Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing

You can't miss it just about anywhere on the web these days: Advertising for adults to enroll in bachelor's and master's degree programs.

And much if not most of this is tightly targeted to people searching for the right career. After all, "career advancement" is one of the strongest terms that students of every age favor in our Customer Carewords research.

Consider this example. Yahoo runs a "news" story on the front page about the "10 stealth careers that are on the rise." That's a fly trap to lure people into a plethora of ads for adult degree programs. Visit http://education.yahoo.net/degrees/articles/featured_10_great_careers_you_never_heard.html and you'll find a story on "10 Great Careers You've Probably Never Heard Of" and the chance to browse for degrees in just about any area you can imagine.

• The advertising isn't just from for-profits like Phoenix and Capella. Search for online Ph.D. programs, for instance, and you'll find an ad for Boston University. Follow that ad and you'll eventually learn that the BU choices are for Doctor of Physical Therapy and a "Doctorate in Occupational Therapy."
• Things fall apart just a bit at this point as much of the information you find with a "Ph.D." level search isn't for Ph.D. degrees. In this case, the BU trip takes you to ads for Northeastern, George Washington, and Norwich universities. Each is offering an array of master's degrees but no Ph.D. level programs.

But why quibble? If you throw enough ads on the wall, some of them will stick and attract flys. At least that seems to be the theory at work right now for online advertising for adults.

To sharpen your skills in adult student recruiting, come to Carol Aslanian's conference May 29-30 in Chicago on "Adult Student Marketing: Electronic, Mass Media and Print Practices that Work."

• The meeting is at the University of Chicago's Gleacher Center and there's only room for about 100 people. Over 60 have already registered and this one has sold out for the past two years.
• Register soon at http://www.aslaniangroup.com/events/

Posted by Bob at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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If you've been to one of my "Writing Right for the Web" sessions, you know that an example included in the SEO writing section is about the benefit of creating title tags on your web pages that include something specific about a particular release. Do that and search engines aren't as likely to think that you only have one press release on your website.

Now I've just finished reading a blog post by "collegewebguy" about what you can do to increase the chances that online news services by Google and Yahoo might pick up your own releases. And that involves more steps to create a distinctive identity for each release that's put online.

The post includes the important note that should motivate many people: well over half the population aged 18-29 looks online as their first source for news. And that percent is climbing for people between 30 and 64 as well. These days, if you aren't careful when you take Newsweek or Time out of your mailbox, a light breeze will blow it away. That's called "disappearing ad pages" and it has been happening for years now.

You'll find valuable tips on how to maximize your releases for Google and Yahoo at http://collegewebguy.com/2008/04/01/getting-university-news-picked-up-by-google-news/#comment-610 and you can go on from there to delve deeper at the original sources if you want.

"CollegeWebGuy" is a web designer at University of Arkansas at Little Rock. 

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Time for a little Friday speculation on a fine spring day in Michigan.

A visit to AdAge this morning linked me to an April 14 article at http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=126364 with a title that will scare some people: "It's Web 3.0 and Somebody Else's Content is King."

• The article reports on a new online venture by Tina Brown, of New Yorker and Vanitry Fair fame, to launch an "aggregator" service that people will use to find information on topics that most interest them. Consider it a sophisticated version of present-day search. And an opportunity for focused online advertising.

The scary part of this for traditional communication and public relations plans is that the "aggregation" efforts won't be limited to "just" formal websites. Instead, they will pull content about a particular topic from any place on the web that somebody is creating it. For colleges and universities, that means that it will become even more likely that when people search for something at your school, what comes back will include a Rate My Professors site, a Wikipedia entry, videos on YouTube about your MBA program, and blogs that people write about you.

Even more so than today (when Wikipedia, for instance, is almost always returned by a Google search not far below your official site), you won't be able to control the content that people see about your institution. What's on your own website will become less and less important, especially in the early stages when people explore to build a list of possible "best fit" places to study. You can continue to describe your faculty as if they have sprung forth from Lake Wobegon, but people will pay even less attention to the superlatives than they do now after they've reviewed your Rate My Professors list.

Will "aggregation" services indeed successful in the Web 3.0 world? Various people are busy diasagreeing about that now. But you can be sure that movement toward continued collapse of the Internet walls that separate sources of information will continue.

Two other places are worth a visit if the this topic interests you:

• The Wikipedia page for Web 3.0 for various definitions and predictions of what's to come at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3
• The Pew Internet report on "Financial Woes Now Overshadow All Other Concerns for Journalists" (not about salaries but the survival of the business model) at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=403 

Will individual college and university websites remain important? Yes. But their value as an early marketing tool will diminish in Web 3.0. People will visit your sites in the future because they have already put you high on their list of possible places to enroll. The experience they have on your website at that point, and how it compares to your competition, will play a major role in sustaining or diminishing initial interest levels. Two elements will rise in importance: 

• More than before, strong marketing sites will be built around knowledge of the content your future students want to find and the tasks they want to accomplish on your site. That includes, for instance, information about real college costs similar to what a handful of colleges are providing with online cost estimators (see a list of 7 at http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/2007/12/5_online_financial_aid_scholar.html).
• You'll have to engage people with web-friendly language when they visit your site. Web editor positions will proliferate in a Web 3.0 world. And that is a very good thing.

Enough for now. More later. A great weekend to everyone.

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This morning I've been getting ready to present the results and recommendations from my review of 12 law school websites that compete with a client of mine. As part of that process, I decided to take a quick look at the websites of the top 10 law schools rated most highly by US News & World Report. That seemed as good a place as any to search for online marketing elements worth sharing.

The overall results didn't diminish my conclusion in an earlier post that law schools in general are not as marketing-oriented as other segments of higher education. At the graduate and professional level, MBA schools in particular have a much stronger marketing approach.

But here are some features worth visiting that stood out for me:

• University of Chicago with 10 faculty and student blogs telling stories that give interested students a special insight into what it is like to study law there. Scan through what's available at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/blog.html
• Northestern University's interactive online viewbook where the video introductions show once again what can be done when imagination and time permit something other than a PDF format at http://www.law.northwestern.edu/admissions/viewbook/
• University of Michigan's easy-to-scan outcomes information that uses a map of the United States to quickly locate where recent alumni have found employment after leaving the school at http://www.law.umich.edu/currentstudents/careerservices/factsandstats/pages/gradgeo.aspx.aspx

These features take obvious advantage of Web 2.0 communication capabilities, Soon, we can suspect, more schools will be adding similar features to help make the visit experience more productive.

And there's nothing here that could not be adopted by other professional school websites as well.

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Here's another move in the right direction for better web content and communications.

John Hopkins, associate vice president for college relations at Wooster College, sent this along with the note that the college is expanding the team responsible for the web... from one person to three. The new director will hire the next two team members.

Read through what's here. Use it to help develop positions like this at your own college. And of course, if you're interested in applying for the position, that information is at the end of this description.

Director of Web Communication

• The College of Wooster (http://www.wooster.edu/) seeks a director of Web communication to provide strategic vision and leadership for its Web-based communication and marketing efforts.
• The director will have overall responsibility for the development and management of the college’s Web site. He or she will design and develop new sub-sites, create multimedia Web content, direct and manage the work of a Web editor and Web programmer, and lead project teams on Web-based marketing and communication initiatives that contribute to the achievement of the college’s strategic goals, with primary emphasis on those related to student recruitment and alumni engagement. The position reports to the associate vice president for college relations and marketing.
• The director will serve as liaison between the offices of College Relations and Information Technology, and as primary point of contact for all academic and administrative departments on Web-related issues including site design and development, message strategy, and content creation. He or she will work closely with colleagues in IT to stay current on best practices in Web development, design, and marketing strategies, and continually work to make the site more effective by integrating appropriate new tools, technologies, and practices. The college has just begun a major site redesign, in partnership with an outside firm, and the director will play a central role in that initiative.
• The successful candidate must have five years experience designing, developing, and managing complex Web sites; specific higher education Web development experience and experience with the implementation or on-going use of a content management system is highly desirable. He or she must be highly proficient with major Web markup and coding languages, including HTML, XHTML, CSS, PHP, and Javascript; with multimedia content creation tools such as Adobe Creative Suite, iMovie and FinalCut; and with writing for the Web. The director must have strong project management skills and the ability to direct and manage diverse creative and technical teams. He or she must communicate clearly and collaborate effectively with a broad range of campus constituencies. A bachelor’s degree in journalism, marketing, communication, information technology, or a related field is required.

Please send letter of application, resume, URLs of representative samples of your work, and list of current references to: The College of Wooster, The Department of Human Resources, 536 East Wayne Avenue, Wooster, Ohio 44691

Posted by Bob at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Financial aid and scholarship estimators from 7 schools is still far from a rush to fill in this important marketing element on college and university websites. But, every new site is a move in the right direction.

And so today, a welcome addition at Southwestern University. This one covers both merit and need-based aid, based on questions on class rank, ACT or SAT score, family income and assets, family size, and the number of family members attending college,

After you fill in your details, you get to watch a column graph fall down away from the maximum cost of more than $35,000 a year. Rather like watching United Fund success in reverse and a nice, immediate visual touch to see how much you might save at Southwestern.

See how low your cost can go at http://www.southwestern.edu/financial-aid/cost/calc2.html

Thanks to Paul Novack, director of web communications at Susquehanna University, for letting me know about this example.

You can see the list of 7 ways to do financial aid and scholarship calculators at http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/2007/12/5_online_financial_aid_scholar.html

Posted by Bob at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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