Ohio University, Art Institute of Pittsburgh and other schools have recently devoted a large amount of marketing and web development resources to extend their campus to the online virtual world Second Life. Click here to check out Ohio Universities' Second Life "campus". I agree that these efforts certainly do help these schools present themselves as hip or cutting edge. It also allows the schools to reach a base of tech savvy users. The game Second Life has 2 million users, up from 95,000 a year ago. The average age of users, surprisingly, is 33.
The branding benefits of Second Life are clear - but if schools expect to get a wave of new students solely from marketing via Second Life, I think they are sorely mistaken.For one, there are 2 million users, but how many are "real"? I signed up just to check it out and I have never logged in again - I bet a lot of these users are like me. Secondly, how many users are looking to peruse online schools, given the sheer number of activities one can pursue in Second Life.
What Second Life should be is a nice addition to a holistic new media marketing strategy. Potential students should be given the opportunity to interact with a school via their communications channel of choice. This medium could be by subscribing to student and faculty blogs or podcasts, interacting with students on a social network for that school, visiting the school's Second Life Campus or more traditional approaches like taking a physical or virtual campus tour or reading online student/faculty profiles.
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