh Weisenburger

Goal

Help recruit the students that we want here in the Bates community.

Strategies

• Present the Bates experience to targeted prospective students in a more realistic, credible (genuine), and immediate (spontaneous) manner.
• Make the admissions process more transparent to prospective students by providing timely, personal reports by Admissions
  staff.
• Use innovative methods and technologies to communicate with prospective students.

Objectives

Targeted audience(s)

• Prospective students
  • Current applicants
  • Students with more technological resources
  • International students
• Parents
• Guidance officers

Key message(s)

• Get an inside perspective on being a student at Bates
  • Regular entries
  • Entries by theme
    • A day in the life
    • Balancing fun and work
• Get an inside perspective on the admissions process
• Get links to interesting external perspectives on Bates

Style/voice(s)

• Real people with personable voices, engaging but not eccentric
• In contrast with traditional admissions marketing, this will be less crafted, less varnished, less slick.
• However, in contrast with the unfettered blogosphere, this will probably be more reigned-in, more tailored, more focused.

Credibility factor

The environment should match the level of content independence.

In either case, disclosure of the role of blogger, the level of editorial control, and compensation to the writer would be important.

In other words, if the entries are closely related to more formal Bates messaging, then using Bates-branded environment would be most appropriate. In this case, the writers would be selected, guided, and edited by Bates staff, with recommendations for topics, style, and behavior.

If the entries were to be very loose and wide-ranging, then an independent publishing environment, hosted on a commercial service, might be more appropriate.

Tactics

Content/entries

• Media
  • Text entries (RSS notification)
  • Photography
  • Audio segments (podcast RSS format)
• Periodicity
  • If it’s not regular, then you have more freedom to hold and edit, if necessary.

Response/Comments

• Do you allow them? Only by registered readers? Moderated?
• Consensus for phase one is to not allow comments. Registered, moderated comments might be considered in
  future.

Editorial

• Clear expectations of writers
  • Off-limits topics
  • Disclosure of compensation
• How many editors in approval process?

Publishing system

• In-house
• External

Resources

Compensation for bloggers

• Combination of pay, camera, memory stick, other items

Admissions staff time

• How much time is available? 1-2 hours per week of writing. 3-5 hours of other meetings for editing, design,
  communications, promotion, recruiting, supervision. Take time that had been used for Chats, discussion board, and general response development.
• For what period? Two-three year minimum.
• (20% FTE, possibly representing $10k/year to the institution)

ILS time

• Commitment to providing platform for group collaboration.
• System has already been in use for the past year; being moved into production.

Equipment fees for multimedia enhancements

• Cameras $500-$1,000
  Audio gear $500-$1,000
  Video blogging gear $1,000-3,000

CMR time (one-time)

• Strategic consulting: Jay 16 hours
• Identity design: Camille 10 hours, Jay 4 hours
• Production coordination: Jay 24 hours

Metrics

Measurements of success

• Page views
• Numbers of comments
• Conversions/action (rate this page)
• Anectdotal evidence
• Reports of viewing via questionnaire (within inquiries)
• Simple fact of doing something in this realm

Approach

Phased: start small, build up

• First, start with admissions officers in private blog “conversation”
• Then, when everyone’s comfortable, take the blog public
• Then, staff will have the knowledge to effectively recruit the most effective students to add their voices to the mix.

[Note: final recommendation: student blogs at Wordpress.com, aggregated into RSS feeds and distributed through multiple services.]