Beyond MySpace: Jumping on the Social Networking Bandwagon Erin Curtis VP, Interact Communications NCMPR District 4 October 22, 2008

A brief overview: One2one2many Online communes Multiple Simultaneous/Asynchronous Messaging MySpace/Facebook/Friendster, etc. Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) – Gaming It’s arguably everything that allows one2one instant communication in a digital environment (Think web/cell phone/gaming and everything in between) What is Social Networking?

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

Girls more likely to engage in “classic” social networking… K

Boys more likely to game… The Daedalus Project, The Psychology MMORPG

Social Networking is Edging to The Tipping Point

But Our World is Tipped Now

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 <20% are Ignoring Blogs and Posting Tools

How Can You Get Into the Game? p

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.)

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

Blog Example: 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.”

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, Disney’s Virtual Kingdom

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

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

MySpace Metrics MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users The country’s 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

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

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

Second Life

World of Warcraft

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

Make sure your pull media efforts aren’t 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 (Disney’s Virtual Kingdom) –Diary of a freshman’s first year –Think Facebook-style web sites with blogs, photos; dynamic and interactive

Example of lame…

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.

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

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.)

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 aren’t 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!

So What SHOULD be Done? Comfortable or not… Smart colleges are embracing it Mediate it …Don’t Moderate it. Use its immediacy and authenticity to bring your college community to the virtual world

Are Community Colleges… Going to leave it to the for-profit world? Going to wait to implement until it’s as unimportant to students as ? Or embrace it and take it to a whole new level? You Tell Me…

Drop Your Business Card Here And you could win One free year participating in the National Student Media Preferences Survey A $3500 Value!