Social network success.

YOU'VE HEARD ABOUT THE PROMISE OF using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as recruitment tools, but many schools don't want to invest time or effort into these paths until they know there will be results. Well, now there are.

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Scott Minto, director of San Diego State University's Sports Management MBA program, is successfully using Facebook as part of his recruitment arsenal. "We can target advertising to the kind of students we want. Maybe it's in a country that is underrepresented, or an age group we want to build on. You can really hammer down your advertising to be as specific as you want it to be," Minto says. He updates his Facebook "friends" with news about sporting events, campus happenings, class schedules, and more. "If I sent them e-mail each time there was an event, they would probably opt out and tell me to go away," Minto says. Another advantage of using Facebook is access to user profiles, which reveal information beyond what's included in a college application. Minto says that gives him a better sense of whether a prospect would be a good fit for his program. "I can see where they went to school, what their interests are, what groups they associate with, where they've worked before, and so on."

But the best thing is becoming friends with the prospective students. "There's a real value in keeping relationships going with these top prospects, the people we really want to target. In the past that hasn't been the case," Minto says. "And because their friends see it too, there is a viral marketing component at work."

The success of the program may be because it is targeted to a specific group and not a university-wide approach. Minto says the school's executive management program has taken an interest in the idea as well.