Beyond MySpace: Jumping on the Social Networking Bandwagon

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Beyond MySpaceJumping on the Social Networking
Bandwagon
Erin Curtis VP, Interact Communications NCMPR
District 4 October 22, 2008
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What is Social Networking?

• A brief overview
• One2one2many
• Online communes
• Multiple Simultaneous/Asynchronous Messaging
• MySpace/Facebook/Friendster, etc.
• Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
  (MMORPG) Gaming
• Its arguably everything that allows one2one
  instant communication in a digital environment
  (Think web/cell phone/gaming and everything in
  between)

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Why Jump on the Bandwagon?

• Under 30 crowd not consuming traditional media in
  large numbers
• Off the grid
• Prefer opt-in/opt-out media (pull)
• Social networking
• Creates strong links between people, but on their
  terms

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Girls more likely to engage in classic social
networking

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Boys more likely to game

The Daedalus Project, The Psychology MMORPG
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Social Networking is Edging to The Tipping Point
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But Our World is Tipped Now
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A Few Colleges Are Moving into SNS

• 150 Colleges use Second Life to Teach Classes
• 500 Colleges have Pod/Vod Casts as Part of Their
  Curriculum
• Many (number unknown) Use SNS for Promotion

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How Can You Get Into the Game?
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Social Networking Tools

• Start with your own college web site
• Target specific audiences (PODs)
• Use video (of students, faculty, anything and
  everything)
• Authentic narration
• YouTube-style is OK
• Blogs
• Interactivity (real-time help, chat, etc.)

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Social Networking Tools

• Blogs
• A publicly shared text interchange
• Politically scary
• Tough to moderate
• What if students say bad things about us?
• They will and that is the best call to action
• They will be saying things to their friends
• anyway, this way you will know about it
• Available from some CMS vendors

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Blog Example Life_at_Lane

• Lane Community College (Oregon)
• A Student Moderated Discussion. All
  communications on this site are subject to the
  LCC Student Code of Conduct and the Information
  Technology Appropriate Use Policy Any views or
  opinions presented in these blogs are solely
  those of the author and do not necessarily
  represent those of the college.

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Social Networking Tools

• Classic social networking sites
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Virtual Reality sites
• Second Life (3D Life Simulation)
• Gaming
• World of Warcraft, Eve, Cartoon Network, Disneys
  Virtual Kingdom

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SNS Sites

• Personalized location
• All about the destination
• It's an extension of your personality (or your
  college)
• What you want to share about yourself to the
  world
• Drive potential students to your site

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Facebook Metrics

• General Growth
• More than 100 million active users
• Facebook is the 4th most-trafficked website in
  the world (comScore)
• Facebook is the most-trafficked social media site
  in the world (comScore)
• User Demographics
• Over 55,000 regional, work-related, collegiate,
  and high school networks
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of
  college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years
  old and older
• Maintains 85 market share of 4-year U.S.
  universities
• Applications
• No. 1 photo sharing application on the Web
  (comScore)
• Photo application draws more than twice as much
  traffic as the next three sites combined
  (comScore)
• More than 24 million photos uploaded daily
• More than 6 million active user groups on the site

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MySpace Metrics

• MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active
  users
• The countrys most trafficked site on the
  Internet
• 85 of MySpace users are of voting age (18 or
  older)
• 1 in 4 Americans are on MySpace
• 100 Billion rows of data
• 14 Billion comments on the site
• 20 Billion mails on the site total
• 50 Million mails per day
• 10 Billion friend relationships
• 1.5 Billion images
• 8 Million images being uploaded per day
• 60,000 new videos being upload to MySpaceTV each
  day
• More than 8 million artists and bands on MySpace
  Music
• On average 300,000 new people sign up to MySpace
  every day

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Twitter

• Micro Blogging, sends one liners to all your
  contacts
• 140 characters on what you are doing, and your
  views
• Public forums used to find interesting topics
• Twitter is all about the text content
• 1 million users and growing fast, outages
  common, very mobile!!
• 40 US, 60 international

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Second Life

• A public forum in a simulated world
• Emotion, the next best thing to being there
• 15 million members, 2 million active
• Application installation required
• Modern computer needed for best use

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Second Life
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World of Warcraft
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What We Should Be Doing

• Looking at the data what social networking and
  gaming sites are popular with our students?
• How many of us have online marketing budgets?
• Change your focus to pull media

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Make sure your pull media efforts arent lame

• Online campaigns should have something to offer
• Direct students to some place social fun
• Give them interesting, interactive tools that
  cater to their culture (Disneys Virtual Kingdom)
• Diary of a freshmans first year
• Think Facebook-style web sites with blogs,
  photos dynamic and interactive

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Example of lame
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Getting New Media to Work For You

• A college in CA that we have worked with
  advertised on MySpace BY ZIP code
• The ad linked to their home page and the results
  were very good with click-thru rates at 4-7
  per week
• More than 35,000 clicks per week
• Combined with other media enrollments increased
  up to 6
• They are now working on their own MySpace page
  for the ad to link to, which will increase the
  viral marketing aspects greatly.

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Getting New Media to Work For You

• Another college in CA bought online ads through
  Google
• Video and flash ads as well as text search ads
• Ads placed on lots of sites, including SNS like
  Facebook and MySpace
• Basic recruitment campaign
• Can also use videos on their web sites, upload to
  YouTube, used them for Cable ads, etc.
• Results were good, headcount is up

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Getting New Media to Work For You

• What we learned
• Geographic targeting is vital, and more
  sophisticated than any other media
• Text ads got placed more have to bid high to
  get video and flash ads placed
• Requires expertise to manage these ad campaigns
  (Google, Facebook, etc.)

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Getting New Media to Work For You

• A To-Do List
• Get Educated
• Learn about how to use online ad tools,
  analytics, etc. or hire in the expertise
• If you arent already, start using SNS yourself
• Start Using the Tools
• Blogs on college website
• Videos on website, Youtube, etc.
• Set up college sites on Facebook, MySpace, etc.
  and have a student manage it for you!

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So What SHOULD be Done?

• Comfortable or not Smart colleges are embracing
  it
• Mediate it Dont Moderate it.
• Use its immediacy and authenticity to bring your
  college community to the virtual world

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Are Community Colleges

• Going to leave it to the for-profit world?
• Going to wait to implement until its as
  unimportant to students as email?
• Or embrace it and take it to a whole new level?
• You Tell Me

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Drop Your Business Card Here

• And you could win
• One free year participating in the
• National Student Media Preferences Survey
• A 3500 Value!