Social Media and College Admissions

Admissions in Higher Education is considered a business.  Admissions is sales, a slightly different kind of sales than car sales, but still sales.  Over the last 5 years, colleges and universities are increasingly adapting their marketing efforts towards social media outlets to help with recruitment.

Back in April, 2013, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education released its latest annual survey of social-media use by colleges.  The survey had more than 1,000 institutions responding. (The full results are here.)

What it found is obvious, Colleges have become more integrated and even dependant on social-media tools to help with their recruitment efforts.  It also concluded that although college admissions offices have been incorporating more social media, they haven't fully embrassed the task into a full time position.  In most admissions offices, social media efforts (unlike traditional recruitment tools) is spread over many different counselors and only as part of their other every day responsiblities.  This is the case at TCNJ.

The survey also found that Facebook and Twitter are still the two most popluar social media sites used by colleges.  Other sites have popped up over the years....Zinch.com is a social networking site geared totally toward college admissions and one that TCNJ uses as well.  Other sites like Flickr have shrunk away. 

Using social media is not new for businesses yet it also does not appear to be well organized at most institutions.  More often than not, Admissions offices don't have a formal plan or strategy as they would for traditional print marketing efforts. 

So now that Social Media is no longer in its infancy, what does it mean for college admissions?  Do students want colleges and universities reaching out to them on Facebook?  Should Social Media recuiting be a full time job in an admissions office?  Should there be a formal marketing plan dedicated to just this technology?  How important is it that the tranditional marketing plan mesh with the social media marketing plan?  What do you think, the future of social media in business marketing is?

As colleges strugle with these questions, the biggest question to answer is how does a college measure the benefits of a good social media strategy and quantify its Return on Investment (ROI)?

Class, please voice in your opinions on questions presented in this post.  Provide examples from your own experiences when searching for colleges.  The above questions are there to help you and do not need to be answered individually.  Instead, an overall response to the post is required.