Blogging for prospects: student blogs are the latest recruitment marketing tool

University Business, Jan, 2005

Call it the cutting edge of personal expression or the ultimate vanity press--bragging is now part of higher ed culture. Students have taken to blogging in the same way they have to personal websites, chat rooms, IM messaging, P2P downloads, and all other internet technologies that have gone before.

This year, administrators got in on the act. Not only have professors who use blogs for academic instruction started flooding the web with how-to advice on sites such as www.weblog-ed.com and the Educational Bloggers Network (www. ebn.weblogger.com), but also admissions officers are using blogs as an outreach tool.

This month Clarkson University (N.Y.) will be launching its student blog intended to appeal to potential students. Six students have volunteered to provide web journals that give a day-to-day account of their lives on campus, explains Michael Griffin, webmaster and director of news services. Their collective reflections will be linked to the university's homepage. All will be encouraged to take digital photos to run with their text online. Those who do not have cameras will be supplied low-cost models. The ultimate goat is to interest web-surfing seniors enough to get them to follow the personal stories and to inquire about the school

Many schools, including St. Michael's College (Vt.), already have such blogs up and running. Here prospective students get an inside look at how freshman Jordan set up his dorm room, how he feels about the World Series (the headline "Go Sox" says it all) and his campus experiences.