With the relaunch, the scholarship and grant listings have been updated to provide the most up-to-date, relevant information for students and administrators alike. With the improved navigation and cleaner interface, administrators can now easily access information and include even more details on their award. Students also have the ability to perform advanced searches to find the most suitable awards to help finance their international education.

IEFA’s mission is to be the complete resource for financial aid overseas. Now, with the addition of loans, this role has been complete. The new loan comparison tool allows international students to choose their citizenship and school to find eligible private student loans. Students can then compare basic lender terms and apply right online.

Finally, IEFA is now home to the International Financial Aid Blog which features regular posts on important topics such as industry changes, important scholarship deadlines, and trends in private funding. With the ever-changing financial climate, we’ve made it even easier for users to keep up-to-date with industry changes in international financial aid.

With these and other enhancements, IEFA.org is proud to continue expanding its financial aid resources for students and faculty around the world. To find out more information, check out our press release with additional information on the recent changes.

Let’s explore the schools that have expressed interest in student lead generation.  There are some that are set up very sophisticated and have the ability to consume hundreds if not thousands of student inquiries or leads each month.  They have the budget, staff and systems and procedures in place to deal with them and give them the attention they need.  After all, there is nothing worse than letting a hot lead go cold.

Then there are others, that due to budget, staffing bandwidth, lack of systems and procedures, can consume fifty, maybe one to two hundred inquiries or leads in a month.  This was the case with our work-study partner HTIR.

HTIR based out of Oregon, partners with schools and implements work-study, or Curricular Practical Training (CPT) programs at schools.  By partnering with HTIR, they will set up a work-study program at your school, where students have the ability to come to the US for school and work from the moment they receive their social security number, literally days after arrival.  This gives their partner schools a recruiting edge, by providing students with a way to get their US education, all while working and earning US wages to pay for it.

HTIR is not staffed up to receive and work hundreds or thousands of leads each month.  So, we have worked with HTIR and their partner schools to allow students not only to inquire into their work-study programs, but to apply directly from InternationalStudent.com.  This expands their reach to over four million international students and increases the enrollment at each of their partner schools.  It also cuts down on the amount of work, since HTIR is receiving completed applications from each interested student.  This takes the lead a step further from student inquiry to completed application and drastically increasing the conversion from lead to enrollment.

You can take a look at HTIR’s application on InternationalStudent.com by clicking here.

Have you found that your school has the bandwidth, procedures and systems in place to effectively take a lead to application?

Let’s start with the definition of search engine optimization.  According to dictionary.com, SEO is:  the methods used to boost the ranking or frequency of a Web site in results returned by a search engine, in an effort to maximize user traffic to the site.  In other words, the best practices used to be found when someone is searching for you or the services you provide to them.  In the case of international education, it is how your school, programs or courses can be found by the students that are looking for them using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu or other source.

There are two ways to be found on a search engine.  You can pay to show up by bidding on certain keywords or phrases, such as “MBA in the USA”, or “international students in the US” or other relevant key words that you could associate with your school or programs.  This is done on a pay-per-click model where you only pay if someone clicks on your ad and visits your website.  The other way to be found is to be found “organically”.  An organic listing is a free listing but requires patients and some effort if you want to rank close to the top of the search results page.

So how can you be found by students organically?  You need to have a strategy and to  implement some standard best practices for SEO, such as having relevant content, inbound and outbound links to relevant content, articles and other related sites.

Let’s take InternationalStudent.com as an example.  How do students find our site?  They find us because we have relevant content on our site based on what they are searching for.  As an example, an international student searching for health insurance might search for “international student health insurance”. In this case, our site Internationalstudentinsurance.com would appear second in the organic search listings.  Another example is a student that wants to study a career in broadcasting, might type in “study broadcasting in the USA”.  In this example our content section on studying broadcasting on InternationalStudent.com is listed second in the organic listing and our content section for our partner the Ohio Center for Broadcasting is listed third.  Even mentioning them in this blog will add a little SEO boost to the above content sections on our site.

If you want your school to be found when and where students are looking for you, you either need a very large pay-per-click budget or a solid SEO strategy with relevant content at the core.  Partnering with sites with good search rankings can also play a key role in being found as well.

Do you have an SEO strategy to help your school be found when students are searching for you?

While there are many other questions to ask, here are five main questions that you should ask your current or prospective lead provider:

1. How often are the leads delivered?  Can they be delivered in real-time?
2. Are the leads exclusive and if not, how many other schools receive the same student lead?
3. Can you target to specific regions, countries, nationalities?  What about specific programs offered or specialized majors?
4. How do you generate leads?  Do you pay for traffic or get them from a third party source?
5. How do you deliver the leads?  Via Email, Spreadsheet or fed via API?

While this is a small list of questions, it should allow you to gather enough information to know whether your current (or prospective) lead provider is supplying you with the best available leads.  What questions do you ask when you are evaluating a lead provider?

According to the 2011 Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education, there was a 23.5% increase in the number of Chinese students coming to study in the USA, bringing the total to 157,558. Morrison Kwong, marketing associate at ISI and former Chinese international student from the University of North Florida, commented “Many international students do not realize that they can save money by purchasing an alternate insurance plan and waive out their university’s insurance plan. I wish I had known about ISI earlier, which is why I’m excited to be working to help educate students about their options.”

The Chinese portal is available online at http://www.internationalstudentinsurance.com/cn. Students are able learn more about the company and popular international student health insurance plans in their native tongue. They can also access specially created PDF brochures in Chinese that describe ISI and its health insurance plans in more detail to provide to their parents.

In addition, ISI is actively working through Chinese social media channels and search engines to reach Chinese students and make them aware of their international insurance options. “Students from China feel more comfortable reading in Chinese, even if they can read English well, and certainly their parents and grandparents want information accessible to them,” Kwong added. “And most students will not be able to access English webpages if they are using Chinese search engines and social media platforms, so the activity here will be an excellent opportunity to help students in a more suitable environment.”

ISI provides students with the highest level of insurance coverage and customer service, no matter where they are from or where they choose to study around the world. ISI customers can rely on world class service from fully licensed insurance agents who offer support in English, Spanish, Thai and now in both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese.

International Student Insurance is a specialized insurance agency selling health and travel insurance to students from around the world. Online since 2001, ISI is a trusted industry leader providing insurance to students studying outside their home country. Owned and operated by Envisage International Corporation, International Student Insurance is a NAFSA Global Partner and accredited with an A+ rating by the Better Business Bureau. For more information, visit the website at http://www.InternationalStudentInsurance.com.

Long known as the industry leader providing access to international student loans, foreign-enrolled loans and study abroad loans for international students, ISTL’s loan comparison tool builds on this expertise in an effort to elevate its commitment to customer care. Developed with the needs of international students in mind, the new loan comparison tool is designed to help students quickly and easily find the right loan. Instead of wading through pages of applications, applicants can get results by answering just a few simple questions. After students choose their school, citizenship, and their co-signer status, students will be matched with eligible lenders. Once students have compared and chosen the loan that meets their needs, they can proceed to the application and apply for the loan directly.

The new loan comparison tool is part of International Student Loan’s continuing efforts to make students’ study abroad experience easier. Study abroad, international and foreign enrolled students will find that financing their education has never been simpler. If you have any questions about this program or how you can make it available to your students please feel free to contact Jennifer Frankel at International Student Loan today. You can also read more about our loan comparison tool on the recently distributed Press Release.

We picked the winner last week and after having the time to notify them and their next of kin, we want to congratulate, Patricia Wells of the University of West Georgia.  Patricia stopped by and visited with us in Mobile, Alabama at the Region VII conference and dropped off her business card for the drawing.

So what did Patricia win?  She won hero status with the University of West Georgia and especially with the International Admissions office.  UWG won a Featured School profile on InternationalStudent.com.  For the next year, we will be highlighting UWG on our site, giving millions of student’s information about why they would want to study in West Georgia and what type of education they will receive.  We will be marketing them to our community of over 4 million international students through banner ads, social media, our very popular International Student newsletter and more.  All in an effort to drive traffic to the UWG profile page where students have the ability to send their contact information, nationality, what they want to study and when, English proficiency scores and more directly to the UWG admissions office instantaneously.  UWG now has the ability to reach out directly to the student increasing their international enrollment.

The University of West Georgia joins the University of North Florida, Johnson & Wales, National University, Sacred Heart and the Ohio Center for Broadcasting’s Denver campus as our newest Featured School Partner.  So congratulations again to Patricia and the University of West Georgia for winning one year as our Featured School partner and for winning free international student leads.  Visit our Featured Schools section on InternationalStudent.com to learn more about what Patricia won!

First, recruiting international students can be quite expensive. Did I just learn this? Well, no. Traveling to fairs overseas….. the support staff required….. paying agents commissions….. and I could go on and on. Schools are spending tens of thousands of dollars (and even hundreds of thousands) on their international student recruiting strategies. Money spent to increase their school’s international student population.

Second, social media still seems to be a hot topic, but schools are still behind the curve on using social media as a way to reach and personally connect with students. Maybe it is because I was in a sessions on recruiting using social media or maybe it is because they really don’t quite get the power of our new way to socialize. Social media gives us a sense of community and of being together without being in the same room together.

Third, back to the first point, “recruiting international students can be quite expensive.” When asking several colleagues (and those that spend money recruiting) how they reach international students online, the main answer was through their school’s website. OK, that is a good start, but how do you really reach international students online? They seemed willing to spend $10,000 for a fair in India when all expenses are calculated, but have not thought through how to cast a wider net and reach millions of international students online.

All in all, the conferences have been great experiences and quite eye opening. Do you have success using social media to connect with international students and do you have an online strategy that compliments your overall recruiting strategy?

So what do you do?  You have to play on their playground with their rules and in their language.  Here are some of the things that we have done to reach Chinese international students.

• Translation – While many Chinese students can speak and read English, we have found they simply won’t.  They prefer to read in their native language.  Translations are key to reaching them.  We have done this with some of our insurance blogs, getting content out in their language.  You can see an example here.
• Social Media – As mentioned earlier, Facebook is banned in China.  As opposed to Facebook, they use renren.com and instead of twitter, they use weibo.com.  We want to reach them where they are socializing on the Internet.  Click on the links to visit our renren and weibo pages.
• Mobile – As mentioned in an earlier blog posting, we developed an International Student iPhone app.    It allows students to search for schools in the US as well as many other useful features.  This app has proved to be extremely popular and China is the country with the second most downloads of our app!

We began our efforts to reach Chinese students over the summer.  If we look at what countries our traffic comes from on our flagship site, InternationalStudent.com, China typically has ranked 10th.   Over the summer months, their average rank was 7th.  This clearly shows an increased amount of traffic from our efforts.

What are you doing to reach Chinese students online?  What seems to be working?

With the launch of the GM, we have been busy testing our three iPhone apps and we are happy to announce all three of our application are compatible with iOS 5 without any need for modification or changes. This is excellent news for our customers, as they will not need to wait for any updates and when moving to iOS 5 you will still be able to enjoy our apps without any interruption!

Our current iPhone app lineup includes:

• Study in the USA iPhone App – designed for international students from all around the world, this free iPhone app helps students navigate their way through information and learn all about how they can study in the USA!
• InternationalStudentInsurance.com Student Zone App – designed for our customers, our iPhone app allows you to manage your account on the go wherever you are in the world!
• Work and Travel Insurance Student Zone App – for all our work and travel clients, downloading the iPhone app is like your personal assistance on how to use your insurance plan, where to seek treatment and much more!