The theme of this issue of BPD Update is marketing the BSW. Consequently, the “Technology Corner” for this issue will highlight resources for marketing that are available on the web.

Before one can begin a realistic marketing initiative, it is important to complete an analysis of the potential market. To determine the number of traditional students who will be approaching college age, the United States Census is a wonderful resource. Located at http://www.census.gov, the Census QuickFacts will provide a breakdown of residents in a particular state or county if you simply click on the QuickFacts menu and select the state or county for which information is desired. (Please refer to the fall 2005 issue of Update for step-by-step instructions. You can access past issues of Update through the BPD website at www.bpdonline.org.) 

To actually locate potential students, one place to look (other than within one’s own institution) is at local community colleges. The American Association of Community Colleges (http://www.aacc.nche.edu/) has a Community College Finder on its website at (http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Content/NavigationMenu/AboutCommunityColleges/CommunityCollegeFinder1/Community_College_Finder.htm). Once there, one can click on the desired state map to get a list of community colleges in the state, along with a link to the website for each one.

Nontraditional students are harder to locate but can be found working as paraprofessional staff members of local social work agencies. There are online resources that can help you to locate local agencies in the public sector. One such resource is the American Public Human Service Association (http://www.aphsa.org/Home/News.asp). On the home page of this site, there are links for APHSA affiliates in public child welfare, TANF, food stamps, and other types of public human service agencies. These links can be followed to obtain contacts in your locality. Unfortunately, there is no similar website listing private agencies that offer social work services in a given locality.

Another interesting site is http://www.bls.gov/k12/help05.htm, a federal Department of Labor Statistics site that defines social work and the preparation required to be a social worker. Interestingly, this site makes no specific mention of the BSW or MSW degrees. Perhaps we should do some marketing of our own here . . .

To learn about marketing per se, one excellent site is http://www.knowthis.com/. At this site, you will find complete minicourses in marketing, including a general course with eight components. Although the course is designed for businesses, the following sections seem very relevant to academic marketing: Part 1—About Marketing, Part 2—Marketing Research, and Part 5—Targeting Markets.

The http://www.knowthis.com site has additional tutorials that will help you “find information for market research”  (http://www.knowthis.com/tutorials/marketing/information_for_market_research.htm) and show you “how to write a marketing plan”  (http://www.knowthis.com/tutorials/marketing/marketingplan1.htm).

A second site with extensive information on marketing is http://marketing.about.com/. This site has a variety of articles on marketing, including an index of marketing tools (http://marketing.about.com/od/marketingtools/l/bltopic.htm), a free online marketing course (http://marketing.about.com/cs/brandmktg/l/aa072003a.htm), and a page with links related to marketing for nonprofit organizations (http://marketing.about.com/od/nonprofitmarketing/). The nonprofit page also offers access to an additional page on nonprofit fund-raising (http://marketing.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=marketing&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.campagne.com%2Fmktg101.html), which includes some strategies that could be used by educational institutions.

These online resources can be a helpful supplement to other resources offered by the authors who have contributed to this issue as your institution prepares to develop, implement, and update its marketing strategy.