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!

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.

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?!

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

to

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!