Recently, Google unveiled a public version of BigQuery, which, in the company’s own words: “Lets you take advantage of Google’s massive compute power, store as much data as needed and pay only for what you use. Your data is protected with multiple layers of security, replicated across multiple data centers and can be easily exported.” BigQuery is accessible via a simple UI or REST interface, and will allow developers query up to 100GB of data per month for free, or up to 2TB of data stored.

Check out the video of Google’s initial announcement of BigQuery:

Not to be outdone, Yahoo has now launched a new tool for online advertisers. Called Genome, the tool will help target ads and campaigns by letting advertisers analyze large amounts of behavioural and advertising-related data from the Yahoo and interclick (which Yahoo acquired in December) networks. It is scheduled for release in July.

“Marketers have asked us for a solution that capitalizes on our vast data and our answer to that is Genome,” Rich Riley, EVP, Americas Region, Yahoo! said in a press release. “With Genome, we can help marketers transform consumer information and insights into actionable online media executions that enable them to attain the right context and audiences.”

Since its focus is on marketers, Genome differs significantly from BigQuery, which is geared toward enterprises looking to upload and analyze massive amounts of data. Clearly, however, there is going to be some overlap between the two in the future, which may add another interesting layer to the ongoing search engine war…

What are your thoughts on BigQuery and Genome?

Why a Social Media Student Ambassador Team?

Social Media Student Ambassadors are an essential tool to implement your Social Media Strategy. They can help your college:

• Engage with fellow students on social media platforms: whether they are looking to transfer to your school or start a brand new program, prospects just want to know they will be a good fit for your school. Involving current students in your social media activities (replying to tweets, answering questions on Facebook, etc.) is one of the best ways to ensure your prospects and students get the most out of their interactions with your school.
• Create student-centered content: Who knows your school and its strengths better than your current students? Student blogs are the best way to offer complementary, student-focused information to prospects (as opposed to school-sponsored advertisement). First-year or graduate Ambassadors could be very helpful in providing information about the career services or the programs your school offers.
• Highlight your school’s specificity: Any successful social media strategy aims at making your school stand out. Creating a fun, engaging contest or viral video requires focusing on what makes your school special. Your students may be able to pinpoint elements that are not obvious to your marketing team and that you may be able to leverage to create successful, engaging campaigns.
• Watch your competition in terms of recruitment and retention: By the time they attend your school, students will have come across many other school’s campaigns. Your Ambassadors will be able to tell you why they were attracted by some, turned off by others and why they eventually chose your school.

Gather your Team

1. Start by gathering 3-4 highly motivated students who are passionate about social media. Ask faculty to approach students about the program, see if your recruitment services have been approached by students who are interested in doing some work in social media. Make sure to choose natural leaders who are both proactive and passionate about the school.
2. Think Diversity: your Social Media Student Ambassadors should be representative of the population attending your school: diversity of background, of gender, race, but also living situation (on-campus, off campus), and of year attended (freshman, senior, graduate).
3. Establish clear rules:
   • Will your Ambassadors be rewarded with money or credits? Your school may create a social media program through which students could apply for a position as a Social Media Student Ambassador.
   • What type of content is expected? Will they have freedom of topic and tone?  Are there any privacy issues that should be discussed before final approval?
   • How often should your Ambassadors post? Are missed deadlines acceptable?
   • How often will they meet? Who will they meet with? Marketing or recruitment?
4. Provide training for your Social Media Student Ambassadors: help your Ambassadors meet the goals you will have created for them. Provide them with tools and skills to help you be successful in your recruiting efforts. This may include WordPress workshops, video editing classes, production tutorials, etc.
5. Try and fail: don’t expect it to be perfect right away. Your team’s learning curve may be steep but you will gather paramount knowledge to attract and retain your targeted student audiences in the long term.

Here is a great presentation by Mallory Wood about the various stages through which a school can develop its Social Media Student Ambassador program.

What is your school doing to integrate students in its social media strategy?

If you truly understand your market and communicate effectively with them you will be successful in whatever your goals or “conversion events” might be. The higher ed marketplace is no different in this respect, it is just really complicated by the wide range of programs, approaches and types of people it serves. This post provides a few organizing concepts and examples to try and help make it a bit simpler for higher education marketers to understand their digital market segments and improve their overall effectiveness (and results!) through analytics.

So let’s review the four basic types of market segmentation and showcase how two tools, Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer, can be used to analyze those different segments of traffic on your website.

The four basic types of Market Segmentation are:

1) Geographic
2) Demographic
3) Psychographic
4) Behavioral

1) Geographic Market Segmentation

Geographic segmentation breaks down your web traffic by geographic criteria – countries, states/provinces, regions, counties, cities, neighborhoods, or even zip/postal codes.

The report below, from Google Analytics, shows a distribution of website visitors from the state of Texas to an anonymous college’s website over a 1 month period.

If you are College or University marketer with a high priority to recruit students regionally, this simple type of analysis can make your marketing planning and recruitment human resource allocations much simpler.

2) Demographic Market Segmentation

As you know, demographics are statistical characteristics of your site visitor population.

Demographic segmentation involves things like age, gender, family size, income, occupation, education, religion, race and nationality. In this example, Google Analytics is used to report visitor behavior, based on the language settings used on their computers.

International student recruitment is a very important part of revenue generation for many colleges and universities. This type of analysis can be very useful to marketing planning and optimization of your site, as you work to develop a relationship with these foreign language speaking, prospect students.

3) Psychographic Market Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation examines markets according to lifestyle, personality, and values.

Psychographic segmentation is often studied in parallel to demographics as people within the same demographic group often have very different psychographic profiles. In simple terms, they represent an individual’s interests, activities, and opinions, including attitudes and cultural touchstones.

In the Google Analytics report below, a community college’s microsite mobile traffic is examined to reveal local student smart phone preference. Over 66% of the mobile device traffic is from an Apple operating system. So in this market, Apple is clearly winning the brand battle for the hearts and minds of the college student. Understanding student popular opinion toward and use of Apple, Android and Blackberry systems can be very important in setting priorities in the future development of internal college mobile apps and campaigns.

Just for the record, in the writing of this post we’ve had a lively discussion in our office over the question of “is mobile operating system a psychographic or a behavioral segment”.

I personally believe, that in this case, it is psychographic because it seems that these days, your selection of smart phone OS is as much a political statement of your support to Apple, Google and to a lesser extent RIM, rather than simply the purchase of a product. Let us know how you feel about this question and we will report back with your feedback in a future post.

4) Behavioral Market Segmentation

Behavioral segmentation typically divides people into groups according to their knowledge of, attitude towards, use of, or response to, a product.

In the higher education digital marketing context, we use web analytics to break-down the range of all visitors (prospective students, existing students, staff, parents, alumni, etc.) into a number of discrete channels. Each channel is then analyzed and a virtual profile is created to deal with each channel. These profiles can be developed into personas that give you a starting point in terms of deciding what content, navigation and layout to present to each of the different personas for optimal conversion results.

Further micro-segmentation of your channels can be researched using A/B testing, (the example below is from Google Website Optimizer), on content, messaging and calls to action, allowing visitor behavior to further indicate which of your communications lead to the most desired outcomes or conversion events for each segment and when to further split your messaging into tighter segments.

I‘ve only touched on a few examples here, revealing the tip of the segmentation iceberg.

We’ve looked at a few default reports, to demonstrate how readily available this type of analysis is to you, within your existing resources. Once you master the basics of segmentation, the sky is the limit in terms of what higher level segmentation strategies you implement and the analyses you develop to track their performance. But that is another topic (or two)! I do hope to have demonstrated that using these (free) tools even in the most basic ways, can lead you down the road to improved marketing effectiveness.

We would love to get your feedback on these approaches and hear about your favourite market segmentation success stories.

Please share your feedback and comments below.

Thanks

Our friends at Mohawk College in Hamilton are looking to add to their ranks of qualified, experienced Web and education professionals. The college is on the hunt for a Digital Analytics and Production Specialist (position number 998802). This is a full-time position with competitive pay. Please consult the following for more information on this exciting career opportunity at Mohawk College.

Job Summary:

Reporting to the Director, Marketing, the incumbent provides technical support in a complex digital environment and is an expert in tracking and analyzing site traffic, coordinating search engine optimization opportunities, and providing recommendations to enhance both. The individual has experience in broadcast techniques, motion graphics integration, project management, technical and digital production, online advertising theory and practice, and web analytics. The incumbent assists the web team with the technical maintenance and support of Mohawk’s Content Management System (CMS). The individual provides support in ensuring that the College’s digital material is accessible, useable and innovative.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Duties include, but are not limited to:

• Designs and implements Google Analytics solutions. Analyzes and interprets web analytics data to provide constructive insights to the web team related to content, navigation and usability.
• Support initiatives in the planning, implementation and analytics of digital marketing campaigns. Designs and builds custom reports to meet web analytics requirements.
• Ensures all web properties have been technically optimized using SEO practices to attract and engage Mohawk’s target audience.
• Performs keyword research, organizes and maintains keywords, and make recommendations for landing page optimization. Leads the web team in Google, Yahoo, MSN and other PPC ad set up and reporting.
• Provides support and quality control for Mohawk’s corporate website by monitoring and modifying the website to maintain its integrity and accuracy, anticipating and resolving problems.
• Researches and implements new technologies, resources and developments related to digital technology.
• Researches and recommends new technologies with forecasted and planned budget resources required to achieve.
• Provides technical maintenance, support, troubleshooting, research and user training of Mohawk’s Content Management System (CMS). Stays current with new CMS developments.
• Utilizes various scripts and programs to enhance website/pages to increase user interaction and/or provide internal stakeholders with user feedback. Will often investigate or initiate solutions where none previously existed.
• Works with the design team, provides consultation and guidance to members of the College community who have developed or are developing their own websites, with a specific focus on tracking, goals, accessibility and usability and meeting the established standard of style and presentation.
• Ensures that Mohawk’s corporate website is of the highest standard and is competitive with all post-secondary institutions by working towards higher accessibility, usability and presentation standards on all pages.
• Promotes and supports the development of web interactivity with College corporate databases and curriculum.
• Provides support for Social Networking activities.

QUALIFICATIONS:

The successful applicant will have:

• Two-year diploma/degree in web design and development, marketing, or related field.
  • Minimum of 3 years of experience in website design and development, including web analytics and computer scripting experience, search engine marketing/optimization, online media and digital marketing, Ad Words, and technical troubleshooting.
  • Courses completed in:
    • Google Tools & Analytics (e.g. Google Analytics IQ Online Course) Google Ad Words (e.g. Google Ad Words Certification Program)
• Experience with Content Management Systems (CMS). Understands front- and back-end site management.
• Experience in writing for the web is an asset.

Please apply using only one (1) method:

All interested candidates are to submit an updated resume or College application form, referring to position # (998802).

Resumes/applications can by sent by fax to 905-575-2353, or e-mailed to recruit@mohawkcollege.ca. They can also be mailed to:

HUMAN RESOURCES
Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology
P.O. Box 2034, Hamilton, Ontario L8N 3T2

Mohawk College thanks all applicants for their interest in employment; however, only those selected for interviews will be contacted. The college is an equal opportunity employer.

Google+, however, has made inroads, and with Google’s other products, Google Analytics, YouTube and Gmail most prominently, it is well positioned to continue taking bites out of Facebook (particularly since they’ve incorporated social circles and social reports). The question is: should Facebook fight back by launching its own search engine?

They can definitely benefit from such a development, even if Google has an almost 65% market share worldwide. For one thing, search is the top dog when it comes to advertising dollars (Google still generates most of its revenue from search), and there is enough evidence to suggest that Facebook would be able to offer advertisers something of an unparalleled service. After all, people now spend more time on Facebook than all of Google’s services, combined, this includes YouTube and Gmail (which is open all day on my computer).

Clearly, if Facebook created a stand-alone website, similar to Google’s, it’s very possible that their results page would be much more personalized. The wealth of information that the social media giant knows about its user base (let’s be honest, they know everything about you), would also likely lead to higher CTR and conversion rates for advertisers. It’s doubtful, however, that they would go this route, as it runs counter to the way they’ve worked in the past.

It’s much more likely that they will implement a more elaborate search function within their existing platform. There are reports, in fact, that Facebook is currently focusing a lot of resources on improving the site’s current search capabilities (which is understandable, it’s frustrating to say the least). A drastically improved search function, combined with the vast social (and public) information available on Facebook, would be something very unique, and it may very well create something of a universal platform, a sort of portal through which users experience the Web. To that end, Facebook was awarded a patent last year called, “Visual tags for search results generated from social network information”. This is how it was described:

Search results, including sponsored links and algorithmic search results, are generated in response to a query, and are marked based on frequency of clicks on the search results by members of social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation from the member who submitted the query. The markers are visual tags and comprise either a text string or an image.

Clearly, something like that, something that incorporates a powerful search engine with a user’s social world, can compete with Google.

To hear more about the social network’s vision for the future, check out Facebook’s Bret Taylor talking at the Web 2.0 Summit:

What Will a Facebook Search Engine Mean for Higher Education?

When it comes to education marketing, a Facebook search engine may be a very powerful tool. For one thing, a majority of colleges and universities are already on Facebook. A Varsity Outreach study on 150 American colleges and universities in 2011 showed that 79% of schools had an admissions-specific Facebook presence (this was up from 65% in 2010.) We’d be surprised if it didn’t increase in 2012, as Facebook has been testing a new feature that is directly related to higher education: Groups for Schools.

This feature will let colleges and universities create a separate and specific community limited solely to people with active school email addresses. Essentially, this lets students and faculty create or join specialized groups within the site for specific classes, clubs and more. Should a powerful search engine be integrated into this mix, it means a whole lot of social information will suddenly be easily searchable by prospective students (of which 83% would view the Facebook page of a school they were considering). It also means that schools really need to implement and maintain a comprehensive social media plan.

Stay tuned for more developments on this topic.

What do you think about the idea of a Facebook search engine?

Higher Education Marketing will be hosting an education marketing webinar on May 17th, 2012, at 1:00pm EST (10 am PST).

Click here to register for the latest Higher Education Marketing webinar: Online Lead Generation Best Practices in Higher Education.

In today’s higher education landscape, college marketers must compete to attract a steady stream of qualified student prospects. Most often, this has to be done with limited, and in many cases, reduced marketing resources. This raises a question: how do you produce more online leads with less marketing?

Lead generation best practices can help you to increase the ROI of your online marketing by increasing the number of leads you produce at a lower cost per lead.

This Higher Education Marketing webinar will review of the basics of online lead generation, including:

• Segmenting your prospects
• The enrolment funnel
• Sources of leads
• Anatomy of a landing page

It will also cover online lead generation best practices, including,

• Conversion segmentation
• Content matching/scent
• Focused messaging
• Microsites
• Offers
• Multi-step forms
• Rich media
  Trust elements
  Tracking with analytics
• Testing,
• Using an agile marketing approach

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE LATEST HIGHER EDUCATION MARKETING WEBINAR: ONLINE LEAD GENERATION BEST PRACTICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION.

Here’s what PostRank founder and CTO Ilya Grigorik (who is now a Software Engineering Manager, Google Analytics at Google) had to say on the PostRank blog.

“It is bittersweet news that we remind our users that PostRank will be sunset on May 1, 2012. The sweet part is that Google Analytics now allows you to conduct much of the same measurement and analytics that you’ve enjoyed through PostRank. We invite you to access the new Social reports within Google Analytics. Learn more about the new Social reports in our blog post. As of May 1st, PostRank.com, PostRank Analytics, Top Posts widgets, and Google Reader plugin, will be taken offline.”

(Note: he never mentions the “bitter” part, though maybe it’s obvious.)

If you never used it, PostRank had developed a number of free tools to help make sense of social engagement data on the Web. This included plugins (the now defunct Google Reader plugin among them) and RSS feeds that would score and rank posts based on their discussion, linking patterns and social interaction. It was, basically, an easy way to find popular posts.

Google’s new social reports will be taking its place. The reports will allow users to analyze a number of different factos to see how Social impacts your company, or in this case your college or university. These social reports include:

• Sources: As your content is shared and people come to your site, it’s important to understand how visitors from different social sources engage with your site.

• Conversions: Shared content URLs become the entry points into your site, driving traffic from social sources. Measuring the conversion and monetary value of this traffic will help you understand the impact of Social on your business.

• Pages: People increasingly engage with, share, and discuss content on social networks. It’s important to know which pages and content are being shared, where they’re being shared, and how.
• Social Plugins: Adding Social Plugin buttons to your site (for example, Google “+1″ buttons) allows your users share content to social networks directly from your site. Your social plugin data shows you which content is being shared, and on which networks.

What do you think about this?

Well, it seems that Google is now indexing embedded YouTube videos, without the video sitemap hurdle. The discovery was made by the folks at ReelSEO, who noticed the change and then tested it. What they discovered is that you can get your embedded YouTube videos indexed automatically and quickly, simply by using YouTube’s new frame method (which is their new default embed option). The next time your program pages are crawled, any embedded vids will be indexed in Google videos. Simple and unexpected.

As ReelSEO states, the reason Google did not index embedded videos was likely to avoid a mess of duplicate content and to help maximize ad revenue (by driving all the traffic to the Google-owned YouTube.com). For whatever reason, this is no longer the case.

The change brings up a number of relevant education marketing discussions. For one thing, effective web content can no longer be restricted to text. Now more than ever, your program pages and student blogs should include a variety of media formats, with YouTube videos prominent among them. Not only can they liven up your content, they can now also help boost your online presence.

The flip side to that coin, however, is that there is a very real chance that this increase in online visibility can also lead to more frustrated searchers (a video may not always be the main point of the page it is embedded on). Clearly, there is going to be a learning curve, one which may even affect the way multimedia content is created, posted and shared. Stay tuned.

What do you think about this change?

Les services de surveillance et d’engagement sur les medias sociaux de Higher Education Marketing peuvent être configurés de façon unique pour chaque école, mesurant et identifiant le volume et l’origine des conversations (Facebook, Twitter, blogs) et les personnes potentiellement influentes. La surveillance sur les médias sociaux pour les établissements d’éducation supérieure aide également à nuancer le ton ou le sentiment général (positif ou négatif) de la conversation sur votre établissement.

Les services de surveillance et d’engagement sur les medias sociaux de Higher Education Marketing peuvent vous aider à :

• mesurer la présence dans les medias sociaux de votre institution ;
• gérer la réputation en ligne de votre école ;
• identifier vos forces et faiblesses dans les médias sociaux ;
• développer un réseau d’individus et d’institutions similaires.

Les médias sociaux peuvent faire en sorte que le Web parle de votre établissement, offrant ainsi un bouche à oreille « naturel » pour vos programmes, campus et services. Laissez le Web travailler pour vous !

Qu’est-ce que la surveillance et l’engagement dans les médias sociaux implique pour les écoles?

1. Une stratégie de médias sociaux - Higher Education Marketing peut vous aider à développer, mettre en place, et surveiller une stratégie marketing des médias sociaux qui peut stimuler les interactions et discussions concernant votre école sur les blogs, les forums et dans les médias sociaux.
2. Mise en place de marketing des médias sociaux - Higher Education Marketing mettra en place et établira votre présence en ligne sur des sites de médias sociaux populaires, et vous aidera à stimuler et à maintenir la discussion et les interactions en ligne au sujet de votre école, université, ou collège communautaire.
3. Surveillance sur les médias sociaux – Suivre votre part de voix dans les médias sociaux peut vous aider à comprendre les besoins de vos clientèles cibles. En assurant le suivi de votre présence dans les médias sociaux, vous pouvez guider la conversation en solidifiant la réputation de votre marque et en gagnant la confiance de votre communauté en ligne.
4. Gestion de votre réputation sur les médias sociaux – Est-ce que des références négatives à votre école apparaissent en haut des résultats de recherche si vous entrez le nom de votre établissement? Malheureusement, avec le développement des médias sociaux, il se peut que vous ayez de moins en moins de contrôle sur ce que les gens disent de votre école. Higher Education Marketing peut vous aider à vous débarrasser des mentions négatives en les « rejetant vers le bas » de la liste des résultats de recherche.

Une stratégie de médias sociaux complète peut offrir une bonne vision d’ensemble de votre école, des ses programmes, ses campus et ses étudiants.

Un audit de site web complet démontre le pouvoir et l’importance de Google Analytics. Pour demander un audit gratuit de votre site Web par Higher Education Marketing, cliquez ici. 

Egalement connu sous le nom de marketing pour moteurs de recherche, le marketing coût par clic (CPC) permet à votre école de vendre des programmes spécifiques à différents groupes d’étudiants et départements. Higher Education Marketing offre des services CPC sur tous les principaux réseaux, notamment Facebook, Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft AdCenter et LinkedIn. Le marketing CPC peut être facilement optimisé pour réduire votre coût par lead (CPL) et augmenter votre retour sur investissement.

Les services de marketing coût par clic de Higher Education Marketing offrent:

• la possibilité de choisir les mots-clés pour lesquels vous souhaitez que votre site se positionne sur les listes de résultats ;
• des annonces affichées en première page des résultats de recherche naturelle ;
• le contrôle total de votre budget et de votre message publicitaire CPC.

Le marketing coût par clic pour les écoles implique:

1. Une recherche détaillée de mots clés – Les mots clés sont la pierre angulaire de toute campagne coût par clic réussie et ils ne peuvent pas être inventés. Une recherché détaillée de mots clés est nécessaire pour tester les mots clés et les expressions qui fonctionnent le mieux avant de décider lesquelles doivent être ciblées.
2. Une gestion méticuleuse et minutieuse des offres – Les listes des enchères peuvent parfois donner le tournis. Sans une attention soutenue et des ajustements continus, vos offres ne seront pas les plus efficaces et les plus rentables. Une gestion méticuleuse de vos offres peut augmenter votre taux de clics, cibler des annonces géographiquement, optimiser le contenu de l’annonce et maximiser votre coût par prospect.
3. Une surveillance, des mesures et des rapports réguliers- les campagnes coût par clic peuvent être surveillées et mesurées de façon cohérente pour déterminer votre taux de conversion, les clics qui rapportent le plus et bien sûr, ceux qui vous coûtent de l’argent.

Un audit de site web complet démontre le pouvoir et l’importance de Google Analytics. Pour demander un audit gratuit de votre site Web par Higher Education Marketing, cliquez ici. 

.
L’optimisation pour moteurs de recherche génère du trafic naturel à partir de moteurs de recherche, augmentant ainsi votre visibilité en ligne. Les services d’optimisation pour moteurs de recherche de Higher Education sont conçus tout spécialement pour les établissements d’enseignement supérieur. Ils assurent un bon placement à votre site Web sur les listes sur les pages de résultats des moteurs de recherche, tout particulièrement pour les termes non marqués en lien avec vos programmes.

Les services d’optimisation pour moteurs de recherche pour les établissements d’enseignement supérieur d’Higher Education Marketing peuvent vous permettre de:

• améliorer votre accès à des segments d’étudiants potentiels encore inexploités
• cibler efficacement divers groups de prospects, tels que les étudiants à temps-plein, les étudiants étrangers ou à la recherche d’une éducation continue
• améliorer votre classement dans les listes naturelles sur les moteurs de recherché tels que Google, Yahoo et Bing

Améliorez le positionnement de votre site Web sur les listes de résultats naturels des moteurs de recherche pour les établissements d’enseignement supérieur grâce à Higher Education Marketing!

Que comprennent les services d’optimisation pour moteurs de recherche pour les écoles?

1. Un audit technique visant l’optimisation pour moteurs de recherche
   Conçu sur mesure pour chaque site Web d’école, d’université, ou enseignement d’éducation supérieur, l’audit technique visant l’optimisation pour moteurs de recherche de Higher Education Marketing peut identifier tous les points qui posent problème et propose des ajustements clairs, concis et faciles à mettre en œuvre qui peuvent améliorer votre classement et augmenter la visibilité en ligne de votre établissement.
2. Mise en place des outils de Webmestre
   Les outils de webmestres pour moteurs de recherche ne sont pas aussi connus que les outils de Web analytique mais ils sont en passe de devenir tout aussi importants. Google, Yahoo et Bing, pour ne citer qu’eux, offrent désormais ces outils, ce qui assure que votre site Web est correctement intégré à leurs moteurs de recherche et aide à maintenir la santé et la visibilité de votre site.

Un audit de site web complet démontre le pouvoir et l’importance de Google Analytics. Pour demander un audit gratuit de votre site Web par Higher Education Marketing, cliquez ici. 

De l’identité de votre marque à la création de sites Web et la gestion de contenu, Higher Education Marketing vous offre un éventail complet de services de design et de développement Web. Grâce à ces services, le site de votre école est entièrement optimisé, avec une esthétique gérable et engageante et des systèmes de gestion de contenu.

Les services de design et de développement web de Higher Education Marketing vous offrent :

• un site Internet esthétiquement plaisant et engageant
• une architecture de site facile d’utilisation
• un système de gestion du contenu efficace et flexible
• une intégration aux médias sociaux

Les services de design et de développement web de Higher Education Marketing pour les écoles offrent un équilibre nécessaire entre fonctionnalité et design web frappant et dynamique.

Pour quoi avez-vous besoin de services de design et de développement web pour les écoles?

Pour tous vos objectifs, l’esthétique de votre site web et les systèmes de gestion de contenu doivent être aussi gérables et flexibles que possible, quelles que soient leur étendue et leur complexité. Pour y parvenir, nous devons collaborer, en échangeant continuellement des idées, des objectifs et des informations pour affiner le design de votre site et l’adapter à vos buts et besoins  spécifiques.

Grâce à Google Analytics, Higher Education Marketing peut apporter les modifications nécessaires, assurant ainsi que le design de votre site soit attirant et facile d’utilisation. Il s’agit là d’un point important puisqu’une grande partie de votre succès dans le marketing sur le Web dépend du degré de confort ressenti par les utilisateurs de votre site.

Si vos visiteurs sont frustrés ou ne sont pas satisfaits, développer une présence en ligne devient plus difficile. Cela revient à réduire un grand nombre de techniques et d’opportunités de programmation, comme par exemple l’intégration dans des réseaux sociaux grandissants. De nos jours, ne pas maximiser vos opportunités marketing en ligne revient à ne pas tirer pleinement profit de votre site web.

Un audit de site web complet démontre le pouvoir et l’importance de Google Analytics. Pour demander un audit gratuit de votre site Web par Higher Education Marketing, cliquez ici. 

Le service de marketing mobile de Higher Education Marketing permet aux écoles de tirer profit  de l’expérience Web sur téléphone intelligent, offrant des modèles, des applications faites sur mesure, des versions de vos programmes compatibles avec les mobiles et bien plus. Cet outil de plus en plus important peut aider votre école à mettre au point une présentation de votre contenu sur mobile optimisée et simplifiée.

Les services de marketing mobile de Higher Education Marketing offrent :

• la possibilité d’augmenter votre clientèle et votre présence en ligne en répondant à de nouvelles préférences spécifiques de vos visiteurs
• la chance de communiquer avec vos étudiants et étudiants potentiels 24 heures sur 24, 7 jours sur 7, qu’ils soient dans le train, l’avion ou à la plage
• du contenu et des caractéristiques mobiles uniques qui aideront votre école à se démarquer de ses compétiteurs
• des outils, techniques et tactiques de pointe qui feront de votre école un leader innovant sur le marché

Qu’est-ce que le marketing mobile pour les écoles implique?

1. Une version mobile du site d’une école ou une version compatible avec les téléphones cellulaires.
   Il peut s’agir d’une simple extension d’une version non-mobile d’une école, ou une version indépendante beaucoup plus sophistiquée pour l’expérience Web sur téléphone mobile. Le but est de mettre au point une présentation mobile optimisée et simplifiée de votre école ou du contenu de votre programme qui rende l’expérience mobile plaisante et facile d’utilisation.
2. Applications mobiles
   Les applications sont désormais la meilleure façon de simplifier votre contenu pour le Web mobile en permettant à votre clientèle cible d’accéder facilement et directement sur leur téléphone à du contenu et à des informations. De plus,  les applications peuvent présenter de nouvelles opportunités au niveau du marketing et de nouvelles sources de revenus.

Un audit de site web complet démontre le pouvoir et l’importance de Google Analytics. Pour demander un audit gratuit de votre site Web par Higher Education Marketing, cliquez ici. 

Activated on April 19, the new analytics tool enables Gmail users to find out more about their email habits. According to the Google blog, the Gmail Meter report will offer information on the following:

• Volume Statistics show you the number of important and starred messages, the number of people who sent you emails, and more. Volume statistics can be very useful in determining how you are using email efficiency tools like Priority Inbox.
• Daily Traffic gives you an estimate of when you receive messages and when you send them during a given month. For example, in the graph below you can see how the peaks in my “Sent” curve indicates that I write emails in spurts.
• Traffic Pattern lets you get a sense of your overall email activity over the past week.
• Email Categories tells you how you are managing your Inbox. In the pie chart below, you can see that the majority of my emails are labeled. My Inbox is tiny compared to other labels which indicates that I keep a lean and mean Inbox.
• Time Before First Response shows you how long it takes you to reply, and how long it takes others to reply to you. By looking at this chart, I can infer that I reply faster than others I communicate with.
• Word Count tells you whether you are writing long emails. The example below shows that most of my emails are shorter than 200 words.
• Thread Lengths help you understand whether you participate in long conversations resulting in long threads. Top Senders and Top Recipients help you identify who you communicate with more frequently.

Check out this video to find out how to set up Gmail Meter:

What do you think about this new Google service?

May is a busy month in the education marketing world, and Higher Education Marketing will be attending a number of industry events across Canada.

These include:

The 2012 NACC Conference

The NACC conference (May 2 – 4) in Montreal will feature a number of speakers, including a motivational speech from François Langlois (the the third Quebecer to climb Mount Everest and the Seven Summits) and a session on ‘Motivating the Career College Student,’ by Richard Ashley, CEO of Enrollment Management Innovations.

Click here to register and find out more about the 2012 NACC Conference.

The 2012 ACCC World Congress

ACCC, in collaboration with Nova Scotia Community College, will host the World Congress of the WFCP (May 26 – 29).  Over 1,200 institutional leaders, senior government officials, international partners, faculty and students will gather in Halifax for this event. Cross-cutting themes will include:

• Local and Global Innovation
• Indigenous Peoples
• Access for the Disadvantaged
• Sustainability
• Transformational Leadership

Click here to find out more about the 2012 ACCC/World Congress.

The 2012 OACC Conference

The OACC Conference (May 30 – June 1) is being held at The Rosseau Marriott in Muskoka, Ontario (aka “Cottage Country”). As always, the OACC Conference will feature a wide range of exciting and relevant exhibitors from all levels of the education world. It’s the place to see and be seen, and we’re thrilled to be attending once again.

Click here to find out more about the 2012 OACC Conference.

Should you be attending any of these events, make sure to say hello to Higher Education Marketing, your source for analytics-driven marketing solutions!

1. First place went to computer science student Nathan Lapierre, who took home $750 for an application that helps students find books and articles at all Dalhousie Libraries. The app also enables students to saves search results and find exact stack locations.

2. Second place went to “Dal Online”, an app created by computer science students Mark Lewicki and Stu Penner, which tackles class scheduling with automated features and GPS. They won $500 for their work.

3. Third place went to computer science student Connor Bell’s “Dalpha,” which is a social network for people in the same faculty and class (with note sharing capabilities).

The People’s Choice winners (voted by faculty, staff and event attendees) were Mohamad Saliman, Tomasz Niewlarowski, Xiaoyu Yu and Marek Lipzac, who created “Mobile App for Dalplex Users,” an app designed to features news, scheduling, registration, class location and space availability.

Click here to see all of Dal App Challenge applications.

In all, nine Dalhousie student teams, representing three faculties, competed in the challenge, which took place at the University’s Goldberg Computer Science Building. Contestants had five minutes to pitch their apps. Judging duties felt to Ken Burt, vice-president finance and administration, and Carolyn Watters, vice-president academic and provost.

“Ask Dalhousie students to come up with apps for Dalhousie students and give them a month during term when they are already busy and what do you get? Incredible ideas that work,” Watters told Dal News. “I was totally impressed at the imagination, innovation, and compelling presentations of ideas from these students,” she said.

We recently posted about the University of Toronto’s efforts to engage students in mobile application development, which included opening a mobile app lab and AppStar, an app contest at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Clearly, this is no longer just one school leading the charge. As recent research into mobile use indicates, it’s become increasingly important for schools to be on the vanguard of mobile marketing and engagement, and contests and labs are a great way to get students involved at the ground floor level. After all, they know what kind of apps they want from their school.

What do you think about app contests like Dalhousie’s App Challenge?

That figure, by the way, would mean it is used on over 55% of all websites, giving it an analytics tool market share of over 82%. Impressive indeed, and considering the additions Google has made to GA, including email scheduling, social reports and flow visualizations, that share may continue to grow.

Here is the announcement during Google’s Q1 2012 earnings call:

In the meantime, Google has been working on their other big product: Google+.

The search engine giant has announced a redesign for its social networking platform, which will allow more user customization. New features, which will be rolled out progressively, include:

• The ability to customize apps
• A new navigation ribbon
• A new Explore page that highlights posts that are trending across the site
• Bigger photos
• A chat list
• An always-updated list of invitations from the people in your circles
• Quick access to every public and On Air hangout, for those times when you want to meet someone new, or watch a live broadcast
• A rotating billboard of popular hangouts, pro tips and other items you don’t want to miss

These changes will allow users to:

• Drag apps up or down to create the order you want
• Hover over certain apps to reveal a set of quick actions
• Show or hide apps by moving them in and out of “More”
• Follow community around your content
• Quickly join discussions and conversations

Here’s a video that takes a look at the new navigation ribbon:

Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra had this to say on Google’s Official Blog:

“More than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+, enjoying new ways to share in Search, Gmail, YouTube and lots of other places. It’s still early days, and there’s plenty left to do, but we’re more excited than ever to build a seamless social experience, all across Google… We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.”

Clearly, Google+ still has ground to make up to be able to compete with Facebook, but the more Google improves this product, the more important it will become for your college marketing department.

What do you think about the new Google+?

The “Show and Tell to Win!” contest is open to current students, alumni and future students who have applied for a program at the college starting in 2012. To enter, contest hopefuls have to visit the Northern College Facebook page to submit an original photo along with 50 to 100 words explaining “Why I chose Northern College”. Contestants then have to try to get their friends to vote for their submission. Those with the most votes will win. Prizes include an iPad 2, a 32 GB iPod Touch and a Cannon PowerShot digital camera.

“Northern College has a long, proud history of serving the training and educational needs of the North. This new Facebook page will add to the many ways in which Northern College keeps in touch with members of our communities,” Candace Fuhringer, Social Media Development Intern at Northern College, said in a press release.

“As the majority of our students use Facebook regularly, being where the students are is an obvious choice and an opportunity to strengthen dialogue,” she said. We would agree. As we have discussed in numerous posts, Facebook is the most popular social network, and more and more schools are using Facebook for recruitment purposes. This is especially true following the new Timeline format adopted by the social media giant.

We recently offered a free eBook that described Timeline’s features and offered suggestions on leveraging the new Facebook format: Facebook Timeline for Colleges and Universities.

Northern College’s strategy is a particularly sound one, in that contests like this are a great way to engage your Facebook community and an even better way to generate “organic” content. Essentially, students and applicants will be writing your marketing message for you. This is an ideal situation, and one that gets Northern’s social media strategy off on the right foot.

Hamilton’s National Academy of Health and Business has held similar Facebook contests, called “Shape Your Own Tomorrow“, which give away full scholarships (and make the most of SEO, press releases and social media while they’re at it). Clearly, this is the way forward for education marketers.

Submissions for Northern College’s “Show and Tell to Win!” contest will be accepted from April 12-25, 2012. Voting will take place from April 26-May 6 and individuals can vote for three submissions daily. Winners will be announced May 11, 2012.

What do you think about using Facebook contests for recruitment and education marketing purposes?

Named the Mobile Applications Lab (Mobile APL for short), the new lab intends to provide the University of Toronto community with opportunities to explore potential smart phone and tablet applications (so, if you’ve ever found yourself saying, “that would be a good app,” you know where to go).

The lab is being led by two faculty members from The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering: Professors Parham Aarabi and Jonathan Rose.

“We want to welcome minds from across the University to partner with us. Intelligent Apps – which combine the sensors, processing, and user interaction capabilities of smartphones – are not just for engineers, but also for many other fields including the arts and medicine” Aarabi told U of T News.

The lab will be open to all faculty, staff and students at the university, which its founders hope will lead to creative, multidisciplinary app development. The lab will work in conjunction with a new, recently launched course on app development (though interested parties will not have to be enrolled in the class to use the lab).

Mobile APL will feature stations for:

• Application exploration
• Simulation
• Testing (iOS and Android)
• Instant user feedback

As discussed in our post on the Horizon Report on Emerging Technologies in Higher Education, 2012 is the year education goes mobile. The report identified six technologies expected to break into the education mainstream in the next five years, with mobile apps and tablet computing first among them. Clearly, colleges and universities need to have some sort of mobile strategy, and U of T’s new mobile lab may be an easy way to ahead of the mobile curve: by letting students be their own engines of development.

As we mentioned above, Mobile APL is first of its kind in Canada. MIT and Stanford University have similar facilities in the US. We wouldn’t be surprised to see more such labs created in the near future.

What do you think about U of T’s Mobile APL?

Essentially, Web writing involves striking a balance between writing for humans and writing for machines (i.e. search engine crawlers). Here are some tips for optimized, effective Web writing.

When Web writing for human eyes:

Keep it concise
Effective Web writing is most often concise and to the point. You may want to bombard prospective students with every bit of information about courses, programs and facilities, but this isn’t a good strategy. Keep content short. 

Use titles, lists and paragraphs breaks
Use titles, headline, bullet lists and paragraph to cut up intimidating blocks of text. The more you break up the text, the easier it is for readers to find what they’re looking for (and the more they’ll enjoy their experience with your program pages).

The following is an example from our Social Media Marketing Setup page:

Be conversational (and professional)
Try to make your program pages as conversational as possible, but make sure that the text is still professional. Plain language can be very effective, but it still has to show your college or university in the best light.

Keep your audience in mind
Know your audience and write with them in mind. What are your website goals? Are your program pages meant for prospective students? Current students? Answering these questions can guide your writing.

Consider the following example from our recent post, “Optimizing Your College’s Press Releases“:

The audience for that post was college marketing departments. Knowing this, we were able to focus our subject matter and decide what we thought these relevant stakeholders would most likely want to read.

Be informative
Your program pages should be as informative as possible. Online readers want information quickly. Give it to them.

Front-load your paragraphs
Start your paragraphs with the key point. Don’t make your visitors sift through endless amounts of text. An inverted pyramid is the image you should follow. Start with your main idea and then expand upon it.

To help you visualize this, here is an image of the inverted pyramid:

Optimizing your program pages for search engine crawlers

Now that you’ve written engaging content that your audience will want to read, you’ll need to optimize your program pages for the best possible rank.

Here are some basic SEO copywriting tips:

Keep an eye out for keyword density (but don’t obsess over it)
The ideal keyword density for your programs pages should be between 1-3%. Google, however, has recently hinted that they may soon penalize sites that are “over-optimized”. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t follow SEO best practices, but it does suggest that you shouldn’t cram keywords into a program page to boost the density.

Use heading elements
Use the six heading elements, H1-H6, to send more focus to your keywords and give your program pages a hierarchical organization (don’t skip section elements, e.g. using an H1 then an H3). An example of heading elements:

See if you can spot where we’ve used heading elements in this post.

Show off your vocabulary
Using synonyms of keywords can be helpful. This involves latent semantic indexing (used by Google), which is based on the idea that words used in the same contexts tend to have similar meanings. High quality, relevant content, in other words, will beat out content that is over-stuffed with keywords. 

Highlight your keywords
Underline, bold or italicize words to emphasize them. Search engines will assume that a word is a keyword if you do. 

Meta tags
Make sure to write page titles (70 characters or less) and meta descriptions (160 characters or less) for every program page or blog post. 

As we covered in our post, “How to Write Great Title Tags“: the ideal title tag should be roughly 70 characters long. Anything past the 70 character mark will not be visible, which means it’s important to create title tags that are close to that length. This restriction, however, can actually help your writing: it will force you to create title tags with only the most important keywords.

A Google search for the words “University programs” provides some examples. Lets consider the following:

As you can see, title tags that exceed 70 characters are cut off, with any excess replaced by an elipsis (…). This does not happen with shorter title tags:

On the other hand, this title tag may be too short (45 characters).  Short title tags ensure that nothing is cut off. However, they may not take full advantage title tag keyword opportunities. Try to get close to that 70 character sweet spot.

Link, link, link
Add links to your program pages. This should be done both internally (cross link with your own pages using relevant anchor text) and externally (linking to useful and relevant websites). This will tell Google what your pages are about and boost your college website’s rank.

Include pics (and title them!)
When adding pictures, title your photos properly with a keyword-rich title and ALT Tag.

As you can see, ideal Web writing involves a combination of techniques meant to engage both humans and machines. It may seem like a difficult balance to achieve, but by following these tips, you will be able to boost the online presence of your program pages.

What other Web writing tips would you recommend?