US Educational Group » Social Media

OACAC BOS10 Conference App

Wassan — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:35:37 +0000

Finally arrived in Boston for the OACAC BOS10 – Overseas Association for College Admission Counseling Conference. Traffic delays brought me into the city well past midnight, and onto the Northeastern campus at almost 1.30am. I remembered that the last email from the OACAC team had mentioned an iPhone App, since I didn’t have my agenda on me, I quickly downloaded it in the hopes it would actually be, you know, helpful.

Wow, thanks so much to the web development team at Northeaststern for putting the tjme into developing the rockin’ OACAC BOS10 conference app for the iPhone. A simple to use interface allows even the frazzled traveler to stay organized. The interface and nice and simple:

Screenshot - OACAC BOS10 App

The *only* item I would have added would have been a campus map – or maybe that was only needed while searching for the housing dorm at 1.30am after arriving on a much delayed flight.

NAFSA better not have ANY excuses for not having an app available for next year’s conference!

The agenda is easy to access, each session is listed on there, and all the pretty social media icons are easy to access (facebook, twitter, flickr). Be sure to properly tag the conference if you will be tweeting with the #BOS10 hashtag (however, I think lots of people will just use the #OACAC10 hashtag as well).

Screenshot - Sessions

The *only* item I would have added would have been a campus map – or maybe that was only needed while searching for the housing dorm at 1.30am after arriving on that much delayed flight.

NAFSA better not have ANY excuses for not having an app available for next year’s conference!

If you didn’t already download it, what are you waiting for?! See you all in a few hours!

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160 lbs of MAIL?

Joseph — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:20:36 +0000

This video makes me shake my head this morning:

160 pounds of mail from colleges and universities during this student’s search. Wow. While there is certainly a discussion and post in there about the OVERabundance of information thrown at high schools students in the US, what *I* thought about was how many Universities were sending viewbooks overseas? How much are you spending on mailing tons of paper across the world? Often to countries where the mail system is so poor the chances of the student receiving it in a timely manner is completely out of the question (yeah Saudi Arabia, I’m talking to you).

So are you still doing this? Are you still spending money on random direct mail campaigns? Does it work? What is your ROI? I am curious because I would think on average a University should be sending a hundred or less viewbooks to a country like Saudi Arabia each year. The rest of your budget should be spent on using the hundreds of better and more effective methods of connecting with the student on a personal and emotional level. That’s what will connect most of them to your institution and make them interested in attending.

…of course I say all this as an international student who chose her school based on its brochure and chose NOT to go to another based on theirs. Of course that was more than 10 years ago…the recruitment game has changed, and its time to give the students virtual hugs and handshakes, not just more mail.

Wassan

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Yay USEG Has a Facebook URL

Wassan — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:23:06 +0000

Finally! We’ve secured our facebook URL, took a little longer than it should have… but that was our fault for not pushing it a little more in our marketing efforts. We’ve concentrated on getting the Al Jamiat facebook fan page going, and we’re happy to be reaching almost 500 fans within just 5 weeks of having it up.

Are we friends yet?

http://www.facebook.com/usegtours

http://www.facebook.com/aljamiat

I hope you’re keeping tabs on the fun stuff going on at Al Jamiat, our student traffic continues to grow as our content increases. Let me know if you have any articles or students who would be interested in sending something in!

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Facebook Allowing Username Changes

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:25:33 +0000

When Facebook began handing out vanity urls a few months ago, most people saw that there were some potential issues with copyright infringement. Facebook was very insistent that you “choose your username carefully” because you were never ever EVER going to be able to change it! Well, we assume a combination of pranks and frustrated colleges who lost their online IDs to random folks has made Facebook change its policy.

Without much of an announcement, Facebook is now allowing you to change your username…but just one time. Or so they’re saying. So here’s your chance to contact the person who’s sort-of squatting on your name (hey Otterbein, do you hear me???) and request they change their username so you can grab yours.

And if you are completely confused by this post, I think you need to give me a call. If your school is not on Facebook, or if you still don’t have an admissions tab to increase international (and domestic!) student recruitment and engagement, you are missing out folks…I’ll just leave you with this:

In both Lebanon and Tunisia, Facebook is the #1 most visited website in the country.

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Iraq Education Initiative Scholarship – Canceled?

admin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:35:43 +0000

We saw a comment on our Al Jamiat site regarding the Iraq Education Initiative asking if the scholarship had been “canceled” due to the current economic climate…

Our initial instinct was to quickly respond with a resounding NO! That’s completely incorrect! However, in the interest of backing up our response, we sent an email to the Director of the program, to which he responded:

“This is absolutely not true. We are moving forward and the announcement to the students to submit their application is scheduled for July 15.”

So there you go folks, its time to start seriously thinking about how you’re going to recruit these Iraqi students. We suspect the in-country recruitment fairs are going to be few and far between at first. Online recruiting will be the best way to reach these “unreachables” .

A Facebook Fan page may sound overly simple, but its a great place to start – along with a localized page in Arabic aimed specifically at the Iraqi students. A very minor marketing investment that can reward your campus with incredible new students that will truly diversify the school.

Hope you’re already a fan of our Facebook page, if not – what are you waiting for?!

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Twitter Verified Accounts in Higher Education and Recruiting

admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 03:40:20 +0000

Twitter today added Verified Accounts to reduce the chances of fake Twitter accounts being mistaken as real ones. The badge

will appear on any account that has already been vetted by Twitter and shown to be owned by the correct person. The badge will appear in the user profile page above the name, location and bio.

Why does this matter to a higher ed institution? Well, as this Chronicle of Higher Education article “When A Twittering College President is Not Who He Seems” (needs a subscription)

“The Twitter account identified as belonging to Georgetown University’s president, John J. DeGioia, features frank admissions about the mundane details of running a modern academic institution. Last week, for instance, the microblogger wrote that his face was tired from all the “fake-smiling” during graduation events. ”

The problem? It wasn’t the president, but an undergraduate student who edits a student-run magazine. The president of the University of Texas at Austin, William C. Powers Jr., had a fake account as well, which Twitter has now removed.

The point is that the students are looking for a personal connection to the Dean of Admissions, to the President, or to the International Student Advisor, and a blog and twitter are an excellent way of informally communicating with the students and potential students looking at your college or university.

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Facebook Vanity URLs

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:06:54 +0000

Has your school already requested and received your Facebook vanity url? This Saturday morning at 12.01am anyone will be able to choose their own URL for your social profile on Facebook, so instead of the current long URLs we all have,you will be able to choose your school’s name (facebook.com/usegtours) to make all your marketing material look pretty and allowing you to easily direct people to your facebook site.

By Saturday we’ll go from

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=46885563326

http://www.facebook.com/usegtours

There are also a few US Universities and Colleges who have requested their new Facebook vanity URL

http://www.facebook.com/stanford

nice and clean, isn’t it?

Of course, some other social media sites, such as Myspace and Twitter have always used vanity urls but its best to make sure your University’s brand is safe in your marketing hands. Fill out this form with Facebook TODAY to ensure no one squats on your facebook URL until you get to it.

And while you’re at it, you should check and see where else you should be signing up your school’s name.

We’re setting our alarms for 12.01 on Saturday – just to make sure to snag our vanity urls!

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