Summer Projects

I know, I haven’t blogged in a while. But it’s about to get even busier around here. Typically it’s slow in the summer, but not this summer for me! We’re launcing a new and improved blog for prospective students, increasing our university’s presence on Facebook, and using more social media like Twitter. I am really frustrated because FCAdmissions is already taken for Twitter and I can’t figure out if I did it and just can’t remember the password, or someone stole it out from under me. No followers and no messages out so I guess that’s a good thing.

Also, I sort of volunteered for something with our database. The company that runs Continuum is thinking about starting a users group and I volunteered to be a part of the process. But I’m not sure what that entails. I’m looking forward to it!

That’s all for now. However, stay tuned. I am working on lots of projects that are blog worthy. I promise.

Implementation DONE! So what next?

Well just this week I’m calling it. Implementation is done, and we are now entering a new phase of work for me.

Implementation technically has been done for a while. I only recently have felt confident that our system errors are caused by human mistakes instead of system quirks. Another sign of the end is that I am now transferring the info from Continuum to our campus-wide system, PowerCAMPUS instead of someone in IT. Now, by transferring, I’m really only pushing buttons that someone else set up for me so don’t be too impressed yet!

So what’s next? Last week I went to the TargetX “Xpert Summit”, got re-energized to do some Social Media Integration stuff, and now I’m ready to roll! Our campus site is undergoing a renovation soon (thankfully I’m not doing it) so we’re really trying to be sure our Break-a-way is conveying all the info our old site did. I have access to Google Analytics for that site now and I’m pretty excited about that. Our Admitted Student Community needs some new widgets, more publicity, and I’ve also been doing some work and formulating some strategy for our Facebook Fan Page. There’s a lot going on right now! Stay tuned for more about what’s going on with our site, the Fan Page, etc.

Facebook Friend Lists

Interesting… I just noticed that Facebook is giving it’s users the ability to filter who sees certain things in their profile. For example, I have a list of friends, colleagues, and everyone else. I only want my friends to see the pictures of me partying last weekend, but everyone can see that I just forded the river in Oregon Trail.

It sounds to me like the powers that be at Facebook have gotten wise to our discussions about whether a college/employer should use a students profile against them and decided to do something about it. At least, that’s my thinking.

This is incredibly fascinating to me. We starting using a Facebook group to encourage students to meet others. We are a small school (about 1000) and there are already more than 70 students in the group. For us, that’s a lot. And, the conversations these students are having range from “who wants to room with me” to “I’m nervous about college.” That speaks volumes to me about a students interest level. What a great way to connect to your college before move-in day.

For another great blog about Facebook, new technologies, and how it can affect recruitment, check out what Chris Potts over at SquaredPeg has to say. There has been some great discussion to follow.

I think most people agree, everything in moderation. And for the record, we’ve starting trying out Zinch and we’ve been pretty pleased. I’m sure I’ll blog about it more as it progresses. I noticed several people have mentioned it being phony because it’s a “scholarship competition” and I guess I didn’t realize they started awarding them until just now. I know Anycollege does a lot of that, but I didn’t recognize it with Zinch.

So back to Facebook, and the original subject of my post, I think there will be a lot of students who decide who sees what in their profile. Has anyone done any playing around with these new settings? What do you think?  Will students take advantage of this? Will you?