By Carrie Wells
McClatchy-Tribune
(MCT)
When Ryan Yarosh posted an advertisement for Binghamton University on YouTube in January, he had no idea the video would go viral. Eleven months later, more than 20,500 people have viewed it.

“To be able to effectively reach out to prospective students we need to be caught up in terms of the latest technology,” he said. “Our students, prospectives, alumni—we need to be where they are.”

Yarosh, the assistant director of media relations for Binghamton, is apart of a growing shift in university marketing campaigns onto social media sites like YouTube and Facebook. The ubiquitous nature of the sites allows colleges and universities to keep in constant communication with alumni and current and prospective students.

Facebook, where users can “poke” their friends or tag them in photos, is seen by some universities as an exciting, innovative way to keep in touch with alumni, who can scatter and be hard to keep in touch with after graduation. It is also a tool for engaging current students.

The University of Michigan’s Facebook page has nearly 22,000 “fans.” On the page are videos, an event celebrating their fundraising campaign, press releases, podcasts, discussions and user-uploaded photos. A couple people even donated $10 each to the university through the site.

Texas A&M University’s Facebook page, with about 14,000 fans, has videos where one can “see what it means to be an Aggie” (their mascot). The page also links to iTunes, where users can download Aggie music and videos.

Other universities use social networking sites to recruit new students. The State University of New York College at Plattsburgh has a game through Facebook in which users participate in an “Ultimate Challenge.” Players rack up points by completing various challenges, which could involve going to a football game or posting a picture of the university.

The embrace of social media sites is a relatively new phenomenon, said Michael Staton, the founder of Inigral, a company that recently developed a Facebook application that securely integrates data the university has on alumni lists and more onto the site.

“Over past three years universities have had to do a complete 180 on how they look at the social web, social media and open content,” he said. “They’ve had to move from a position of fear to a position of ‘we have to move on this as quickly as possible before our competitors do.’ They’re very afraid that someone is going to have a better Facebook page up and more viral videos, etc, and as a result have a bigger digital footprint.”

Abilene Christian University, a private liberal arts college in Texas, is the first user of Inigral’s application, and the company hopes to sign two more colleges by spring 2009. Around 60 colleges have expressed interest, Staton said, but many are leery of jumping into the site. His advice for universities planning on expanding their “digital footprint” was to make their content unique and interesting. Otherwise, he said, their plans would likely fail.

At Binghamton, the social networking process is still evolving. Yarosh said he only launched a Facebook page for the university last Friday. But he expects to market the university using other social networking sites in the future.

“It’s a great way to bring people from all over country _ people from all over the world, really _ into one common place,” he said.
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© 2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (www.mctcampus.com).