Props to Calvin

Texas A&M web designer and blogger Matt Herzberger recently pointed to Calvin College's site in his del.icio.us links. The prestigious Christian liberal arts college is one of our local gems, and I like what they're doing with student profiles in the prospective students section.

Nice photo with an intriguing lead on the front page, appealing story and photo when you link through. Plus you can share the story on facebook, del.icio.us, Digg, Google, etc. Six stories to choose from. Well done! (Thanks, Matt!)

Visitation program can drive enrollment up

The GR Press reports today that the local private institution Aquinas College has another record number of freshmen enrolled for the fall.

The college is expecting 445 students from 14 states when freshmen begin moving in Thursday. That is up from last year's record of 428.

A press release on the Aquinas site goes into more detail, citing more students "taking advantage of the college's special AQ Days programs" as part of the reason for the enrollment jump.

Here at DU we soon will launch our own comprehensive visitation program. It will kick off later this month, and it includes special Panther Preview events, CU @ DU Saturdays and Junior Days, along with specially scheduled group campus visits and one-on-one counseling sessions.

We all know that the campus visit is a top "decider" for students making their college choices. DU has lots to offer, so showing off our main campus in a big way can go a long way in convincing prospective students that we have what they're looking for. We'll be launching a special microsite for sign ups soon, so stay tuned.

The importance of real

Since I'm so new to higher ed, I'm open to anything and everything I can find about marketing in this arena. Which is why I attended eduWeb in Baltimore last month (see my conference blogging at my other blog). Which is also how I am finding bloggers like Karlyn Morisette, who presented at the conference. She's interactive recruiting manager at Norwich University and she blogs at Interactive Recruiting.

She had a good post last week about the importance of "being real" with prospective students:

They are out there getting the real story, whether you like it or not. Prospective students already place admissions offices very low on their list of credible sources of information when it comes to getting information about a college. They get it. It's marketing. You're trying to sell them because you have beds to fill. Want to really get their attention? Give them unmoderated blogs. Give them student produced content on your website instead of hidden on YouTube. Allow prospective students to e-mail, IM or chat on boards with current students without your moderation. Show them that you're not afraid of showing the real experience your students are having!

Why? Because, she says, rightly, I think:

... At the end of the day, you're going to build so much more credibility with your audience by being real with them. Kids are smart and they know how to filter. They have a million messages thrown at them every day and they decide immediately which ones are going to garner their attention and which ones aren't. Using the right technologies to communicate with them is not enough. To make it past their filters, you have to use the right technologies in the right way. To make yourself stand out, you have to be real and encourage your students to be real.

I've been through this lack-of-transparency thing with another employer, in another job, in a totally different industry. The "be real" mantra holds, no matter what business you're in. You can't hide, bury 'indelicacies' or push out cookie-cutter, jargon-filled marketing messages and expect to win buyers' (students') hearts. In the internet age, there are too many ways for the 'real 'to be found. We might as well embrace it.

We've got RSS

Our web team just configured an RSS feed for the News & Events section of the Davenport website. Works great in Firefox and IE7 - they still have to get it going in IE6, which is what most people still use.

Will people subscribe? I'm doubtful right now. Do we need it? Yes! I do believe we need to get our information to prospective students, parents and donors in as many ways as we can, RSS being just one of them. And yes, we have a ways to go on that score, but we're working on it.

Now the pressure's on me, though, to keep that section of the website super up-to-date. Which I should be doing anyway, of course.

HighEdWebDev Conference

Oh, I forgot to mention that the reason I found this HighEdWeb discussion list in the first place was that I'd read somewhere about a conference this group is holding this fall. When I found the conference details, I also found the list.

So HighEdWeb, short for Higher Education Web Professionals is HighEdWeb is "an organization of Web professionals working at institutions of higher education. We design, develop, manage and map the futures of higher education Web sites."

Their conference, HighEdWebDev2007 is coming up October 14 - 17, in Rochester, NY, October 14-17. (Can I go?)

List of analytics tools

Through the HighEdWeb discussion list, a webmaster recently asked for recommendations on web analytics tools. He wants to replace the one he's currently using. The group came back with this list, which the requestor quite thoughtfully (I thought) compiled:

· Urchin 5 Web Analytics Software
http://www.google.com/analytics/urchin_software.html

· ClickTracks Visual Web Analytics
http://www.clicktracks.com/

· NetTracker Web Analytics
http://netinsight.unica.com/Products/nettracker.cfm

· Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/

· WebLog Expert
http://www.weblogexpert.com/

· Clickheat
http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/

· Mach5 Fast Stats
http://www.mach5.com/fast/

· Funnel Web Analyzer
http://www.quest.com/funnel-web-analyzer/

HighEdWeb List

I joined an email discussion list the other day called HighEdWeb and now my inbox is being hit with people's questions and answers.

I know it sounds odd, but I've never participated in an email discussion group or a listserv or anything like that before. (Although I have done message boards and forums and I'm not fond of either). So at first I wasn't sure I wanted to slog through all that email. Then I thought this could be a good way to learn and share information with other .edu content folks and web geeks.

If I come across something useful, I'll post it.

Placeholder blog

This is a placeholder blog until

a) we think of a better name and
b) we design a better template, or
d) we move this to Typepad or WordPress. :-)