Time to share an update.

Yes, Peterson’s is now a Nelnet company, no longer Thomson Peterson’s.

Yes, I’ll still be blogging here on SHE. Same voice, perhaps with a new wrapper.

You bet, video is on my mind. It’s kinda like I’m speaking through video these days. As I mentioned to EducationPR blogger Paul Baker recently, I haven’t had any video to share, thus light blogging. But the good news is that I caught up with some attendees at EduWeb earlier this week and I’ll be sharing that video here over the coming days. In fact, after a Quicktime finishes burning on machine B, I’m going to get started on editing that footage.

There was a lot of talk about video at EduWeb; indeed, the entire Higher Ed community seems to be buzzing about the possibilities of video on the web. The days of routine campus tour videos are coming rapidly to an end as the tools of high quality production come within reach, and web video sharing platforms mature.

To this point, I agree with Charlie Melichar: You should be watching Beet.TV. Charlie introduced me to its producer, Andy Plesser, and we fast became buds during some exciting times at SF’s recent Vloggercon, where Andy broke the story about Robert Scoble leaving Microsoft for Bay Area startup PodTech. It was a treat to share in Andy’s excitement at seeing Beet.TV zoom up like a jet.

You may not be surprised to learn that Andy’s also got a stake in academe. He’s the guy behind the incredibly innovative LawClinic.TV, which features interviews with participants in Fordham University’s clinical legal education program.

More on the week of EduWeb and admissions blogging….

I was very pleased with the response to the EduWeb discussion on admissions blogging Rob Pongsajapan and I led. It was exciting to share 2 months’ worth of accumulated research and get feedback, and the small group/lunch format was a perfect place not only for that, but also to make some great new acquiantainces, among them Nina Sossen, who was kind enough to blog our session for Collegewebeditor.com. Nina politely took issue with my use of the term “admissions blogging program,” and I’m committed to explaning what I mean by that more fully, if not for Nina only, then for the rest of you as well.

I was reminded that many are still very new to blogging, and the questions abound. In fact, this week the Uwebd list is alight again with questions about blogging. And much of the advice there validates our findings–for example the importance of selecting the right student bloggers and the idea of selecting student bloggers from among students who already have a relationship with the admissions department. (Think student ambassadors.)

Of course, the session would not have been a success were it not for the generosity of the institutions participating in the study; they’re listed on this page along with the items we covered in our discussion on Monday in Baltimore.

Been visiting Collegewebeditor.com lately? You’ll find a treasure trove of blog coverage from the EduWeb conference there. Karine did a smashing job in recruiting attendees to blog “almost live” for Collegewebeditor. Kudos to Karine; a resourceful and audience-aware blogger she.

Well, that’s all for now. I bid you a wonderful weekend. Next time you visit, an interview with Nina Sossen from UMass Amherst, talking about blogging efforts there, will greet you.

Despite the early timeslot, we had a hearty turnout this morning at NAGAP for the talk on blogs, podcasts, and RSS, and how they are and can be used in graduate recruiting. There was a considerable amount of excitement about these tools, and much of the time was spent in conversation with those in the audience who had questions, or who had something to share about their own school’s efforts. It was very much the dialogue I had hoped would transpire. If you were in the session, thank you very much for being so engaged and enthusiastic. Below I’m providing a set of links to many of the free resources I mentioned in the talk. I also provide a link to the screencast, which is a movie of the presentation, complete with slides and audio. All you’ll need to do is click on the link for the screencast, and the movie will play in your browser. In an earlier post I talk about the main points I make in the presentation.

View the screencast (click to play the movie in your browser, 65:00)

Get the slides (.ppt slides in a .zip file; 7MB).

Links mentioned in the talk:

Petersons.com, the search portal covering more than 4,000 accredited institutions and 30,000 accredited graduate programs

Oregon State University Admissions Blog

Wordpress.org free open source blogging platform

Definition of a blog

Definition of a podcast

Definition of RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

Johns Hopkins Public Health News Center RSS page

Pew Internet and American Life project

iTunes podcatcher
iPodder podcatcher
FireAnt podcatcher

Technorati.com blog search engine

College and University RSS Feed Directory

Sitemeter.com free web stats site

University of Utah RSS feed page

HigherEd BlogCon, a free online conference on new media in Higher Education

New Communications Review

Naked Conversations, a book on business blogging by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble

Ourmedia.org, a site where you can host video for free

The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross’s blog

Rocketboom.com, daily video podcast

Harvard Law School Admissions Blog

Wharton Admissions Blog

UC Berkeley Haas School podcast


Destination B School 2006, a prospective student blog

Blog of student at Indian School of Business

Blog of French student hoping to get into business school in the US

Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute profile on Petersons.com, showing RPI’s news headlines being published dynamically to Petersons.com via RSS

It’s morning here in Vegas, and my talk on blogs, podcasts, and RSS at NAGAP happens at 8:45. I’m glad we have a chance to do this talk, because there’s not much information about these media circulating at this conference. Simply put, blogs are a great way for graduate admissions departments to go.

Main message #1: Don’t be afraid of blogging; be afraid of not blogging. Your prospective students are blogging. Not only should you know what they’re saying about you, you should also have an organized way of interacting with those students online, responding to student concerns rapidly, and being proactive in communicating your message and position the blogosphere.

Main message #2: You can do more with less. There are some excellent open source blogging packages available for free, and they can be adapted to look like your existing website.

Main message #3: Expect to communicate with prospective students online more often. You may not have a new, official marketing message to offer every week, but then again if you’re only considering launching a blog as a way to publish your marketing message, you’re going to miss out on most of the benefits of a blog.

Main message #4: Your most important marketing tool isn’t your website, it’s Google. If your website isn’t built from the ground up with search engine optimization in mind, you may as well not build it. By their very nature, blogs are search engine friendly.

Main message #5: You don’t have a choice. You need to make sure your information reaches people where they are. This means getting into Google, iTunes, and blog searches, and it means offering an RSS feed for those who have switched from browsing web sites to scanning for information using their RSS reader.

This morning I’m headed to Las Vegas to lead a talk on blogs, podcasts, and RSS in graduate recruiting at the NAGAP conference. The preliminary program (pdf) is up. Looks like my session is the only having to do with any of those subjects. This is surprising, since quite a few schools have started blogs or podcasts for admissions or recruiting. People may also be surprised–or perhaps not–by how many prospective students are blogging about the admission process. If you’re in admissions or recruiting at any level, you need to realize what’s going on in the blogosphere, and you need to understand and use the tools to help you keep informed. Here is a draft of the slides (.ppt; 10 MB).

Last month I had the pleasure of giving a talk on podcasting and student recruiting at the AACRAO SEM 15 conference in Chicago, Illinois. It was fantastic to spend time with higher ed marketing, IT, and enrollment management professionals talking about opportunities in podcasting.

The presentation itself was a long-ish (~80 minute) vendor-track presentation that included both a hearty sampling of marketing-oriented audio and video podcasts from around higher ed and an overview of Thomson Peterson’s offerings in the area of microcontent and syndication.

I am providing the material in three formats. Because the visual aspect was very important to the presentation, I am not offering an audio-only podcast. The screencast will provide by far the richest experience; the PowerPoint slides and links are merely supplementary.

-Screencast (streaming only). Note: Recorded and offered in 1280×800 format; scroll down for player controls.
-PowerPoint slides (4M)
-Links mentioned in the talk

A special thanks goes out to Nancy Prater (Ball State University) and Jett Pihakis (University of California Berkeley Haas School) for providing behind-the-scenes information about podcasts at their school.

If you have any questions or feedback about this presentation, please leave a comment or email me directly at dan.karleen@thomson.com. If you were in the audience in Chicago, I would love to hear from you!

Yesterday I spent an enjoyable hour talking with a group at Drexel University on Blogging and RSS in Business and Marketing. The talk was part of the e-learning lecture series hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences. Jean-Claude Bradley was kind enough to post the screencast and mp3. In attendance were representatives from Drexel.com, LeBow College of Business, the College of Education, as well as The Chubb Institute, among others.

Presenting the talk from a blog instead of PowerPoint made it easy to illustrate the features of a blog for the group. At the last minute, I switched to using Jean-Claude’s TabletPC so we could use his screencasting software; having the presentation online as a blog made this an easy switch. If I present this way again (and I think I will), I will take Karine Joly’s subsequent suggestion to have the current “slide” on the home page of the blog, then navigate to the next slide using the index, so that only one slide is visible at a time.

Drexel has some cool grassroots initiatives in podcasting and blogging, and I think we’re going to see a lot more from them soon.

Over on this page I’m gathering links and information for a talk I’m giving at the Drexel RSS Club on October 5, 2005, on blogs and RSS in the enterprise. If you have comments or suggestions for this talk, please feel free to comment. The page will have a temporary home in the right nav under “Works in Progress.” I am hoping to pack this talk with lots of good information for those in business schools, schools of communications, and institutional development/communications.

In November I’ll be presenting at AACRAO SEM 15, in Chicago. I’ll be talking about how we conceived, produce, and evaluate the Podcasts@Peterson’s series for college-bound students, which are still among the only podcasts of their kind. I’ll also be offering some suggestions about how to approach creating podcasts for the college-bound market.

If you are going to be in Chicago the week of November 14, and would like to get together and talk about RSS, podcasting, videoblogging, etc., drop me a line.

Next time you’re interested in organizing a conference, or just reading some interesting bio’s, head over to the Speaker’s Wiki, a new resource organized by Mary Hodder that includes speakers, their websites, affiliations, and contact information. If you’re organizing an event, you can post the event as well.

Check out some of the speakers in blogging, education, and video blogging. You can subscribe to a feed of recent changes as well. My listing is here.

Last week I gave a talk entitled “A Plain-English Introduction to RSS for Marketing” at the Web Communications and Strategies Conference in Salisbury, MD. Links to the slides and audio are provided below. In this presentation, I introduced web syndication and talked about how marketers outside .edu are taking advantate of RSS to promote more than just news headlines.

A Plain-English Introduction to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) for Marketing

Slides: .zip 2M, 48 .jpg’s | .pdf 4.3M

Audio: mp3 19M, 58 minutes