Six Must Have Links for International Admissions Folks Using Social Media

Let's face it, technology is advancing faster than we can possibly have imagined when we first entered international education as a field. The rise of social media and increasingly mobile social media tools are fundamentally changing the way prospective international students live their lives. These lives are lived online. Are you active where they live? Personally, a large part of my world these days is spent researching social media tools updating US institutions and our EducationUSA advising centers on how some of these can be applied to our common goals to bring/send more international students to the US for higher education.

To help provide my colleagues in higher education with my top 6 must-have links/resources for understanding, tracking some of the key trends and applications of the social media world I submit to you the following:

1. Mashable.com The gold standard for all things social media--many guides on how to use different tools.


2. http://www.checkfacebook.com/ If you're not on Facebook or think it's going away anytime soon, think again--70% of the nearly 270 million users are outside the US. This site will allow you to see the demographics by top country, fastest growing countries on a weekly basis, and individual country age breakdown of users. Great data!


3. DIOSA Communications This company does regular reasonably priced webinars on using social media in higher education, but also has some worthy blog and video posts on the usefulness of these tools.


4. http://www.statmats.com/ These folks do quite a bit of research on use of social media in higher education. They also have a free white paper on "THE FIVE FUNDAMENTAL STEPS
   FOR DEVELOPING A POWERFUL SOCIAL NETWORKING STRATEGY FOR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES."


5. Rachel Reuben -- http://www.doteduguru.com/ -- Rachel is a leader in the higher education field for using social media in marketing and communications. Great resources from following her, very active on Twitter.


6. http://www.nickburcher.com/ Nick is based in the UK, and is on top of examples of how businesses are using various social media tools. Nick occasionally does Facebook demographic updates as well.

Hopefully, by following these few folks/sites (and me!) the murky waters may become a bit clearer, and a path for your institution's approach to using social media in international admissions better defined.

I certainly invite others to make comments and suggestions as to other sites to include as my list is not exhaustive. Happy hunting!