A successful social media strategy means more than having a blog or a twitter feed. It’s one thing to have the tools, but using them correctly—that’s the key.

Our recent playbook, “10 Social Media Do’s and Don’ts for Higher Education Enrollment Success,” talked about the value of social media as recruitment tools. We struck a chord. Many of you asked me for more specific advice on making these tools work.

So, welcome to the advanced course! Admission Lab’s latest playbook, 4 Keys to Putting Your Higher Education Social Media Strategy into Action, outlines a winning strategy for social media. You develop it around these elements: channel, reach, credibility and sustainability.

This free Playbook explains how to match communication channels to your messages (for example, sending tweets about upcoming campus events). It looks at how to build those relationships that are so important to extending your reach. You’ll also learn why student-generated content is pure gold and why your strategy must be current, consistent and controlled.

I could go on, but instead, please download the Playbook. Learn how to get social media right. Admissions Lab

A newspaper columnist and mother of a high-school senior wonders if the increasing number of college entrance essays that schools require is going too far. With questions like “What was your favorite thing about last Tuesday?” and “What does Play-Doh have to do with Plato?,” she wonders if the essays are just too outside-the-box to be valuable....continue reading

Each year, The New York Times’ blog, The Choice, tracks application trends. As the deadlines roll in for colleges around the country, it is sketching out a picture of the state of college applications. It has found that many of the increases in applications are due to students and their families searching for good value or effective financial aid....continue reading

Since its enactment 40 years ago, Pell Grants have helped needy students go to college, but the program has veered from its original intentions. Arthur M. Hauptman, a higher-ed consultant, writes in a recent Inside Higher Ed essay that the program needs a major change to return to its stated purpose. He suggests six ways to do that....continue reading

It used to be that average workers doing an average job could earn an average living, but average doesn’t cut it in this economy. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman explores this idea in a recent column, explaining that to get beyond average, students will need better access to education after high school so they can find jobs amid this time of technological change....continue reading

The Common Application, used by hundreds of thousands of students applying to colleges, is about to get a multimillion-dollar makeover that will make it easier to use, the group that runs the application says. The revamp comes at a time when 750,000 have used the system to apply to 450 schools this year alone. The new version is expected to go live the summer of 2013....continue reading

College letters of recommendation may be getting a bit too praise-heavy. Sure, there are some superb students out there, but they’re not all that way, right? A Chronicle of Higher Education blogger says he saw the effects of this “culture of praise” as he looked over recent letters of recommendation at the invitation of an admissions officer. “After an hour,” he writes, “I was exhausted.”...continue reading

Go to YouTube and search for Tufts University and you may stumble on “On a Date with Tufts University.” These and other videos are now on YouTube because for the class of 2014, Tufts began letting applicants create YouTube videos as an optional supplement to the required essays. They showcase each prospective student’s creativity and offer a “sense of who they are,” one dean said....continue reading

The federal government has a major tool at its disposal to help lower the cost of a college education: the student loan program. By using its influence over student loans, the government could encourage online learning, limit the amount of loans when schools increase costs too quickly and require schools to offer more financial aid....continue reading

Cristiana Quinn, a career adviser and founder of College Admission Advisors, LLC, has heard many an admissions spiel, and she and other advisers have to dispel that incorrect or misleading information. Quinn recently revealed the tallest admissions tales she has heard from prospective college students, including “We look at the whole student.”...continue reading