Posted by Howard Kang, Ignition Officer
When interviewing for a job we tend to use a formal tone as that’s what interviews demand. We have our resume prepared listing our achievements, past successes, work history, as well as a few bulleted points of what makes us unique.
When we’re on a date (don’t worry, it’s been a while for me too) we approach conversation much differently. The interview strategy doesn’t work. The person sitting with you doesn’t care all that much about your college GPA and if you spoke to her in a rigid and formal tone it would be awkward. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you listed your accomplishments off during the entirety of the date, your chances of seeing this person again would be slim.
Think about the language used in both situations and how they contrast. When we communicate on the web I think it requires a balance of both an interviewing voice and dating voice, favoring the dating voice. Listing statistics and rankings is easy so that’s mostly what’s primarily communicated to our prospective students. Look what we have done, this is how we’re unique, and this is why you should care. The main issue with this is that when you communicate as if you’re interviewing, you’re not fostering connection. Connection becomes a ancillary goal because interviews are based on evaluation of credentials.
People know the hard facts about your institution. If they don’t they can find them on Google, your website, and on your print communications. So why do we need to keep reminding them? Why not show them why you’re known as a friendly campus instead of repeating the message and hoping it sticks, why not charm them with authentic and human stories unique to your institution that capture their attention, why not spend some time interacting with your audience as if it was a date and not an interview?
Everyone appreciates a little romance. 
Posted by Brad and Joe, Co-Founders of BlueFuego
Here is a follow up to our post earlier this week about sharing your US News ranking via the social web, more specifically Facebook Pages. Here is a quick snapshot of the US News release from yesterday.
After the day, Joe decided to take a look at Top 100 National Universities according to the rankings and cross reference to Facebook Page wall posts.
Of these 100 schools, 37 posted on their wall about the rankings the day they came out. How were the results? An average of .9361% engagement on the updates.
To put that in perspective, if these schools would consistently get at level of engagement on each post, they’d all be in the Top 50 most engaging pages of our data that tracks over 1,400 Pages.
But if you know BlueFuego, you know we couldn’t stop there.
Next, we dove in and look at the Top 100 National Liberal Art Colleges. Here, only 17 of the 100 updated on the wall about their ranking, to the tune of an average 1.0124% engagement.
We have our opinions in why a lower amount of schools in the more prestigious category didn’t update regarding their ranking (eternal embargo from the top? ). But one thing is for sure…. data doesn’t lie.
Posted by Joe and Brad, Co-Founders of BlueFuego
We see it all the time in higher education, more specifically on Facebook Pages. A confusion of interests between 1) what the page administrator cares about or likes, and 2) what the audience cares about or likes. And as a result, both suffer.
You’ve probably heard us say it at a conference before: You are what you publish, and your institution is what you publish. You might think that your audience cares about your favorite TV show, an event in the area that you are passionate about, etc., but the majority of the time, the post falls on deaf ears.
Take for example the recent mini-meme within the higher ed web developer world of the venn diagram on XKCD. Through our monthly research of nearly 1,400 universities and colleges on Facebook, we saw several schools post this cartoon to their Facebook Page.
Average Engagement on the XKCD post = 0.025%.
Average Engagement on all other posts for the month = .1734%
Yes, a fourth of a percent of the audience responded with a comment or like, well below the average. In most cases, it fell on deaf ears, with no engagement at all. There’s a 594% difference in engagement between the XKCD post and the rest of the posts for the month.
US News Rankings
Let’s talk for a moment about US News Rankings, which were released today. A common sentiment between higher ed employees is that the rankings are flawed, irrelevant, and aren’t even worth a mention on the site or web presence. Heck, Brad’s even said it before. But… is it your interest, or the audience?
Now, take a look at this data of an event similar to the US News Rankings being released today. The Forbes 100, which were released earlier this month. Of the 100 schools on the list, 10 decided to update their Facebook community with the news of their ranking. How did it go with the community (the audience you should be serving)?
Principia College:
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .412%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .987%
Forbes Post Engagement: 4.064%
Washington & Jefferson:
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .312%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .594%
Forbes Post Engagement: 2.541%
Wofford College:
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .184%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .087%
Forbes Post Engagement: 1.996%
Westmont College:
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .121%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .225%
Forbes Post Engagement: 1.535%
Centre College (KY):
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .363%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .038%
Forbes Post Engagement: 1.499%
Claremont McKenna:
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .070%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .044%
Forbes Post Engagement: 1.214%
Drew University:
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .114%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .324%
Forbes Post Engagement: .973%
Tufts University:
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .154%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .117%
Forbes Post Engagement: .715%
University of Virginia:
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .147%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .108%
Forbes Post Engagement: .426%
William & Mary:
2010 YTD Facebook Engagement: .109%
August MTD Facebook Engagement: .065%
Forbes Post Engagement: .204%
Wow. That’s some serious engagement. (We based engagement on the BlueFuego Formula.)
Final Thoughts
This is something that has been on our minds for quite awhile, as we continue to watch endless amounts of universities and colleges miss the mark with their updates.
Who is running your page? Are they even an effective communicator? Marketer? Or did they just happen to get there first? If you haven’t considered the fact that your Facebook Page/Presence is where most of your audience is having more touch points with your brand than ever before, and you haven’t yet thought about who’s running the Page and if they are truly a match to be communicating your messages and representing you, then it might be time to re-visit how you’re doing things. All it takes is one off-message post for someone to click hide and never hear from you again. The short-term agony of restructuring who’s involved has long-term implications for your brand and your institution.
While we are not advocating a restructuring that includes red-tape about who posts, what they post, getting approval, etc… we are advocating having the right person in place, people who understand the audience, to be representing you online.
Got a good ranking today? Post it to your online communities. I think you’ll be pleased with the results.
