Posted by Howard, Ignition Officer
With Tinychat.tv recently entering the live video streaming space, I thought it would be a great time to chime in with some thoughts on Tinychat.com and how it can be leveraged effectively to connect with students. We’ve been testing Tinychat for a while with clients and believe it can be a great tool to build relationship with prospective students.
Tinychat is an extremely simple video chat platform that allows up to 400 people to chat and 12 people to broadcast audio and video at once. The part that makes it truly “simple” is the login process. Users do not need to sign up for an account and can simply enter with a nickname or login with Twitter or Facebook Connect.
(Tinychat interface – Recent chat with some teammates from summer trip)
After Tinychat’s relaunch in May 2009, TinyChat has seen steady growth and has begun edging out Tokbox in unique traffic. Tinychat has been beating out Tokbox for one reason: the ease of use.
Now onto the fun part, how Tinychat can be used to reach students on the web. One way is to use student bloggers (or just students) and host a student panel through Tinychat. All they would need to do is login from their respective rooms and broadcast! A quick fan page post letting fans know it is going on can drive traffic to the session. The chat will be very organic compared to a regular, scheduled chat. The “impromptu” chats should prove to still be successful, as we’ve seen Facebook Fan Pages drive traffic well in the past. With Tinychat premium you can control who broadcasts, so that only your bloggers can broadcast while prospective students ask questions via text in chat. Another way is to have an admissions counselor do the exact same thing. Imagine being a prospective student with a question and having an e-mail back that says, “Do you just want to video chat? Talk with my at tinychat.com/(name).” Not only is it an opportunity to build relationship, but it gives a great human side to an admissions process that can seem very hostile to prospective students.
Another great perk of using Tinychat is that the users pretty much spread the word for you. When prospective students logon using Facebook Connect (as many do), Tinychat will publish to their Live Feed that they are currently chatting at X room. It looks like this:
Hope these ideas have helped start a good conversation on how Tinychat can be leveraged to connect with students; these are only the start of great ways Tinychat can be used. What do you think? Do you have any other ideas?
Notes:
Premium Membership details (may not be available with recent update):
Tinychat occasionally has audio problems and at times users have trouble getting their wecams connected. Make sure to plan ahead! If you have problems, Tinychat has great customer service:
Posted by Brad, Chief Explosion Officer
If you follow BlueFuego, you know we love to present at conferences (http://bluefuego.com/presentations). I just presented at two conferences recently and am heading to Malaysia to speak at the QS Apple Conference next week, so I thought it might be fun to talk about why we present, and share some feedback we’ve recently received from the presentation at NACAC in September.
Presenting at conferences does a few things for us: it allows us to meet others in the industry, it helps us learn more about the challenges being faced by the industry, and it gives us the opportunity to share our knowledge and research with the group. That’s my favorite part.
If you’ve been to a presentation by someone on the BlueFuego team, I hope our style is apparent: no sales pitch, top-level research/thoughts/theory/application, conversational and relaxed, and some open-ended questions to get you thinking about what’s next for your team at the end.
I recently received my ‘report card’ for my presentation at NACAC, Integrating the Social Web into your Recruitment Strategy. This is by far the most organized and packaged presentation report I’ve received from a conference! Kudos to NACAC for providing such detail. I still don’t know how they turned it around so quickly.
It’s always interesting to present as “the vendor” at a conference. I’ve spoken at nearly 50 events in the past 18 months (http://bluefuego.com/presentations), and I’ve sat through many presentations that turn into vendor pitches, just like you. I hate when that happens. I make a conscious effort to avoid it every time. You might see BlueFuego on an intro slide or contact me slide, but rarely in between. Being a “vendor” brings negative connotations with it, due to the others who view a presentation as an opportunity to pitch. With that, I enter every presentation knowing that 1) I have to earn your trust first, and 2) I have to provide great content without it coming across as a sales pitch.
It’s sort of like this: How would you expect a widget salesman to come into a room and tell you about the latest and greatest widgets on the market without coming across as a promotion for his/her widget business? It’s a very fine balance, one that I work to be on the right side of every time. I try to prove myself, but I can’t always win.
The room was packed, with 356 attendees and almost half of the room (n=140, 40% response rate) responded to the follow-up questionnaire. I just wanted to share the results and provide some commentary on a few numbers and responses that caught my eye. Here we go!
Years in profession: Majority of room has been around for 10+ years, with 71% of the room being in higher ed for 4+ years.
I work: 86.3% of the room works at a postsecondary institution. 5.8% are vendors.
My overall rating for this session is: Well, I didn’t get any POOR ratings, so that’s good. Over 90% in the 4/5 range. Awesome!
The presenter at this session: A few disagree’s in there. Might have been due to my usage of Prezi? Full disclaimer: I refused to use their PowerPoint template, and tried to mush it into a Prezi format. Might have left some confused without all of the bullet points and long lists? I do wish I had more time for Q&A at the end as well, leaving me somewhat neutral on that category. Can’t win them all. 
This session provided information that: is of interest to most in the future. I know I couldn’t change someone’s life or job in one hour, and I definitely knew I couldn’t show them all something new in regards to this area of the web. All in all, I feel good about where I am at here.
Alright, let’s head to the text field to get a final report on my grade.
You’ll see a good mix throughout these 30 or so comments of “Great!” and “Awful!”. I can learn from both. For example, #8 says I could speak at NACAC again. As you’ll see below, #12 has an issue with me being a vendor. #11 refers to my constant need for water. I had mentioned first thing of the presentation that I had a sore throat and would be getting a drink of water frequently, as my voice was lasting about 3 minutes before the puberty-like crackling started. As for saying hi to people who came in late, this was probably in the first 3-4 minutes. The reason for welcoming them in was because the seats were full, and I wanted them to know it was OK to come in and stand along the wall. Everyone is welcome. Again, it’s unfortunate that I lost this person in the first 5 minutes and they couldn’t get past that. Something to work on in the future!
Here’s there the Catch 22 of presenting comes in: #12, #15, #17 felt I was light on actual examples. #12 again cannot get past my vendor status. Although many, people felt this met the ‘educational session’ tag, #12 does not.
If I could talk to #12, here’s what I’d ask: How would you have felt if I spent the hour showing examples of how my clients use these tools? Doesn’t that sound like more of a sales pitch to you? That’s what I tried to avoid. If people want to come talk to me more later, I’m fine with that. But pushing our services during the presentation? Not my style. Take your pick.
More thoughts. Probably my favorite segment of answers. Just sayin’.
All in all, I feel good about the presentation. Would I present at NACAC again? Definitely. Will they let me because I’m a “vendor”? Time will tell.
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You’re on my blog, so now’s where I can sales pitch you. Want me to speak at your event? Visit http://bluefuego.com/presentations to view previous events and topics, and contact me at brad(at)bluefuego(dot)com. 2010 is already filling up quickly. Hope to hear from you soon!
Posted by Brad, Chief Explosion Officer
BlueFuego has arrived at NACAC! Stop by Booth #1234 to say hello if we haven’t had the chance to meet, and enter for your chance to win a shiny new Macbook Pro! We’ll draw the lucky winner on Saturday. Also, we have a few BlueFuego shirts with us, so come let us know you read the Fuego Files and we just might have one for you.
Don’t party too hard on Thursday night at the awesome events such as the YouniversityTV Omega Bowl II or iDrink 6.0, because you’ll want to get up bright and early for my Friday 8:30am presentation in Room 314. I’ll be talking more about Integrating the Social Web into your Recruitment Strategy. (Seriously, don’t miss it. But seriously, I’ll see you out on Thursday night.)
If you’re at NACAC, hope to see you soon!
Posted by Brad, Chief Explosion Officer
WOW! When BlueFuego created the Race to 100K, we had anticipated a close race between Texas A&M and LSU. We could not believe it when the Aggie Nation reached the 100,000 fan mark a mere 90 seconds before LSU, capping off a monumental comeback over over 17,000 fans in less than 36 hours. (That’s almost 8 fans a minute for 1.4 days. Another way to look at it: For the past 14 days, they’ve gained 2.5 new fans per minute.) The 50,000 new fans on the TAMU Facebook page are more than all but 2 schools in the nation have on their entire page. Think about it… TAMU’s new fans this week would make the top 5 pages in the nation on their own! Texas A&M gained more fans in one week than 99% of colleges and universities have on their Facebook Fan Page. Quite the accomplishment! Congrats again from BlueFuego on winning 100,000 pennies. They truly proved it this week…. don’t mess with Texas!
We quickly sent the 100,000 pennies to TAMU for their Scholarship Fund, and a special ceremony to celebrate the win was held last week on campus. They posted pictures on their Facebook page, here are a few from the album.
The "100K Pennies at Sully Ceremony" celebrated the great show of Aggie Spirit in the Race to 100K Fans on Facebook.
Texas A&M Interim President R. Bowen Loftin, Class of '71, congratulates students.
Another big congrats from BlueFuego to TAMU for their photo finish on the Race to 100K, and to LSU for being the second school to cross the 100K mark. If you missed the finale, check out http://bluefuego.com/race for the video recap of the event. To all other schools continuing their march to 100K, good luck!
By the time you read this, you might have missed the Race to 100K! We’re hosting a contest for any college or university fan page on Facebook. The first institution page that reaches 100,000 fans will get 100,000 pennies donated to a scholarship of their choice!
The two schools that have broken out of the pack are Texas A&M and LSU. Both schools are now within 5,000 fans of 100,000 total fans as they race for the prize. LSU surged ahead early in the week, but TAMU is fighting back…. quickly. Here’s a snippet from their Fan page:
In a tremendous showing of Aggie spirit from around the world, over 9,000 new fans joined the official Texas A&M Facebook page in the last 24 hours. The surge to 92,500 fans is in response to the question, “Should Texas A&M concede the Race to 100K Fans to LSU?
Until Tuesday night, Texas A&M University had the top university-sponsored Facebook page in the world with more than 83,000 fans. In one day, LSU surged from 81,000 to 96,000 fans – putting the Aggies in second place. With the sudden gain by LSU, everyone watching the contest expects that LSU will win the race by this weekend.
However, in a tremendous show of Aggie Spirit from around the world, Texas A&M rallied from 83,000 to 92,500 fans in the last 24 hours. LSU has almost reached the goal with over 97,500 fans. While it’s a long shot for the Aggies to reach 100,000 fans before LSU, a second comeback in the next 24 hours would show the spirit and strength of the Aggie network.
Aggies, this is your page. This is your race. Invite your Facebook friends to become fans by clicking “Suggest to Friends” in the upper left-hand corner of the Texas A&M Facebook page.
Texas A&M has achieved tremendous growth in the past 29 hours. They’ve averaged one new fan every 8.5 seconds and have grown at over 10 x’s the rate of LSU today. At this pace, Texas A&M will hit 100,000 fans in 11 hours or less. To watch the race in real-time and keep an eye on each school’s progress, hop over to http://bluefuego.com/race. As one TAMU fan says, “This is more fun than the presidential elections.”
Check it out!!
