U.S. Colleges & Universities: Join EducationUSA on YouTube

 If there has been an important social media lesson learned over the past year, it would be that one size does not fit all.  With EducationUSA we realize that there are many different audiences that we attract to our website, to our different Twitter feeds, our Facebook fan pages, this blog, and our YouTube presence wanting different information in a variety of formats. Information, particularly for our prospective students, needs to be of an interactive nature and visual oriented wherever possible.

To that end, we have been collecting a series of videos produced by our advising centers abroad and others that would be attractive to potential students looking to come to the United States for study.  As we grow our EducationUSA YouTube channel, and hope to work more closely with all accredited U.S. colleges and universities looking to reach out to international students, we are offering a free opportunity to partner with EducationUSA to enhance your international recruitment efforts.

For your institutions to have either existing or future campus videos displayed as "Favorites" on our EducationUSA YouTube Channel, you are welcome to email Marty Bennett, EducationUSA Marketing Coordinator, the url address (from YouTube) for institutional promotional videos, interviews with international students, international office personnel, or other related videos.  If you have videos but have not created a channel on or made use of YouTube, it is a free service.  The only requirements for posting videos to YouTube is that they be less than 10 minutes long, and smaller than 100MB in size.  In submitting these url addresses to us for linking to our YouTube channel, we would ask that you provide in the email, a statement that consent rights of the individuals highlighted in the clip for use on your institution's behalf online have been secured, and could be made available should the need arise.

As more and more U.S. colleges and universities get their heads around how best to use various social media outlets to reach international (as well as domestic) audiences, we hope you can join us in this effort.  Many campuses now have either their own YouTube channel or have taken advantage of YouTube.edu options that allow their institutions to showcase all sorts of related videos on campus life, lectures, events, as well as admissions-related content.  By partnering with us, your institution will be able to reach a larger audience of potential students that may be attracted by what your campus has to offer them.

Deadline for Submissions:  January 29, 2010.  We hope that with enough submissions by that date, we can go live with this Playlist on our YouTube Channel by early February.

Join the EducationUSA Pavilion at the NAFSA Conference in Kansas City

Have you ever been to the Exhibit Hall at National NAFSA conferences and were perhaps a
bit surprised to see that the Germans, Australians, Chinese, British, Brazilians, Spanish, and a host of other countries had massive sections of the hall devoted to their countries and their higher education institutions? 

Have you ever tried to arrange a place to have meetings with current or prospective exchange partner institutions abroad at NAFSA, having to settle at the last minute to meet under letter "C" on the message boards among the throngs of other lost souls looking for the same thing?

Is the country fair just too short of a time to meet our EducationUSA staff, REACs, and advisers?

Is your institution part of a state or regional consortia for international education (like Study Washington, Destination Indiana, or One Big Campus (in the Philadelphia area) that would like to have a space in the exhibit hall?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, EducationUSA has a practical option for you.  At the upcoming NAFSA Annual Conference in Kansas City, for the first time, EducationUSA will have its own pavilion.  We are offering on a first-come, first served basis the opportunity for regionally accredited U.S. colleges and universities as well as established state and regional international education consortia to reserve free of charge,1/2 day slots for table space within our pavilion to have meetings with potential or existing overseas partners, meeting with our advisers, and display your institution's literature.

These two options are available: 

1. reserving a half-day's time in our booth with a table and chairs for your institution/consortia
2. having your literature on display for visitors to the booth to collect.

Please email Marty Bennett, EducationUSA Marketing Coordinator, to the reserve space in our 1st EducationUSA Pavilion.

Keep Coming Back For More...

Since we rolled out our new EducationUSA website less than one month ago, we have seen a dramatic rise in the connections we are making with prospective students and members of the U.S. higher education community. Our Facebook fan page has jumped from under 800 fans to well over 1300 (an increase of over 63%) and the views on our YouTube channel have increased over 90% in that same time period. Additionally, we're averaging over 90,000 hits a day on our new site. We've also recently added our EdUSAtips Twitter feed to our Higher Education home page.


Today, we are announcing a new feature for accredited U.S. colleges and universities, as well professional association representatives. For those of you who have successfully requested a login to the secure section of the Higher Education site, you can now set preferences to inform you of developments (new stories, events, and resources) that involve EducationUSA and that are relevant for the U.S. college and university community. Much like Google Alerts or news digests that you can receive, once you have your login access you may set your "Preferences" to specify how you wish to receive news and updates on EducationUSA-related activities-as they happen, on a daily basis, or as a weekly digest.

In addition to indicating how you wish to receive updates about new content added to the News, Events, and Resources sections, you can also change your password using this Preferences screen. To access resources we make available for the U.S. higher education community, including past copies of the HEI eNews, conference presentations, and more, click on the "Resources" link on the top menu bar.


Please sign up now for your login access to take advantage of this new service!