Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Tomorrow, I will present to the American Assoc of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers Strategic Enrollment Management conference or AACRAO SEM for short.  I’ve been asked to join the panel on social media by Khori Whitaker of Inside Track, by recommendation of Brad Ward.  Joining Brad and I will be Billy Adams from OU and Andrew Meyers of Hope College (Holland, MI).

While Billy, Brad and Andrew talk about recruiting and admissions strategy, I am excited to share with the attendees something I believe is very unique to our efforts – retention.  Since early this semester I have been working with Hayley Webb, Director of Student Retention and Services, on how to use the data we gather from students (tweets, blog posts, pictures posted, links referenced) to identify if they are “at-risk” of leaving the university.  Let me be clear, my task here is not to make any judgment on the content that pours through the social networks, instead I see myself as a router of that information to the appropriate offices established on campus to handle these types of situations.

You@ACU! - YouTube

Other points to share will be the great success of the You@ACU! campaign that was created by Hayley and the student team.  Since the program launched in late August, we have had over 200 user generated content (UGC) posts of dorm life, campus activities, football games, alumni reunions and only a few were removed before being broadcast publicly on campus or at Shotwell stadium.  This is a great program and one that I hope to really focus on in coming months so that we can be better prepared for data collection and review in 2010-11.

Last, in the spring of 2010, I am planning a pet project to aggregate all social media onto a single microsite.  PutOnYourPurple.com is the domain I’ve chosen (available – pending purchase).  This site is planned to be more of the human interest or community-in-action side of New Media with content aggregated from social networks, submitted by our alumni, students, faculty and staff showing how they are changing the world.  A great example of this concept is Oregon State’s Powered by Orange.