College. Be.
To convey the sense of community and richness of campus life to prospective college students, UMBC is creating a window into in the university through the eyes of its current students. College. Be is an "aggregator" site where UMBC students stream material—photos, video, Tweets, blog posts, and music lists—that they’ve posted on other social media sites. As noted on the site, "The world is full of advertising trying to convince you why something is great. Why not let you and your friends, who make UMBC what it is, tell that story?" UMBC provided a "seed" group of students representing the breadth of the campus community with cameras to photograph their daily lives and upload them onto FlickR, followed by an invitation to all UMBC students to participate. Social media plus radio and outdoor advertising in the DC metro area will drive initial traffic to the site, which UMBC expects will continue to spread virally.

Food Blog: UMBCEats
UMBCEats is a blog for students, by students, about all things food at UMBC and the surrounding neighborhoods. Seven UMBC bloggers post thoughts about what college students might want to know about food—dorm-room recipes, free food on campus, campus eateries, area restaurant reviews, tips on using campus dining cards, where food comes from, and the hot dog cam in the student union. The bloggers represent the broad range of UMBC students—residential and commuting, foodies and students just trying to eat as cheaply as possible. Together, they provide an authentic slice of campus life. The blog came from a pilot project conceived by UMBC to use viral social media to create interest among prospective students about UMBC and provide an inside look at campus life. The bloggers were recruited by a committee of UMBC staff, and students and are paid a stipend. The blog launched the week of October 12 and will be promoted through campus events, communications, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.

"The admission office directs prospective students to www.smcblogs.com, where they can find links to each Blogger's blog (on campus and abroad), as well as additional blogs from SMC faculty, staff, and a recent graduate. The Bloggers also have their Twitter updates feeding to the page. Links are provided to SMC's YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/saintmichaels, as well as the Bloggers Facebook group. This Facebook group is mostly used for answering questions about campus life, academics, Burlington, and more. We have found prospective students and their families will read the blogs, but typically YouTube and Facebook are only utilized by the prospective students.

"Prospective students are invited to chat with the Saint Michael’s Bloggers throughout their senior year with an online group chat hosted on the SMC website. As applicants find out about their acceptance into the college, this chat room is a great way for them to ask specific questions about majors they are interested in and meet other interested students. Accepted students are also invited to SMC's Ning site, similar to Facebook and only for our accepted students. There is a great level of participation on this site, which the Bloggers also monitor for questions and advice.

"The admission office's social networking approach has worked well, especially since the Bloggers have gotten some branding. Keeping that level of consistency among the various sites has allowed students to form relationships with the Bloggers, and we find that because they become familiar to the prospective students, a richer dialogue occurs."

Amy Phenix, director of communications & public relations at Macalester, said "Macalester’s collective social media ‘tribe’ is comprised of alumni, students, faculty, staff, parents, media institutions, reporters, prospective students, prospective parents, small businesses, think tanks, nonprofits, and friends we haven’t met. Currently, we have one institutionally-managed presence (group, page, account) in each space. However, this year, we plan to support Admissions in developing a ‘Class of 2014’ Facebook page for admits. Also, individual alumni chapters and reunion classes have set up and manage their own Facebook pages.

"Social media complements our Alumni Relations to connect alumni to their alma mater. Indeed, Facebook is already doing some of this work for us – the last three of the five-year reunion classes have smashed attendance records. In part, this may be because they were already in contact with each other, and able to rapidly spread the word, through Facebook.

"Tracking our progress in our social media efforts continues to evolve as we learn more. At a high level, we track the number of fans, followers, and group members we have in space. The return on investment could be found through many lenses – from more rapid media coverage of our important news, to greater trust from our constituents, to a general sense of pride from all of our constituents.

"At a more granular level, we are paying close attention to the number of interactions we receive in each space. Facebook does a good job of ‘grading’ our posts. We watch closely what kind of discussions draw the most attention in LinkedIn. We also pay attention to the number of retweets, hat-tips, and mentions we receive in Twitter. At heart, however, we know we are succeeding when our fans, followers, and group members speak fondly of the college in heartfelt ways."

On the admissions side, gone are the days when glossy viewbooks dominate university recruitment efforts. "This generation is very savvy to media," Karen Giannino, senior associate dean of admission. "They see right through the posed photograph," added Giannino. Colgate already offers virtual tours, online chat sessions, and Facebook and Twitter pages. In the next few months, the university will roll out a blog intended to give prospective students and their parents an insiders look at the admissions process. Admissions counselors will blog about their jobs, post photos, and interact with visitors who leave comments.

In addition, the university continues to look for ways to use technology to engage alumni. Colgate recently unveiled the Living Writers course, allowing alumni to watch live webcasts with prominent writers, including some Pulitzer Prize winners, visiting campus and ask questions through a chat room. "Many of our alumni tell us that they want to continue to experience the educational opportunities they had on campus. Technology has allowed us to do just that," said Tim Mansfield, director of alumni affairs. "Their distance from campus may have been a barrier in the past, but new media is now connecting them with the campus whether they're around the corner or around the world."

Lehigh has established a domain in over 20 social media spaces such as Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Delicious, and Twitter. With over 350 social networking sites now available, Lehigh concentrates on maintaining a presence in the largest and most popular domains. Lehigh on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lehighu 
Lehigh on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=44751&trk=anet ug hm 
Lehigh's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/lehighuofficial 

Lehigh Athletics has also embraced social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter. Their Facebook page (www.facebook.com/lehighathletics) and Twitter account (www.twitter.com/lehighsports) have been gaining in use and popularity as the department promotes the tools in a variety of ways, including via their sports telecasts. 

Lehigh is also nearing completion of an iPhone application, and working on WebApps for specific audiences, e.g., visiting students and their families. Lehigh plans to create an app that will integrate the iPhone with recruitment print materials, Web site, and visitors center kiosk.

The Longhorn Confidential student blogs project started its fourth year at the beginning of October 2009. The blogs project chronicles the experiences of eight new undergraduates each year and, for 2009-10, will also feature the blog of a graduate student. The students post blog entries, photos and videos, and the site also gives readers the opportunity to interact with the bloggers in the form of comments. The project is also a collaboration with colleagues in the Office of Admissions, who use Longhorn Confidential as a Web tool to reach out to prospective students and their parents.
http://www.utexas.edu/inside_ut/lconf/

The university has also recently developed two other blogs: Further Findings, stories behind the research conducted at the university, and ShelfLife@Texas, showcasing literary news and events at the university.
http://www.utexas.edu/opa/blogs/research/
http://www.utexas.edu/opa/blogs/shelflife/

Get Your Horns Up is a photo-sharing Web site for alums. The idea for Get Your Horns Up comes from one of the videos the university produced for its brand: What starts here changes the world. Texas wanted to showcase those efforts and stories of success since graduation, give alums the opportunity to reconnect with one another and, through photos of alums proudly showing off their "Hook 'em, Horns" hand sign, also have a bit of fun doing it.
http://www.utexas.edu/opa/alumni/

Social media has provided the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum, opportunities to post content that is topical, drive traffic to its Web site and blog, and share external content that relates to the Center and its diverse holdings. To date, 62 percent of the Center’s Twitter posts push followers back to Ransom Center content while 38 percent push followers to external Web sites. Sharing content via social media outlets has contributed to thousands of Web visits to the Ransom Center’s site. "We believe that many of these visits may have not ordinarily happened, but were triggered with social media messaging," said Jen Tisdale, director of public affairs at the Ransom Center.

A recent promotional campaign that sought to bring awareness about the opening of an Edgar Allan Poe exhibition was the Center’s first strategic campaign that fully integrated social media and its tools. The week-long campaign revealed unique online components each day of the week via Twitter and Facebook, but also integrated YouTube and Flickr. Advertising on Facebook brought a 40 percent increase of fans, while attendance for the opening week of the Poe exhibition increased by more than 52 percent from the spring 2009 exhibition and by 84 percent from the fall 2008 exhibition. More than 1,200 clickthroughs occurred from Facebook and Twitter.

Tisdale added, "We are still working to define how we use social media, but some of its benefits are already plainly visible."

The site also includes links to all the CC Facebook pages and groups, among them the official Facebook page, Athletics, KRCC Radio, Tutt Library, Summer Session, Dance Festival, Summer Music Festival, and Colorado College (a group for CC students, staff, faculty and alumni).

Colorado College students are also using Twitter to share college news on a semi-regular basis.

For example, in April 2009 there were 600 registered "fans" on the official Earlham Facebook site. Since that time, after encouraging more fan participation and posting information to the page regularly, Earlham has nearly 1,600 fans, many of whom are extremely active. Earlham posts news items, photos, videos and campus events and encourage fans to do the same. Earlham sees a significant connection with alumni who interact with the college through Facebook. (www.facebook.com/earlhamcollege)

Earlham recently launched a blog written by students. For this combined personal-institutional blog, the students are writing about life at Earlham from their own perspectives. While edited by the Public Affairs staff prior to posting, the entries are not assigned nor are students encouraged to use "marketing-speak." Earlham hopes that the authenticity of the blog, taken as a whole, will provide prospective students a picture of college life at Earlham that they cannot get anywhere else. (http://pressroom.earlham.edu/category/blogs/life-earlham-blog)

Additionally, the College has a presence on Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

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