The home page, like every other university web site out there, has a large photo-centric center section that corresponds with a recent news-ish story.

There’s a tiny bit of interactivity with the mouse on LMU’s page, however, and despite how subtle it is, it really works. It got me to stick around the page minutes longer than I otherwise would, and it just makes it more fun.

Quantifiable? No. It’s a surprise a little feature like this made it through the various discussions that I know happen at institutions of higher learning (“Will people get it?” “Is it too flashy?” “Will this make us look too hip/trendy/fun?”).

Way to go, LMU. It almost makes up for your crazy, almost unreadable URL-naming system:

• Admissions = http://www.lmu.edu/page76.aspx
• Contact Us = http://www.lmu.edu/page70.aspx
• Quick Facts = http://www.lmu.edu/pagefactory.aspx?PageID=110

Give bloggers a chance, will ya?

The Boston Globe’s Boston.com has a three-month old blog column called “The Big Picture” and yes, it does blow your mind.

It’s a collection of amazing photography presented in a large format.  Very little commentary and captioning.  Not to get nerdy, but all the photos are all 990 pixels wide and around 600 pixels tall.  Much larger than your average web site photos.

Artistry comes both from the quality and presentation of your work, and as I think about engaging people, I can’t help but think that most web content creators are missing the boat by limiting viewership of their most important digital assets.

Example 1: Photos
Looking at two examples from my own university, the Pepperdine school of law posted tiny photos from an alumni event.  No context; just hundreds lined up in a row.  Conversely, Pepperdine’s president just went on a highly-publicized tour of Route 66, and, along the way, his team posted photos to flickr, where people can view full-sized images, as well as download and comment.

Example 2: Video
I wrote a column for TubeFilter about TNT’s new interstitial series, Lucky Chance, and not only is the series lame, but they only allow you to embed a super-small window (260 px wide) in which to post the video on your site.  Not an engaging viewing experience, even if you’re watching your favorite show.

Apply this to your own site.  Your own blog.  Your own experience.  Are you trying to “wow” clients?  Trying to make web surfers “feel” your brand?  Big presentations and crisp photography can do that.

What do they have in common?

They all use Ning.com to host a private social network on their sites.  They give their fans an opportunity to upload photos, make comments, and engage as a part of the brand experience.

The best part?  Ning is free.

Why wouldn’t you create a ning social network?  Barack Obama and my University want to keep their social networks close, so as to tie data back to their main databases, which makes sense.

In any case, shouldn’t you be creating a social experience for your customers or prospects?  Aren’t they expecting it?  I mean, if The ‘Hoff is doing it…

I have to respect The Bauer School of Business at the University of Houston for choosing a spokes-student and going with it.

Their “online series” That Bauer Girl may not be a viral hit (the first video has about 3,000 views), but they only need it to serve as one piece of media among the hundreds any potential will be looking at. It feels fresh, honest, and authentic. Rather than another boring fluff piece, it gives prospects something to talk about.

PS — the millions of searches for Jack Bauer can only help this project…

It’s a nice, personal service and allows for fast-spreading messages.

But is it really a marketing tool? I think not. I hate it when spammers try to “follow you.” They’re fishing for followers. Then again, if you have a ready stream of content to share (@cnnbrk) or you are constantly moving around the country (@BarackObama), it seems to be tailor made for you.

In thinking about Twitter and the Pepperdine community, I’ve had quite a few conversations about using it to reach out to the few Pepperdine alumni who are active on Twitter. Honestly, the numbers probably aren’t there to make it worth anyone’s time. I’m not going to post tweets 10 times a day to reach 10 people. That doesn’t scale.

I found a few links dealing with universities and Twitter; great ideas here and good discussion on the comments. I won’t replicate it. Go check these out:

• Using Twitter for Higher Ed
• Twitter as Alert System?
• Social Survey: Twitter for Higher Ed Marketing (.eduGuru)
• Do You Twitter? (uwebd)

An Experiment

What these links don’t cover is using Twitter simply as an RSS aggregator. Using Twitterfeed, which renders RSS entries into a twitter account’s status updates, I created a Twitter account called PepperdineFeeds.

I set up six RSS feeds to push content to the account:

1. YouTube videos with “Pepperdine” in the title or description
2. Flickr images with “Pepperdine” in the title or description
3. Google News feed looking for any article with “Pepperdine” in it
4. Technorati RSS feed looking for blog posts with “Pepperdine” in them
5. Pepperdine’s own Public Relations RSS Feed
6. Pepperdine’s own student newspaper The Graphic

Since the first tweet on April 11, 2008, I haven’t touched the account, and it’s racked up 672 updates. I like that scalability.

Great. I have a lot of posts. What’s the point, right?

I’ve used it to keep track of news and interesting things in my Twitter account (rather than bogging down my RSS reader).

I haven’t pushed it to an audience, so, sure, there are only 3 followers. I suspect that I need to apply some additional content tweaks before it could be relevant to an external audience as content.

So, check it out. What do you think of Twitter, or the PepperdineFeeds account?

Stephen Cassidy began posting the videos to UNICEF’s own MySpace page and then to other video-sharing websites — all for free. In less than a year, the number of views on the video-sharing sites exceeded views on UNICEF’s homepage — doubling the exposure at no additional cost. more

Financial News Sites Bank on Video
Big financial news sites cue up Web-beats-cable sell

Yahoo Finance recently launched Tech Ticker, a tech-stock-centric blog that produces daily, bicoastal video segments. Yahoo claims TechTicker is pulling in 150,000 to 230,000 unique viewers per day, and sometimes close to 500,000 when featuring a big, news-making guest. Forbes.com took a major plunge into video in 2002 and now averages 2.5 million total viewers per week, per internal data. more

Colleges Putting Their Own Spin on YouTube

Frostburg, like a growing number of schools, is trying to elbow its own messages onto such sites as YouTube to promote themselves, create a virtual community and drown out embarrassing clips. more

My favorite? The video of last month’s graduation in Malibu, where the seniors were given custom Dodgers hats to put on when longtime announcer Vin Scully took the stage.

Totally unfair, if you ask me. When I graduated in 2000, Tom Selleck gave us his advice, but we didn’t get little Magnum PI moustaches!

EduStyle is hosting its first annual web design awards contest, judged by public ballot.

The nominees across the categories seem heavy in the Boston, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, and Biola areas, so I wonder if the results are skewed because those schools employ the heaviest users of the site. It could also be that their designs are truly original and compelling.

A great read for anyone looking at college admissions. From the summary: “College is a wise choice for far fewer people than are currently encouraged to consider it.”

My take: “[Your school] is a wise choice for far fewer people than are currently encouraged to consider it.” What does that say about your marketing strategy?

Live Video U (http://lvutv.com/) boasts 50,000 videos in their library, and seems to get permission to come on campus and stick a camera in students’ faces for quick, authentic takes on their own lives there on campus. Did a quick search for Pepperdine and didn’t find any videos. They must not be looking for UGC or else they’d have a lot more.

Looking specifically at LMU’s page, they seem to have 64 videos of individual interviews. That’s a ton of footage, but not unreasonable for one or two days of shooting. The videos are simple, short, and have nice color correction. They are all tagged (e.g., student athlete, environment, or school spirit).

The site also does a nice, quick link to all the YouTube videos tagged with LMU.

Combined with some simple “fast facts” and a link to Google Maps, Live Video U actually provides a nice template for a “one stop shop” for media for Universities.

For University marketers, your school should take a lesson from this site and embrace all the external media being created outside of your control. Flickr images, YouTube videos, and student blogs are all playing a part in the conversation around your school’s merits (and dirty little secrets).

What part does online video play in your marketing strategy? Is it a primary draw for your prospects, or does it take a backseat to other types of media? By putting video front and center, Live Video U is using it as strategic tool to bring traffic and then, interest.

Some are really well done, and some are really well done… for librarians. Nevertheless, I applaud the effort libraries are putting forth these days to make their facilities relevant to a new generation of student needs.

Now Your Library is Open Late Night, Too!
QandANJ.org, New Jersey Library Network

The Obstacle

The University of Nebraska has about 23,000 students, which is about 10% of the entire population of Lincoln, NE. Big state school? Small midwestern college town? There are a lot of stereotypes flying through my head already. As a Nebraskan high schooler, your college options are increasing (growing online education options, competitive out-of-state rates, loopholes, etc.), so why would you consider UNL?

Since UNL has such an obvious battle to face, it would be easy for them to create some videos with the same lame scenes: students in lab coats (doing real science!), students working on computers, and super-engaged professors (what?). All this has been done in the past, to try to bolster the prospect’s view of “higher” academics.

The Videos

But UNL didn’t take that path, and instead features admissions counselor David Burge hosting funny, unusual, and thankfully honest depictions of life on campus at Nebraska.

The videos offer a wide range of content, such as “man on the street” interviews, guided tours around campus, weekly Grey’s Anatomy recaps by current students, and student band featurettes. Talk about unabashedly authentic!

Leveraging Online Video

The University of Nebraska admissions team gets big praise from me for their tactics surrounding the videos themselves:

• They posted videos everywhere (not just their own site). A simple Google-search reveals that they posted the videos to YouTube, Revver, and MetaCafe. Tip: They could use TubeMogul to get on more sites.
• Anyone can subscribe their videos via RSS. Allow people to download their videos, making them more spreadable. You might even see some mashups, which might be a marketer’s dream.
• There is interactivity right there on the page. You can vote on the video, see related ones, and ask a question directly.

Tactics Falls Short

For all the things they’re doing right, I have two problems with the Real Nebraska home page:

• You can’t copy HTML code to embed the videos right there on the site. It’s common practice nowadays and a must for anyone wanting to share videos online. Let your viewers distribute it for you!
• The RSS (Subscribe to Podcast) link is difficult to take action on. There should be a big red button that says “subscribe!”

And that’s it! Congratulations on such a great series and being bold enough to share your personality with prospective students!

If you happen upon this post, David & team, share some of your returns and findings!

After all, if your video is on YouTube, it can be copied and posted anywhere!

Most marketers would see this a big plus, but for some reason, most Universities are a lot vested in how prestigious they are. They get scared when their content (especially academic-related) has the possibility of making it to MySpace, Facebook, or — even worse — a blog!

I therefore applaud Vancouver Film School for not just dancing around new media and YouTube, but actively using it to showcase their students’ work.

More than that, they’re using YouTube as an active tool for recruitment. A perfect fit.