Report from the AMA: Blogs for Prospective Students Work in Surprising Ways, Ball State Finds

The first of the Advanced Marketing Tracks at the AMA’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education was presented by Heather Shupp and Nancy Prater. Shupp was executive director of university communications at the time the BSU blogs were planned and organized [she’s since moved to Michigan State University], and Prater, the web content coordinator at BSU, continues to manage the blogging program there. Ball State’s blogs are among the best on the web and have been honored widely. They received a national CASE award this year and have been covered in the Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere.

Prater reported that BSU invested about $40,000 in launching and promoting its blogs. The expenses included about $800 to “compensate” the dozen student bloggers, each of whom received a video iPod, a digital camera that could shoot video, and some other tools and accessories. Prater estimates that she spends about 2–3 hours on blog-related activities in a typical week. One of the most important elements in making blogs work, she said, is that the student bloggers need praise and coaching. Ball State also promoted the blogs heavily, in post card mailings, email, and through other media, including links on its website.

Blogs—Not journals

One of the decisions Ball State made in the beginning was to launch true blogs—i.e., they turned comments to the blog posts on, so that visitors to the blog could respond to the posts by the student bloggers. This distinguishes them from journals, which are written by students but don’t allow response.

Shupp admitted that this made her uncomfortable. Her exact words: “I choked when Nancy suggested turning the comment feature on.” But, upon reflection, she said, “I figured our students would be reasonable, but I was terrified what others might write back to them in terms of comments or harrassment. We came up with some strategies and agreed that it was OK to go forward.”

Ball State makes it clear to the student bloggers that the blogs are theirs, not the university’s, and that they are free to speak their minds. At the same time, Prater said, she reminds them that people are visiting their blogs to learn about life at Ball State—and that many of their family members, professors, and friends will also read the blogs. In other words, if they want to chronicle their personal lives, there are other places to do it that are more private. But at that, Prater doesn’t edit the posts by the bloggers.

Among Ball State’s strategies was to give its student bloggers the authority to edit or delete comments on their blogs. Careful selection of bloggers is important—BSU asks prospective bloggers to produce some sample posts and provide a list of topics they might blog about. But so is training. Ball State invites the university’s legal counsel to speak to the bloggers about legal issues, such as libel, fair use, and other issues that could affect them if they aren’t careful. And the university offers a clear disclaimer on the website that makes it clear that the blogs are the opinions of their creators, and not of the university.

While there haven’t been posts or comments that have been problematic from a messaging, PR, or legal standpoint, there have been comments like this one:

“As to the other question though, what do college kids do for fun? Wacky shit.”

Prater said that the bloggers have been quite adept at answering questions put to them by prospective students and parents. Here’s an example she shared:

Parent: “My daughter and I are coming to visit BSU this Saturday. Can you tell me what living on campus is like since this is a new experience for you? … What’s it like in the dorms? Sounds like you can find a party when you want to, but can avoid them when you need to.”
Blogger: “Personally, I feel that dorm life is very beneficial for first year students. It forces students to be around other students. Therefore, for the first couple weeks, you are constantly meeting new people and making friends. As you may have seen from my blog, some of my closest friends here at school are from my floor.”

How about results?

Ball State conducted quanitative research among prospective students and parents to asses how effective the blogs were. They questioned a random sample of parents or 4 weeks during summer orientation, as well as all feshmen. Of these, 15% of students (N=1225) and 78% of parents (N=139) visited the blogs.

One of the surprising insights, according to Prater, was that 70% of parents reported visiting the blogs more frequently once their child was admitted to BSU; 40% of prospective students did so.

Prospective students believed the bloggers were authentic: 54% said they agreed, while 15% strongly agreed and 29% were undecided. But 59% said they unsure whether “bloggers were like me”

Shupp acknowledged that they were surprised by the interest in the blogs by parents, but she welcomed this news. The challenge for BSU now is to see how they can make the blogs more relevant and interesting to prospective students. They plan on doing some focus groups to see what they can learn about making the blogs more appealing to their original target audience.

For a copy of the presentation handout, contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

NOTE: I’m attending the AMA Symposium and will post entries about interesting sessions I attend here for next two days.