U Marketing Guru

Moving the blog

2011-02-27T14:50:00.000-08:00

I am moving my business blog efforts to www.supersimplesocialmedia.wordpress.com . Currently, I'm working on ways to help small organizations and business leverage social media. I'd love to see you over in the new wordpress neighborhood.

Lessons for Life

2010-12-30T12:33:00.001-08:00

A colleague sent me an insightful essay from the Wall Street Journal recently. The author, Alain de Botton, offers a cutting but valid critique of the modern university -- and, I'm afraid, some faith-based colleges, as well.

The modern university has achieved unparalleled expertise in imparting factual information about culture, but it remains wholly uninterested in training students to use culture as a repertoire of wisdom—that is, a kind of knowledge concerned with things that are not only true but also inwardly beneficial, providing comfort in the face of life's infinite challenges, from a tyrannical employer to a fatal diagnosis. Our universities have never offered what churches invariably focus on: guidance.

It is a basic tenet of contemporary scholarship that no academic should connect works of culture to individual sorrows. It remains shocking to ask what "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" might usefully teach us about love or to read the novels of Henry James as if they might contain instructive parables. When confronted by those who demand that a university education should be relevant and useful, that it should offer advice on how to choose a career or survive the end of a marriage, how to contain sexual impulses or cope with the news of a medical death sentence, the guardians of culture become disdainful. They prefer students who are mature, independent, temperamentally able to live with questions rather than answers, and ready to put aside their own needs for the sake of years of disinterested study.

Whatever the rhetoric of promotional prospectuses and graduation ceremonies, the modern university has precious little interest in teaching us any emotional or ethical life skills: how to love our neighbors, clear human confusion, diminish human misery and "leave the world better and happier than we found it." To judge by what they do rather than what they airily declaim, universities are in the business of turning out tightly focused professionals and a minority of culturally well-informed but ethically confused arts graduates, who have limited prospects for employment. We have charged our higher-education system with a dual and possibly contradictory mission: to teach us both how to make a living and how to live. But we have left the second of these aims recklessly vague and unattended.

Those of us who work in faith-based institutions of higher learning are called to a much higher purpose. Among all colleges and universities, our campuses should be the most adept at helping students glean life lessons from their coursework. But are we delivering what we promise?

Easy Way to Monitor Social Media

2010-08-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

With a dizzying array of social media initiatives to monitor and maintain, what's an already swamped college PR practitioner to do? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace, Vimeo, Flickr, PhotoBucket ... it seems difficult just to keep track of all the places your brand shows up, or maintain the multitude of "official" sites that have sprung up in these channels.

I've found an easy way to keep an eye on our campus' social media efforts, all from one computer screen. The trick is to install a secondary web browser and configure it to automatically open a set of your most important social media sites.

For me, the weapon of choice was Mozilla Firefox, but you could choose any secondary browser you like, for either Mac or PC. I installed Firefox and added a quick-launch button at the bottom of my screen.

Then, I set up Firefox to open a set of social media sites. (This configuration for Firefox is under Tools --> Options --> General --> Homepage.) Here's my current list of tabs:

Tab 1. HootSuite. This is a great web-based utility for managing multiple Twitter accounts and RSS feeds. At a glance, I can see what's been sent or received at our university's four official Twitter accounts, and my own personal account.

Tab 2. Facebook. Based on research into student usage, we've placed most of our social-media emphasis on creating a quality fan page for the University, plus some additional groups for various constituencies. A click on this tab shows me what's going on.

Tab 3. LinkedIn. A few years ago, one of our enterprising grads created an "Alumni and Friends" group on LinkedIn. Later, he graciously added me as a manager of the site. Clicking this tab earlier today showed me two more requests to join, awaiting approval. In seconds, that task was done.

Tab 4. This blog. It's a gentle reminder to post something, or to see what the co-authors are up to.

Now, any time I want to check what's happening with these social media sites, I just launch Firefox rather than my usual web browser. I can quickly scan these sites, without the clutter of my usual web browser. (Again, I use Firefox this way, but you could configure almost any tabbed browser to do this.)

My next steps are to add tabs for YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr. We have a university-sponsored presence on each of these services, but I think I'll configure those tabs to find anything that's been tagged with our name.

How would you use a system like this? Got an idea to share?

New research, updated stats

2010-05-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

And you have to admit, YouTube is a cool way to promote a book.

More evidence of Social Networking's impact

2010-01-21T08:06:00.000-08:00

In doing a quick catch up on some reading today I came across two articles about Christian Higher Education, and they both have interesting implications both for private higher education and for the age of social networking (which may be in decline, but that will be another post).

Ongoing issues at Northwestern College in Minnesota made the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and yesterday’s Inside Higher Education carries a story of how an article critical of Wheaton College was killed by Books and Culture.

I have very little insight into the particulars at either school, but I have a few years in Christian higher education, and a few in communication, and I think there are lessons that communication and marketing people at faith based and strongly mission driven institutions should be reminded of in the wake of these very public controversies.

1. You can’t stiffle conversations. In the good old days firing a professor or the killing of a story might have stayed in a small community, but now that information is instaneously shared. Inside Higher Education got a pdf file of the actual cover that was approved and then killed and has seen the article. Killing the story didn’t stop it, it probably just gained it wider readership. In the case of Northwestern they have taken several steps to finalize the controversy and move on, but the debate rages of Facebook.

2. You have to engage people where they are. If the debate is on Facebook that is where the organization has to engage. You can’t ask for debate to be turned off or ignore it. Dell Computers is great example where instead of ignoring negative blog posts they actively engage and try to solve problems. The same model could be applied here.

3. Inconsistency is the controversy. People and in turn social networks thrive on controversy and nothing creates more controversy than when someone says one thing and does another. Social networks function as fact checkers, and even if there is debate about the facts if it looks like you did one thing but said another, this is going to spur internet frenzy. This is a particular challenge for strongly mission driven and religious institutions because it is not only the mission of the place but commitment to beliefs that may be unpopular that are on the line. Read the comments on the Star Tribune piece and if you are a Christian who wants to see others recognize Christ your heart will break.

In part two of this blog post I will look at some of the underlying issues, but these are ones that I think apply to the profession.

College students use social media to rally relief for #Haiti

2010-01-14T10:26:00.000-08:00

Across the country, college students are using social media to rally support for relief efforts in Haiti.

A January Term class on grassroots marketing at Huntington University (Ind.), for example, is using the Twitter hashtag #jterm to spread word about a fundraising opportunity benefiting two relief organizations. They've also set up a special Facebook page to support their selected causes.

The idea for using social media to support charitable organizations was built into the curriculum from the beginning of the course, but the devastating earthquake in Haiti galvanized action by the 25 students in instructor Andrew Hoffman's class.

Andrew Malloy, a freshman pursuing a degree in business management, posted this report to his blog:

This morning in our class we discussed the crisis in Haiti. Our conclusion was to all rally around Concern Worldwide and help raise money for them. Our goal is to raise $1,000 by Monday January 18th (5 days from now). This evening we have raised over $800. That is a testament to social media’s power. In one day, a group of people changed course on their project and then a body of people united to aid the cause. This has truly been a blessing and amazing experience!

Meanwhile, three HU graduates serving Mission of Hope: Haiti set up a new blog to support disaster relief. The blog features photos, first-hand accounts, and opportunities to give. The team's alma mater linked it to the university's fan page on Facebook. Word spread quickly through the virtual community, resulting in a regional fundraising event organized by a radio station and area churches.

These are but two examples of uncounted similar scenarios playing out on college campuses nationwide. Globally concerned students with well-honed social-media skills are a new target audience for charities and relief organizations seeking advocates and donors.

What the heck does Google Wave do, and why do I want it so bad

2009-12-14T08:22:00.001-08:00

Google wave is brilliant marketing, but what the hell does it do? A friend recently posted on Facebook that he had a Google Wave invite, and put out a call to see if anybody wanted one. I almost broke a finger typing in, "Heck yes." Alas, when I opened up it up on Friday I was like a kid on Christmas morning who opened the package and found out they had gotten a dictionary, in latin.

I simply can't figure out how to get started, and I can't figure out if I should be disappointed that I was tricked into wanting this thing and now it doesn?t do all of the wonderful things I thought it would or if I should spend the time figuring it out. I had images of managing my posts, my dormant blogs, and my digital persona all through Wave, but I don?t see how to do any of that. Beyond that, I'm reticent to send out the five invitations that I have, because I don?t want to admit I'm not sure what my friends should do with it.

A few simple lessons are probably worth it though. One, the marketing is brilliant. Creating scarcity and then having people salivating for the product is genius. The second lesson is that Google has such great brand feeling, I may just start a wave. My idea over the weekend was to start a wave about what the best uses for wave actually are. My only reticence in doing that is that I know it would benefit Google as much, or more than me - which again if I was Google - is brilliant.

State Schools

2009-11-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

I remember sitting down with the college president of my school when I was elected student body president and having a candid and free flowing discussion about the future of higher education. Beyond remembering his amazing seer sucker suit, I remember the part of the conversation about fundraising. I remember it, because we agreed that in principal state money should never be used to build a building, because that is the role of the state. Money should flow to scholarships.

Twenty years later I don’t think there is college president around who thinks that, and I have witnessed firsthand how campuses that caught on to the reality that higher education was being privatized too late have fallen behind.

Thus, it is interesting to read “The New Public Domain At Public Universities: Less for More” in the New York Times today. It is partly interesting to me because the premise of the article is so easily accepted and there seems to be no turning of the tide. In higher education, we are all rushing to become Harvard, and many of us are ignoring students in the process. More importantly, in ignoring students we are ignoring the very people who can fix those problems that we can already see and those that will inevitably surprise us.

And if I admit it, my response is deeply personal because I worry there will be no place in college for guys like me. I was a solid B student with a B attitude and lots of dreams. I came from a solidly middle class existence, but there was no college fund, and financial aid was a big part of what paid the bills. Where does a kid like me go today? If the state flagships are becoming Ivy’s and students like me frankly don’t matter much, then where do they matter?

It also affects what I do for a living, because I want to spend more time communicating to the students like me that they matter. To recognize the dignity of each potential student I am communicating with. We can spend so much time in marketing talking about a demographic like high achieving students or students that can pay, that we seem to lose sight of communicating to students who need us as much as we need them. That's why I got in the business, if I can't remember that everyday it might be time to get out.

System failures?

2009-10-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

I tend to want to make order out of chaos, so it’s not uncommon that I read two articles and find correlation. This morning it was Friedman’s piece in the New York Times, “The New Untouchables” and a very small note from the Bozeman Chronicle in Bozeman Montana “Montana regents look to reinvent university system.”

What Friedman points out is that the current recession may have its roots at least partially in the failures of the education system. The Chronicle article is about yet another effort for someone who is at least somewhat outside the system to encourage reform around the idea of student outcomes and what is best for the state.

I think both Todd Buchanan, the Montana Regent in charge of the effort and Friedman find a point of agreement when they say education in America must be reformed. I want to be careful to say that the failures in education are not the failures of educators, but rather a failure of a system that doesn’t work.

Nobody likes to fix systems. It is messy work. It’s like comparing plumbing with cooking. Fixing systems is like plumbing. Nobody really wants to do it but it has to be done and the consequences of not doing it are terrible. It’s messy, grimy work and at the end of the day the person only knows that the water flows the same way it did before. They don’t realize the damage that was occurring behind the walls, the plumber just fixed things and made it work the way it was supposed to.

Compare that with cooking which many people enjoy. It is creative and while it is messy everyone can see the work that goes into it, and when it goes well you have created something that people eat and are satisfied with. Teaching or any front line profession is a little more like that. I’m not saying teachers are paid enough, or get enough recognition but I am saying that when your kids goes into the classroom and you see that individuals life broadened and you see their progress you know something is happening. At some level you can demonstrate it in the life of one child, and that is enough to rally people around.

The problem is that we don’t do enough plumbing, and the wonderful smells from the kitchen are covering up the rot underneath. It’s time to figure out a way to tackle systems without sacking the folks involved. This will require a level of maturity few of us have (myself included).
We desperately need those inside industries like insurance, education, and others that may be broken to stand up and say, yes we can do better. We need to be honest about challenges and then work on actually fixing them.

The great professors and teachers can make any system work and they do. But in a way, they to become victims of their good work because everyone looks and says, “See it works.” The problem is the system is failing too often.

I think this analogy applies a lot of places.

Picking up Harvards crumbs

2009-10-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

The article in today’s New York Times “Leaner Times at Harvard: No Cookies” is like a dispatch from a foreign planet. I’m from the west, and I learned long ago that means my ideas about higher education are very different than those in the east. Additionally, I have spent most of my career nearer the other end of the education spectrum where first generation college students studied to find jobs to take families from poverty to prosperity, not from prosperity to prosperity.

I don’t begrudge Harvard students their hot breakfast. At a recent staff meeting on our campus the attendance was at all time high, and people were visibly excited (me included) because we had been promised breakfast. It is the most important meal of the day.

However, once again what happens at Harvard overshadows the entire higher education landscape. It seems like the Ivy’s always do, and media equate the Ivy’s with higher education in general. By sheer numbers of students this couldn’t be any further from the truth. Most of the teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and entrepreneurs that will shape this century are toiling away at state schools, community colleges, and dare I say it – some are even in for profit online programs.

This focus on the Ivy’s is a pretty significant problem for those of us in marketing and public relations. The big stories are usually about these schools. We have to spend time talking to people who think our faculty are paid too much, our football teams get special treatment, and our students are pampered because news by its very nature is always reporting at the edges, nowhere near the reality of most campuses.

It seems to further my theory that the future for us may be in more and more direct efforts with our stakeholders. It also means that most of us should never, ever, use the “Harvard on the X” analogy when talking about who we want to be. They don’t even get cookies at faculty meetings.

P.S. Posted at 2 p.m.: Since I took the NY Times to task for their focus on Harvard I should also link this very interesting essay by Paul Krugman that in a way makes the point that we are somehow missing the forest through the trees when it comes to higher education in America.

Using Insights to shape Facebook page content

2009-10-09T06:07:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, I wrote about how Facebook usernames help grow brand fan pages. As a postscript, the growth of our university's fan base continued through the month of September. The page reached 2,000 fans on October 8. That's 500 new fans in three weeks, or an overall increase of 286% since the page's username was implemented in midsummer.

Given the size of our enrollment and alumni base, I expect the growth to plateau. But meanwhile, I have found the composition of our fan base fascinating. The group skews female (57%). The age demographics are even more interesting. According our Insights report:

18% are potential future college students, ages 13-17.
32% are currently of traditional college age, 18-24.
25% are probably recent alumni, ages 25-34
11% are ages 25-44
9% are ages 45-54
4% are ages 55+

These statistics have been remarkably stable since June. They did not change significantly even after we added Facebook buttons to our campus portal (for current students) or Admissions page (for prospective students).

The age demographics have made me reconsider how we shape our Facebook page content. We need to keep the material aimed at prospective students, but we need to add more material designed to serve current students and alumni.

About half of our fans live within a two-hour drive of the university. That's important to note when using Facebook to promote special events, such as concerts or athletic competitions. Facebook allows simple segmentation of updates sent to fans. We can shape our communication stream appropriately, routinely inviting those who live nearby but not sending spammy invitations to those far away. (Of course, Homecoming invitations will go worldwide!)

I would like your suggestions about Facebook content for the 25-44 population -- the largest segment of our fan base. If you fall into that category, what kind of resources would you like to see added to your alma mater's Facebook page? Wall posts about alumni, faculty, and student achievements are a natural. What else should be added to the standing content on the other sections -- for example, the Boxes tab or the Events tab?

Post a comment and share your thoughts.

2009-10-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

Inside Higher Education ran a piece on Monday that proves that faculty gets a fair amount of their nutrition biting the hand that feeds them. Their review of “Wanna-Be U” is interesting, and highlights a problem that most university relations people have to face at some point.

While, I have no idea if the book has merits, there aren’t a lot of industries where you could write a thinly veiled criticism of your employer and expect that there wouldn’t be consequences. In this case, there will probably be accolades.

For me, it highlights the importance of internal communication and the reality that because of the unique nature of university governance and tenure 100% support is not a goal any of us are going to achieve.

I also find that this is good for me to reflect on, because I seem to find myself most disappointed by the criticism within rather than from without. I’m not too frustrated when those outside of the academy don’t understand and see it as a challenge to communicate. I tend to get frustrated by those inside the walls are unwilling or unable to support the institution.

Of course there is room for disagreement, but in presenting a face to stakeholders outside the university singing from the same sheet of music goes a long way.

Google's "Wave" next?

2009-09-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

In the “Further Proof that just doing a new viewbook isn’t enough” column I file Google’s Wave. The short review on CNN today is enough to both make me salivate with possibilities and give me a bit of panic about how I’m going to keep up.

If you read the Buzzmachine blog or have read “What Would Google Do?” by Steve Jarvis you are pretty well aware of how blogs, Twitter, and social networking and media sites have changed a lot about how information gets transmitted. But Wave has me wondering if it isn’t about time for another game changer. Anyone noticed that friends aren’t “Facebooking” as much anymore? I know it is still growing, but when the biggest current growth is among 50 year plus women, I tend to start to wonder where the 20-30 somethings are going.

It’s an old joke, but I can tell you the exact day Facebook lost its cool - the day I joined. I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense to use it, expand it, and revolution it as a platform, but what’s true in the world of communication gurus is that there is always a platform lurking out there.

I have started to envision it as a cold war arms race between the tech people and communicators. For every missile they build, we adapt some new technology to our use, and then they get around our processes by building a new missile. Of course, like all analogies this one is fatally flawed because the tech people don’t really want to destroy us, they are just being creative geniuses who want to build a better widget.

However, sometimes trying to get my arms around all the tech stuff I’m feeling a little crushed.

Tricks of the Trade: Getting your Ideas Repeated on Twitter

2009-09-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

Social media researcher Dan Zarrella spent the better part of a year studying messages that were shared via Twitter, then repeated by others. Some fascinating -- and useful -- patterns emerged.

Interestingly, Zarrella identified 20 words that were the most likely to be "retweeted." He also discovered which words and phrases were least likely to encourage others to repeat your message.

Additional observations were made about those coveted RTs, including some that could help shape your Twitter tactics. Zarrella's research covers message topic, time of day, readability, punctuation, novelty -- even esoteric details like the URL shortener most likely to be retweeted.

His full report is available here (if you subscribe to his blog). A synopsis was reported by Fast Company.

Direct Public Relations

2009-09-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

Back in the classroom in Public Relations class, I’m confronted with how much the reality of public relations has changed. This was pointed out by a friend who sent me an article the other day about media bias and the current ACORN scandal.

There is a bit of bias in the commentary, and if you are upset by the current state of political rhetoric, just stop after the second paragraph. The bottom line of the opening is this; people don’t trust the media and that distrust is getting worse.

This takes me back to thinking about a foundational concept of public relations. We have been taught to focus on getting our stories in the media because people see the media as a more credible source than advertising. While I would agree that because of cost and several other factors public relations is still a worthy goal I have to ask if the world of social media begin to take some of the shine of that particular golden apple. Since most of us read, “The End of Advertising as We Know It” we focused on public relations.

What I’m seeing today though in reality, and I think the theory needs to catch up, is that direct public relations is the new path. Maybe I’m coining a new term, but direct public relations isn’t exactly public relations because it ignores the media, going straight to the “public”. For instance, websites that post press releases that aren’t really press releases. They are never intended for the press, they are actually news items intended for stakeholders of the organization.

It is also not advertising, because there is a veneer of reporting and it doesn’t rely on some other vehicle to carry the advertisement. The item is controlled by and appearing in a company or organizational vehicle.

I know I’m not the only person thinking about this because I hear versions of it in a lot of places. What is missing is that foundational book like Sergio Zyman’s that helps us quantify this new phenomenon.

What I think would be important about quantifying this theory is that it may help explain and is some ways solve resource issues that we are all facing. Many of us still have shops built heavily around a traditional public relations and traditional print public heavy mix. Some (including some of my fellow bloggers) seem to have solved these resource issues, but for Presidents, Deans, and others it would helpful to have a broader discussion on this so that we can retool the offices around the actual functions that need to happen.

Facebook username helped double university's fan base in 6 weeks

2009-09-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

In June, Facebook enabled page managers to establish intuitive "usernames" for their pages. This made it possible for companies, celebrities, and organizations to create short, intuitive URLs for their Facebook content (e.g. www.facebook.com/username).

At first, this service was only available to Facebook pages that had been set up prior to May 31, 2009, and had attracted at least 1,000 fans by that date. On June 28, Facebook enabled usernames for other pages with at least 25 fans.

I got up early on Monday, June 29, and claimed the intuitive address www.facebook.com/huntingtonuniversity for my campus. Our Facebook page had been set up for a full year, but despite regular updates and some pay-per-click advertising, it had only attracted a few hundred fans.

However, once we established the easy-to-type (and easy-to-remember) URL, our number of fans began to climb steadily. Critical mass accelerated this growth when students returned to campus on August 28 and made new connections with each other and with the university. Throughout this period, content updates and promotion strategies stayed about the same, but the shorter URL made it easier for fans to share the site. After setting up our Facebook username, we doubled our fan base in six weeks. The chart below demonstrates the dramatic results.

Now that there is an easier way to direct people to the page, we expect to continue expanding our fan base through promotion in other media. We have not yet mentioned the new Facebook page URL in our alumni magazine or mailed any postcards, but these are obvious next steps.

If you manage a Facebook page for your college, university, or campus organization, give serious thought to creating an intuitive URL for the site. Guidelines are available here: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=900.

Actual Discussion

2009-09-17T06:15:00.001-07:00

The discussion on Tweeting below is great. Here in my world we are a little behind the times and are just getting into blogs in a bigger way. I see blogs as a key to telling the "Mission" part of the story. People often see the value in having my help in getting information out about the event, but sometimes I get glassy stares when I start to talk about the importance of using marketing communication plans to communicate the vision.

At any rate, two blogs are launched on our site today. Comments, love letters, and advice always welcome. The blogs are for our MentorExternship Program and to highlight Social Justice issues on campus.

7 Discoveries of a Newly Fledged Tweep

2009-09-10T17:31:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I described my belated adoption of Twitter. I promised then to share some of my discoveries as a Twitter neophyte. Here goes:

1. Twitter is supposed to be fun. Like any business communication tool, Twitter deserves to be taken seriously – but not too seriously. Twitter users expect your tweets to have personality, to reflect the people behind the brand. Letting some individuality show in your tweet stream is not only acceptable, it is expected. If your tweets are boringly institutional, your following will shrivel.

2.Twitter is two-way communication. In PR school, they teach that public relations is supposed to be a two-way street, enabling companies and publics to understand each other. Twitter is well suited to this purpose. Some companies are using Twitter as part of a careful customer-service strategy. Their reps have branded Twitter accounts (e.g. @ACME_Joe) that they use to respond to complaints. I tweeted my dissatisfaction about a particular software product recently and was surprised (and pleased) to get a prompt response. Twitter makes it easy to give and receive feedback. When my university set up a new Twitter account for its alumni association, we simply asked the first few dozen followers what they wanted us to tweet about. The replies shaped our communication strategy.

3. Twitter doesn’t require a fancy phone. Our sports information director uses a regular flip phone to text-message scores and stats to Twitter immediately following competitions. She loves the mobility and immediacy of reporting via Twitter. Of course, if you do have a smart phone, there are additional possibilities. I had fun last week tweeting photos from our campus move-in extravaganza and orientation festivities. (Contact me @johnpaff and I’ll let you know what apps I currently favor on my Blackberry Storm.)

4. Twitter is more satisfying than RSS. I've deleted feed readers and most news apps from my smart phone. Twitter gives me a better way to catch up on news in those odd moments between meetings. I follow a few carefully selected news sources that are important to me: regional newspapers and television stations, niche publications serving higher education, and journals on marketing and advertising. Their headlines are mixed in with updates from friends and colleagues in an endlessly customizable stream.

5. Multiple accounts make a lot of sense. My small campus has four official Twitter accounts. Each has an intuitive name that describes the content of the feed: @HU_News (selected headlines), @HU_Alumni (accomplishments of grads and events of interest), @HU_Sports (brief scores and stats), and @HU_EXCEL (for our adult students). Some constituents follow more than one of these streams, so we try not to cross-post.

6. Twitter tools abound. There are many good third-party software tools available to help you juggle multiple accounts. I began with Tweetdeck, but recently switched to HootSuite because it is web-based (and therefore portable) and because it allows me to authorize several authors for each of our tweet streams without sharing Twitter passwords. Neat trick. Other tools allow you to import updates from other sources into your Twitter stream. For example, I use TwitterFeed to share U Marketing Guru postings instantly. (Caution: Do this sparingly.)

7. Live a life worth tweeting. As ConversantLife blogger Won Kim posted earlier today, “Truth be told, it doesn’t matter whether you’re on Twitter or not. It's whether we're living a life worth tweeting.” If you do decide to join the Twitterverse, do so in a meaningful way. If you waste your 140 characters tweeting pointlessly about what you had for breakfast, no one will care. But if your Twitter updates reflect a life well lived -- sharing good cheer, enlightenment, and real value -- your following is sure to grow.

Responding to Blogs

2009-09-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

If anything shows the changing nature of communications jobs, it’s the strategic decisions related to responding to blogs. Today, I had pretty much planned my day around writing and projects, but I got sucked into responding in the blogosphere which makes me think on a few lessons.

1. Not all blogs are created equal. Today, I wrote a response to a post at MN Lawyer. I haven’t responded to a number of other posts on other blog sites on this same topic. However, the audience reached by MN Lawyer is just too important for us to ignore. Additionally, I have always found the dialogue on the MN Lawyer blog to be relatively respectful and the editors tend to get involved when something goes too far off the track. I’m not sure I ever made thought of this before today, but there is a separation even between the “good” blogs and the “bad” ones and we can’t chase them all, but we better be chasing a few.

2. Good news is viral, which means so are mistakes. The other part of my day was spent chasing down some news that appeared good but the data was wrong. By the time I submitted a posting saying, “Sorry, the wrong data was submitted” two prominent blogs and probably others had trumpeted the news. Thus, I had to correct the facts as many places as possible meaning the damage was tripled because we couldn’t fix the problem fast enough to get ahead of other bloggers. On the flip side, in the old days of print we wouldn’t have been able to get in front of it at all.

3. Responding to blogs requires trust from senior level administrators. I have a good relationship with the top administrators and can typically get ahold of them, but responding to blogs is a “now” thing. Responding in 30 minutes as opposed to 90 is a big difference.

So – did I get it right?

Seize the Spray

2009-08-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

It's August but I already know what I want in my Christmas stocking. Genkiwear has produced a line of Star Trek-inspired fragrances: Tiberius, Red Shirt, and Pon Farr.

The promotions are creative and somewhat demeaning to their potential customers. If you're not familiar with Star Trek, just know that "red shirt" has become a euphemism for someone who is expendable. Now the tag line "Because Tomorrow May Never Come" takes on new meaning. With these offerings, Genkiwear may be producing a line of nearly consumer-free products. I say "nearly" because of crazy trekkers like me who might just wear it anyway, as long as it doesn't give me a rash.

Note to Genkiwear: if you're looking for a spokesperson and both William Shatner and Chris Pine are unavailable, I suggest you call Simon Helberg.

Dealing with Protestors

2009-08-24T13:06:00.001-07:00

I spent the morning listening to protestors. As tempting as it is to use this space to poke holes in their arguments and assert my position that’s not very helpful for anybody involved. What is helpful is to recognize that there are likely lessons for everyone who does marketing and communication.

First, I was in a class a few years ago when a corporate public relations executive explains that the first step in any P.R. crisis was the “fix the problem.” I couldn’t agree more. While in this case there was no problem we could fix, we did have a clear position we were taking and it wasn’t really up for debate. I’m not saying you never give into the will of public, but in this case it was pretty clear where we stood and that gave me a lot of internal peace and a clear position I could go back to.

Secondly, it pays to wear your good suit. Standing in the midst of 18 protestors I think I realized that 16 of them had cell phone cameras and are now carrying around my picture. My friend Dave has put forth a position in where we as the media relations professionals should be taping each interview ourselves so that we could use on You Tube or our own sites later if needed. This might be helpful where editing doesn’t do us any favors. In this case, I think I could have done that and it would have probably worked to help faculty and staff better understand the situation.

Finally, dealing with protestors is hard work. It has been a long week at it is only 3 p.m. on Monday. I’m drained, not so much from actual work, but from the emotional energy of being on the receiving end of a lot of anger and ill will.

Maybe as the sky clears I will have more lessons, but that is it for now.

Beloit's New Mindset List

2009-08-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

This year’s Mindset List from Beloit College is wistful for me, because I realized as I read it that the people they are describing were born the same year that I graduated from high school. It doesn’t make me feel old exactly, but it does highlight some of the disconnects that can happen when doing communication at a college.

For instance, today I heard a professor make a pretty funny comparison using the “Landshark” skit on Saturday Night Live as an example. This class didn’t even remember Wayne’s World, let alone the early zany years of Akroyd and others.
It is easy for time to pass and to realize that those things that we thought were cultural touchstones have changed. Sure, within my group of friends nobody lets a good “Caddy Shack” reference go by, but when I’m with students most of them just think I’m weird.

Relevance. It is a key challenge for the communicator, and it may be the key challenge of the University in coming years as pressure continues to mount and we face a generation that has always had online classrooms, went to college with laptops, and did as much research from Starbucks as they did in the library.

Narrative Theory Applied or Applied Narrative Theory

2009-08-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

I have an undergraduate degree and one Masters degree but I find myself sitting in the classroom again headed toward a doctorate and learning about persuasion. It’s a pretty interesting exercise for someone that has practiced some forms of persuasion for the past 15 or so years, but have not thought much about the theory of persuasion. It also highlights a classic faculty and staff rub. Broadly and grossly generalized faculty spend too much time in theory and staff not enough - but I digress.

The thing that keeps resonating over and over for me is Fisher’s narrative theory and how much it explains about what we do in the world of communication. And even if the theory isn’t 100% correct, the thing that it brings me back to is the challenge of always making sure that you are telling a story when you communicate.
Far too much of the day is taking up with creating bulleted lists of accomplishments and features, when in some cases what people want is a narrative. I’m not saying it has to take a lot of space or that people with actually read. (I haven’t lost my mind.) But what I am saying is that telling the story of a new student is more compelling to most people than giving the statistics of the Freshman class.

Having said that, I just wrote an entire post that didn’t really include a narrative flow. Maybe I should have written a story about writing a blog.

For those that are gluttons for punishment, my complete recent short paper on the narrative theory and how it explains how Obama got elected and why we can’t get out of Gitmo I have posted it to my personal site.

Pure is Better

2009-08-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

Despite our dog's mournful cries when we cut her nails, my family and I always ignored the television when the Pedi-Paws commercials came on. But my wife bought a one after her mother sent a video via email. Viral videos work, they’re "purer" than standard advertising, distribution can be free, and the videos may have tremendous reach. But can virals be harnessed by higher ed?

CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING IS AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION

Consider the ROI for running an ad in a magazine that targets college-bound high school students. Say you've spent $10,000 for a back cover and it reaches 250,000 high school students. Some might think you've spent only $.04 per student, but out of that quarter million, you get 1,000 inquiries, 100 of which are viable candidates. Since you have a smart Admissions office, they focus their energy on the 100 and 10 actually become matriculated students. So in reality you spent $10,000 to reach 10, or $1,000 per student.

WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG.

This may sound like a pitch from the late Billy Mays, but what is it worth to you, to get an extra 5 or 10 matriculated students out of the 100 viable candidates? It may be surprisingly inexpensive to do so, if you get your students to speak for you. Student-produced virals are pure recommendations because they don’t come from the institution--and pure is better. The production value will be low and the writing may be poor, but neither is a problem for YouTube.

Many campuses already have student-lead film festivals, where student work is displayed, judged and prizes are awarded. Frequently the student organizations are underfunded and need extra support to put on events like this. An enterprising marketing office can sponsor the entire event or single categories, which provides input for determining the message, genre, and length.

Student-produced virals may only cost the price of an iPod.

ONE MORE THING . . .

Fellow U Marketing Guru, John Paff, responded to my last post and asked if the distribution of a viral video can be planned and I didn't answer fully. The answer is "yes" and "no." Channels of distribution like YouTube can be set up and "viral" distribution via email can begin with an orchestrated campaign. However there is no way to predict with certainty the number of views that any video will receive. But our goal isn't to get a large number of views. Viral campaigns, like any of higher ed promotional campaigns, are pointless if they don't result in more potential students inquiring about the school. Therefore, a viral only needs to inspire the connection or bolster an existing link.

Twitter: Therapy for Graying PR Types

2009-08-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been feeling old. And it’s not the newly prescribed bifocals. I blame Twitter.

You see, I have always pictured myself an early adopter of emerging communication technologies. When I took my first higher-ed PR job—way back in the day, when my current colleagues were still in junior high—I ordered the first PCs for the public relations office and strung telephone wire above the ceiling tiles so we could share a printer. We started faxing our news releases instead of mailing them. In fact, I installed some nifty software that would automagically fax our news to regional media, even at night. Back then, this was cutting-edge stuff.

But somewhere along the way, I must have gotten a little complacent, a little too content, a little too self-identified as a PR guy with a geek streak. When the social media revolution burst onto the scene, I opened a Facebook account, but thought of it only as a place to play games with my kids. I avoided MySpace and shunned LinkedIn. I sniffed disapprovingly at Twitter as a refuge for the hopelessly self-absorbed: “I am sitting on the patio, folding socks.” Who cares?

Then it happened. Suddenly, last winter, Twitter was everywhere. Every trade journal, popular magazine, or PR rag I picked up had not one but several articles about Twitter as a business communication tool. This caught me completely off guard, and I didn’t quite buy it. I made casual inquiries of some trusted friends in the industry, asking if they had experimented with Twitter. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that several of my peers had fully embraced Twitter as a means of reaching twenty-somethings. They had opened multiple Twitter accounts and had integrated the service with their news blogs and RSS feeds. My comeuppance was complete when I seemed to be the only one at a recent PR conference who had never seen anything like the Twitterfall projected at the front of the room.

It was like awakening with a start after falling asleep in the sun; it burned. Determined not to lose any more time, I jumped in with both feet. For several months now, I have been playing catch-up with Twitter. While the results so far have been modest, at least I feel that I'm back in the game, tech-wise. That’s good therapy.

Next Time: Discoveries of a Newly Fledged Tweep

New Contributors

2009-08-07T12:47:00.000-07:00

I’m glad to note that John Paff and Mark Lambertson have joined Umarketing Guru as contributors. These are both guys that have a lot to contribute, and I think this experiment in blogging will be enriched by sharing the load. Take a look at their profiles to the right.

In the next few weeks I am hoping to add some other authors, and as always your comments are appreciated.

The Beauty of Cheap

2009-08-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

After working at McDonalds many years ago, I promised myself that I would not eat there again. My negative feelings about the food won't be swayed by TV commercials. Assuming they want my business, this leaves McDonalds in a quandary. Aside from the obvious (making better burgers), what can they do to reach people like me? McDonalds has to get people that I trust to recommend their restaurants. This is a purer recommendation than one coming from the company itself, and the purer the better. There are a few methods that institutions can use to deliver pure recommendations, but for my first posts on U Marketing Guru, I’ll focus on “viral marketing.”

Rather than assume you know the definition of viral marketing, I’ll explain it briefly. It’s called viral due to the way the marketing message spreads, mimicking the growth of a virus. It starts with one person who sends it to their friends, each friend doing the same, until countable thousands (or millions) have received it. Viral videos are effective because of the purer method of distribution and the recommendation it implies.

Virals spread a marketing message faster, to a wider audience, and for must less money than ever before. Virals are working for Ford, Subaru, Nike, Burger King, et al. The beauty of viral campaigns is that you don’t have to a Coca-Cola-sized budget or get 1,000,000 views for it to be successful. Colleges and universities can launch viral campaigns with a very small investment.

Next time: Pure (and free) is better.

Valleity

2009-06-11T08:45:00.001-07:00

Nerd alert: when I was in Mr. Mellang’s fourth grade class I used a thesaurus to help me write a short paper. I’m pretty sure I got some of the words horribly wrong, and sometime around college I swore off the thesaurus, but I still take great joy in finding the perfect word whose meaning matches the reality.

At a staff retreat I helped plan last week one of the participants introduced me to the word “velleity.” As defined by the free web dictionary it is “a mere fancy that does not lead to action.” The way it was presented during the meeting is less elegant buy equaling meaningful, “a problem you don’t care enough to do anything about.”

The retreat actually went pretty well. We spoke candidly about what needed to be changed, and challenged (maybe even too much) the status quo and spoke about what could be changed to make the place better. What was particularly good was that it seemed like making the place better wasn’t just to make our lives easier, but was centered more or less around the idea of accomplishing of a mission. So, if the retreat went so well why am I still haunted by the word velleity.

I think I’m haunted because trying to define the velleity is a humbling task. Andy Stanley in his book Visioneering brings forth the idea that every great vision begins as a moral imperative. It is the deep feeling within in us that a particular situation or problem is so unjust that it must be changed and we must be the person to do it.

It’s an important, but humbling question to ask, “What do I care about enough that I’m willing to do something about it?” Part of that question makes a person face up to what they are not willing to do anything part. I have joked for years that I don’t care enough about getting in shape to give up donuts. The unhealthy eating might be a problem, and I may complain, but it’s a clear velleity, because I don’t quit eating donuts.

I have a colleague about my age who was recently diagnosed with cancer. I wonder if I suddenly had to face my mortality in a real way that I would feel the moral imperative to better care of myself in order to be around to care for my family.

There is an organizational application as well, because I think it is clear that the things we don’t care enough about to act on that kill us. It’s the organization that talks about tighter cost controls but never puts them in place that ends up in real trouble. It’s the organization that waits for someday to invest in people that realizes at some point it has lost its best and brightest.

If a person doesn’t care enough to act on a problem, then that has to be acknowledged. People and organizations that are honest enough to ask these tough questions seem to be a few steps ahead.

Texting in Church!

2009-06-08T07:02:00.001-07:00

So after trying to disprove last week that Twitter is sustainable, I had a fascinating experience with integrating technology into communication in a new way on Sunday.

My family doesn’t normally attend Westwood Community Church, but for a variety of reasons we went on Sunday. The pastor, used text messaging during the service. It was really well done. After a short tutorial, he encouraged people to text answers which were put up on the screen in real time. It was really engaging, and no I didn’t even text. My thumbs make me text impaired, but it was still fascinating and the positives far outweighed the negatives of a few folks by me who couldn’t figure out how to get their phones on “silent”.

The up shot is that it reminded me of something about technology and communication that seems to get missed. It is about the message first and the medium second. I know that is a theory not all people subscribe to, but the longer I work, read and think about communication the more I believe it is true.

As communicators, I believe that we need to figure out what the message or the story is first, and then figure out the best way to tell it. This point hit me two weeks ago when I rented the film “The Other Boleyn Girl”. It’s actually a pretty interesting story lost in a pretty bad movie. My estimation is that is because it’s not a movie, it’s a miniseries. There are far too many events and the motivations are too complex to cram into a little under two hours. It is a story that needs nuance and background, and without it you are left asking, “Now why would they do that?” about primary characters.

For what are probably a lot of sound commercial reasons they crammed the story into a movie format. It may make sense commercially, but if you care about the story it doesn’t make any sense.

Sustainability is a big word now for business. I’d apply it to communicators as well saying that commercial considerations may make sense, but the more sustainable option is to care about the message first and the medium second.

Tweet to distraction

2009-06-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

Anybody remember “Rico Suave”. Yeah, I do to. It is something that got overplayed, overhyped, and now it’s just embarrassing when it gets stuck in your head and you can’t get it out.

I think the world is eventually going to feel the same way about Twitter. A Sports Illustrated article today talks about how Twitter is changing sports, or at least our relationship as fans with sports stars. While they provide some compelling evidence, Twitter as the hot thing isn’t likely to keep momentum, and there are some lessons to be learned.

Twitter isn’t really sustainable from a user or a reader platform on a mass basis. A short article by Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik on Nielsen reporting that most users opt out after the first months points this out. For average people, they realize pretty quickly that letting everyone know everything that you are thinking or doing takes a lot of thinking and doing. It violates one of the basic facts of good communication which is that it has to be interesting and most of us just aren’t that interesting on a minute by minute basis. If you need further proof read my blog.

From the perspective of a fan or listener, I will admit that Twitter appears to have more usage, but not across a broad spectrum. There are a group of people that care enough to follow Stewart Cink’s every thought, but the longer that goes on the more that crowd thins to a pretty interesting few. There isn’t a profit motive for Cink and it has the making of creating a strange relationship with fans. For instance, I can’t even imagine my wife wanting hourly updates about my life let alone anyone else.

So, for those of you in communication and marketing I would say that Twitter is a potential time killer without a lot of upside. Sure it can be used for some useful things, but on an individual level the work doesn’t necessarily lead to the benefits one might hope for.

The Trap of Tactics

2009-05-07T07:01:00.001-07:00

I was a few paragraphs into “How David Beats Goliath” before I looked up at the author and recognized Malcom Gladwell’s name. The article is classic Gladwell, throwing a lot of seemingly unrelated ideas into a story with a strong central narrative and creating a mind bending milkshake.
It’s a great read, especially for those of us that love the game of basketball on a philosophical level. More importantly for that, as I sat at the computer last night reading it, it helped me come to terms with what I thought had been a meeting gone wrong.
The short story is that I had gathered a group, and started to talk about the plan. I had thought through the tactics and how to best push things along. Heck, I even had a Excel spreadsheet and a homework assignment.
The meeting went badly, because everyone kind of ignored that part of it. They wanted to know about the strategy. They wanted to know about the conclusions I had made in my head, and why we were doing what we were doing.
I had looked at the landscape of the organization and made a lot of decisions based on just getting the project done, and I jumped right there with the group. The problem is that I didn’t bring them along. I didn’t engage their thinking, and their perceptions of what needed to be done and who needed to do it.
What reading Gladwell (and a great phone call from a friend) helped me realize was that it is the way of thinking that matters. I didn’t the groups agreement on how to think about this project, and I didn’t respect how they viewed the problems this project would solve. So, when I jumped in with tactics they jumped back. They wanted answers to a lot of questions I didn’t have.
Today, I’m ready to take a little different tack and look at the problem and try to come up with new solutions, rather than just dive in with tactics. I think that is the challenge for most us in almost all parts of our life. We are rewarded for completed tasks, but much of the time it is the thinking, analysis, and problem solving that truly leads to innovation and ultimately makes our lives more fulfilling.
I can’t think of an area of life where this doesn’t apply. Even in my relationship with Christ, I can go about the tasks of teaching a Sunday School class or writing a tithing check, but Christ is clearly more interested in our thinking our or intent in those things. At work, I can go about the tactics, but what is personally rewarding and best for the organization is that I think about the problems in a long view which solves them in the long term, not just the short term. In my family, I can focus on getting everyone where they need to go without stopping to ask if we are going to the right places.

Fish, not just for breakfast anymore

2009-05-04T10:20:00.001-07:00

Today’s New York Times includes a link to the blog opinion piece by Stanley Fish called God Talk. I am a fan of Fish, and often have some piece of his in a pile on my desk waiting to be read, or waiting to be filed for reference in some currently unknown project.

What strikes me most today about the academy and the discussion on religion is how false much of it rings. Today’s discussion by Fish reminded me of a professional conference I once attended where they brought in a debate team for after lunch entertainment.

This was five years ago before much of the debate about gay marriage was settled, so as a topic it seemed provocative. However, the debate ended up being a debate over civil union versus marriage. It wasn’t much of a debate, because those that had given the topic had already decided that one of the two was the right answer.

Now I realize that collegiate debate doesn’t have a lot to do with the fleshing out of ideas, rather it’s about scoring points and judges. However, I think it is still and interesting example of where the institution of higher education gets many of these debates wrong.

Despite how you feel about gay marriage or any other hot button issue, the debate has to happen over the real conflict. The conflict is whether or not gay marriage is an option. The debate is pretty robust and over some key foundational concepts of what it means to be human, religious faith, psychology, law and a host of other disciplines. To start the debate somewhere other than at the core just doesn’t do much good. It alienates the University from those truly seeking answers.

I think Fish has some good thoughts in this piece, and I hope the debate about God and the meaning of life at Universities and elsewhere picks up steam and grows deeper. The answers to these questions shape every discipline.

Classic Montana hiring problem

2009-05-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away called Montana I worked in their University System. I actually remember President Malone, who served before Geoff Gamble at Montana State University. I also sat in enough meetings with Gamble to know he was a pretty good guy.
That makes me very interested in both the decision to retain an outside consulting firm and the call for a change agent as reported in today's Bozeman Chronicle.

The code seems to be that they want someone who can raise money, not spend money, and be a leader of a complex campus system. At the same time, the big problem they are likely to run into is money. University President's are much better paid in most states that Montana, and at some point a view of the mountains just isn't enough of an attraction, particularly in a state with shifty political winds when it comes to higher education.

It will be an interesting process, and probably will happen largely under the radar not for a lack of transparancy, but simply because watching decisions get made in higher education is like a cricket match. If you're going to watch the whole thing you are going to be there a long time, and most of us are just interested in the outcome.

End the University as We Know It - recommended reading

2009-04-29T12:26:00.001-07:00

There are two reasons that most of the ideas found in the essay “End the University as We Know It” will never find their way into meaningful discussions among higher education leaders. It is radical and innovative, two things it is hard to imagine modern higher education suddenly embracing.

Having said that, there is some interesting discussion on Jarvis’s Buzzmachine blog. The most interesting linkage between the essay and “What Would Google Do,” is the fact that we don’t seem to making the linkages that need to be made to solve problems at a time when we are increasingly interdependent.

For instance, this week I have listening to NPR talk about the “smart grid” concept in terms of talking about energy. Inherently, it sounds like a good idea and could knit us more closely together. However, what is the effect on the local community. The wind farmer in South Dakota might be able to make some money, but that wire is going to stretch across a lot of land owned by people that theoretically want to help the environment but don’t want the aesthetic or real costs associated with living with electric transmission lines.

The solutions require more people and better ideas, but bringing those people is very difficult to do, and without a financial incentive I’m not sure how you do it.

Thus, we are back to higher education. Currently, there is no financial or other incentive for higher education to change, so it’s going to take a daring group of leaders to do it.

Comparisons

2007-06-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

Last week a major national daily newspaper published an article that mentioned the school I currently work at with several other schools we would probably not like to be lumped in with. The problem is over their ideology - and to some extent ours. What was essentially a throw away fact in the piece generated well over 50 faculty emails calling for everything from a letter to the editor to storming the proverbial Bastille.

In the end, I chose to just send an email to the reporter and ask if she was interested in more information. It was a great lesson - because she was interested and in fact had done very thorough background and understood the distinctives of my school very well. In the end, we disagreed about some the words that she would use to describe us, but she essentially gets who we are and I have no doubt that if there is a next time it will be positive.

It got me thinking about two things. One is that I should never assume someone else's motivation. This happens to be a good reporter with relatively pure motives and no bias against Christians or any other group I can tell.

The second thing was a little trickier though. What people reacted to was that we did not want to be seen like "them". They were either too conservative, too academically inferior, or something else. It made me reflect on the fact that benchmarking with other schools is a poor way to tell as story. While we might want to have salaries in the same group as school X or the same number of square footage for students, I'm not sure that aspirational schools do much for us from a marketing perspective. Also, we probably each need to get over ourselves a bit and give the guy down the street or across the country for doing some great things - even if they do it differently.

Somewhat along those lines, let me put in a plug for the linkage of CCCU schools and some Catholic Colleges. This is a centuries old theological divide, but I have seen many recent signs that we may have a scary amount in common and much we could learn from each other.

Public Relations Ethics

2007-04-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity yesterday to listen to Daniel Yankelovich, a prominent pollster who has recently written a book titled Profit with Honor. It was the kind of event that was great from a marketing prospective. There was a good turn out, and his presentation was appropriate to current students, alumni, and area professionals. It was in short, the kind of thing that Universities should do to engage broad audiences in discussions of ethics.

What was interesting however about the actual presentation was Yankelovich’s approach to public relations and advertising. This was not a focus of the presentation but it was an interesting sidelight for those of us that are in the professor in higher education. During his presentation he talked about public relations as a tool in the hands of organizational leaders to build trust relationships. He indicated strongly that public relations could be a tool to build or destroy these relationships.

It continues to build on my feeling that colleges and universities have to lead in the area of transparency in terms of advertising and public relations. Internally, we have to police ourselves. Professionals who have been in the field long now that numbers like faculty staff ratio are bound to great deal of interpretation, and as a number tells students not nearly as much as they think it does. Likewise, how we use rankings is a major issue. As I wrote the obligatory U.S. News release I couldn’t help but wonder how that particular stranglehold can be at the very least softened.

The basis for ethical behavior in promoting colleges and universities seems to be in taking a student centered approach. Considering that audience first, and considering what facts and figures will really tell them what they need to know. The problem is that educating them about what they need to know can be tough.

It is a complex issue, but one I think is worth considering.

Different Challenges

2007-03-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Two weeks into the new job and it is interesting to find out that what I have is the opposite problem of my last two positions. Right now, I have people who can all articulate and are committed to a single vision – but there is no visual identity in place that makes sense. Plus, for the first time in a long time I have to work with a team that I have no direct control over to build a brand identity because we are school within a larger University. I love a challenge.

The exciting thing is that when it comes to living the brand, this is the place. It starts with the dean who says when it comes to faith integration and promoting excellence there is no either or, we must embrace our mission to attract the kind of excellent students that we need to come from around the country. When he talks about that it is all I can do not to say amen, and the others that I am working with have echoed that in a variety of ways.

The bad news is that I am on a remote campus and we work under the auspices of a University wide marketing plan. That news is very bad though, because my partner in that University office is tremendous. Not only is she a good professional, but she is completely customer service oriented.

I have started to think about how to get a team together to get them to think about the visual aspect of branding and how that should happen. Here they seem to be big on creating work groups – I think I better get one started because there is work to be done.

One week down - 259 to go

2007-03-23T09:41:00.000-07:00

(Personal post about new job - next week on to Higher Ed. Marketing from a different point of view)

I spent my first week riding the bus, working downtown, and trying to figure out exactly how a large, private University works. It has been great. I like the bus, I like the work, and Spring is the in the air.

The fun moment of the week was having lunch with Garrison Keilor. Alright, so we didn’t actually have lunch but he did walk into the small deli where I was having lunch with a colleague on Wednesday. By the way, lunch was great.

I say I have 259 to go because my goal is to be in this job for at least five years, and the feeling after week one is that it is possible. Everyone here is very focused on the mission. They seem to all be working together toward excellence and it is both challenging and invigorating. I’m trying to figure out why they hired me. There are a lot of smart people here and they seem to genuinely like each other.

I’m having a blast.

New Digs

2007-02-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

It looks like I will headed to a new job on March 20. I have accepted a new job at a much larger University with the chance to stay in the same house I'm at and earn my Ed.d. at the same time. While it is a hard decision, it is clearly the way that God is calling me.

The things that I will miss is the people. As we work through the final stages of the campus redesign I realize that is really what it is about. I came in today and on my desk were new samples of web pages, they look great.

I will be very happy that in the next month as I finish out my time here we will have the admissions part of the new package figured out. We haven't been able to get everyone on board, but I think we are headed in the right direction.

Proverbs and marketing

2007-01-25T09:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had an intersting lunch conversation with a friend who is at the top of his game as a communication professional and a forward thinker. He was talking about ideas that stick, basedon a new book and the thought that ideas that stick tend to be like proverbs. They go beyond slogans or marketing fluff to actually say something that instructs the audience. It is a really challenging idea as we read and write marketing copy.

Beyond that, I have been thinking further about the difference between art and entertainment and what marketing means in that mix. One of the parameters that I have been seeing for art is that it is dialogical in its approach - thus coming from and "I thou" perspective. Dialogical communication respects the listener as a person. I think this is what art does. Entertainment on the other hand is a commercial enterprise where the person isn't necessarily important. This is not an argument that entertainment is bad and art is good, just a way to seperate the two so that we don't keep trying to sell slasher porn as art in film, just because it is a creative process that went into making.

What does this mean for marketing? It means that we have to consider our audiences as real people in order to make marketing an art.

(End of thought - next webisode)

Two good articles I have read in recent days that are to a large degree unrelated, and to pull them together in my head would be time consuming and a disservice to both writers.Typically, I stay away from any book that starts with “the Gospel according to. . .” unless those name following is Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. However, Christianity Today had a really interesting excerpt from the Gospel According to the Beatles. It shows in the end that everyone, no matter how creative or successful is searching for something, and I think helps Bob Dylan’s point that you have to serve something.

The other article was by Frank Deford in Sports Illustrated. I really like his writing and I think he sums up the state of college athletics pretty well in this short article. I only wish I would have had a chance to listen to him deliver it on his regular Wednesday NPR spot.

Good Stuff

2007-01-16T11:20:00.000-08:00

Good stuff in the recent Stamats Quicktakes that came to my email inbox. There was an article by Eric Sickler "RESOLUTION #1: A ONE-YEAR INTEGRATION PLAN" that seemed to pick up on many of things that I have been doing over the past year. It is a good article and a good kickstart to the integrated marketing process. It is amazing that this has been around for a lot of years but is still such a struggle at some times to actually get done.

On an entirely other note and a bit of shameless ask for help, if anybody has a contact at Augsburg College or Hamline University if they would kick that along I'd appreciate it. I'm wondering how they work some things in the Twin Cities and need a little colleague to colleague advice.

Thanks

Hate the buzz

2007-01-11T11:39:00.001-08:00

Last night a political figure (name protected so we can focus on the subject of buzz not party affiliation) one of the phrases used in reference to Iraq was “the centrifugal forces of chaos.” Now, I may have an incomplete education but that makes absolutely no sense. A force that brings things into a center would seem to be the opposite of chaos. Did the speaker or the speech writer really think that was going to help the American people understand what was happening in Iraq?

I recently saw a news segment on whether jargon was bad for business, and the answer was a resounding yes. I would say we are actually a step beyond that. We are bombarded with communication, but so much of it is bad communication. From advertising to political rhetoric often if feels like people are just taking several long words and stringing them together. I’m not sure if there is a centrifugal force at work, but modern communication surely reflects chaos.

As professional communicators we owe our audiences better.

Finding a Niche

2007-01-09T11:22:00.001-08:00

Just when you thought marketing to college students was difficult, it gets a little harder. In our quest to find out the latest in marketing trends we did a little literature review and found a place where we could find out five top ads in a college bound magazine. It was a great resource and we thought by looking at the top five ads we were sure to find some trends right? Wrong.

Basically we found some big rocks that we can hang our new design on. Photography is important and a majority of the page dedicated to photography seems to work. However in type style, amount of information, number of photos, etc. we saw few trends. The students this organization chose seemed to pick the ads almost at random. Three of them I would have guessed would do well and two of them I wouldn’t have put out in a million years. Our current ad coincidentally landed somewhere right in the middle.

My working hypothesis is that this is a natural outgrowth of the increase in niche’markets and indicative of this generation’s diversity and worldview. The lesson I’m figuring out is that it is more important than ever to find something and stick to it despite what winds might blow. The campus that dedicates themselves to being unique and knowing their market well is the one that will grow and attract a core that is loyal.

Research Finally

2006-11-30T11:04:00.000-08:00

We are at the stage where we are testing some key messages and begining to try and dovetail the strategic planning process. It has been good, and the big news is that we now have a plan to do some real life research. It is just one small step, but I think getting this little bit of data will allow us to go forward with more ambitious research later.

At this point we are employing a two pronged approach. Prong one is to do an internet based survey to some larger audiences. Prong two is to go back and use an interviewing technique to drill down with some of those same audiences. I'm excited about what it might tell us, but I have a feeling the research is only going to whet our appetites for more, which is exciting to me.

Interesting discussion in the office right now about what creates a great "look". That is more than the science of research, there is some art there and that makes it fun.

Design stage

2006-11-15T07:16:00.000-08:00

We have entered into the design stage and the testing of taglines. It is alternately fun and absolutely horrendous. Yesterday in an intial review of some tag lines with the marketing office staff five ideas were quickly shot down leaving us with an empty white board.

It is probably what should have happened, but the creative process generates ideas that I tend to fall in love with and then I can't help but feel some dissapoint when they die. Sometimes the death is quick and sometimes it is slow, but along the way a lot of ideas die.

One of the things that I was reminded about yesterday in leading this process is that I have to model an attitude that lets my ideas die quickly, especially when they obviously don't make sense. I had one tagline I loved. In my head I had the art done, the magazine ads layed out, and programs built around the tagline - but one comment from a staff did a great job of demonstrating why it was a bad idea, and it had to die.

What is equally important for me personally is to understand that ideas get resurrected. They may not look the same, but letting that idea die so it could come back again in another way was the best thing to do. Hard for me to do, but worth it.

Worth Doing? Yes Possible? Maybe

2006-10-31T13:39:00.000-08:00

Good article in University Business this month with an outstanding quote that pretty much sums up the difficulty with integrated marketing on a college campus by Don Shutlz of Northwestern University, "You can never integrate higher education marketing because no one on any campus ever wants to be integrated into anything."

So far, in my own process I have developed the key messages and we are kicking around taglines. The good news is that we are on time and the value of the process reveals itself with each step. The bad news is that most of the taglines are in my head, and that seems to be the thing that feels like it is getting most of the kicking.

I have to admit that several days in the past two weeks I have wanted to give up. I feel like I'm five miles into a marathon and I see that the finish line is being moved and so it just seems easier to die where I am at rather than keep running. Overly dramatic - sure, but I think if we are honest with ourselves we live in some fear of the moment that a President, board member, or other looks at months of work and says - "Let's just do this instead." Or the dreaded in my mind, "I don't like it." I don't dread "I don't like it," because my self worth is in the work, I dread it because if we are going to just argue about opinions then there are no winners.

Research is continuing to become more and more valuable, and harder to take the time for and come by.

Our Communication

2006-10-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

Over the past several weeks I have been getting together with key groups on campus and brainstorming, "What are our key messages?", "Why do people come here?", "What do we want to accomplish in their lives?". It has been a lot of fun, and as I have been out on this tour I'm hit by the power of a marketing leader getting out and firing others up about marketing. In the past, I have probably ebbed and flowed in terms of getting out and keeping the marketing fire burning, but this exercise has shown me that when you talk about it, people can get excited.

One of the great things about having a blog is that you can shamelessly promote friends and relatives, and an article from an athletic training journal written by my brother seemed to hit a lot of great points along these lines. The article refers to another book, but one of the communicaiton assumptions that it states well is that we assume the person we are talking to, "cares about the request and will act accordingly to fulfill the request."

So many things in marketing rely on other people that I hope I don't ever make the mistake of assuming those things. As a communicator it is more than my job to communicate "stuff", I have to package it in such a way that it inspires people to get involved and do their best work.

My deadline for delivering my initial research and ideas is two weeks away, and I'm more excited about this job and this field than I have been in a long time because I can see the vision.

The funny visionary quote of the week comes from Steven Wright who says, "I'm a peripheral visionary. I can see into the future, just way off to the side."

I hope that you are excited about what you're doing today, because it could be life changing for a student sitting somewhere asking the eternal question, "What do I want to do with my life."

Web posts of interest

2006-10-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

Our new web content editor has gotten the first draft of the marketing and media relations website up and running. It is at http://www.crown.edu/4615.0.html. The site still needs significant work, but since the new content editor started we have made pretty good strides in making sure that the news and events are updated weekly. I know - kid stuff - but there are no small steps up the marketing mountain.

Sub-brands

2006-10-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

"I'm a special case." That seems to be the common theme when you begin to talk about a brand. It seems so hard to develop a brand that is rigid enough to be meaningful, yet elastic enough to allow individual expression and departmental differences.

Most of the time I like the give the analogy of Coke and Diet Coke. No one really wants to be Diet Coke, but they tend to understand that the brand looks different but the same. Another place this analogy seems to fall down is the question of what if someone doesn't like the Coke brand in the first place. Worse yet, what if someone just doesn't like Coke.

It seems like on a college campus this is primary to confronting the marketing conundrum. Professors, staff and others want to change the institution in some cases by changing the brand. Of equal problem are brands that don't really reflect the campus.

The most interesting story I have recently of this is that an admissions counselor got up at a college fair and stated that we were the only "Christian" college in our state with a certain program. This caused quiet a flap with two schools sitting on the stage who feel that they fit the definition of Christian, though they don't fit the admissions counselors. We can talk about Christian or any other word, but the truth is that as marketers we have made some words meaningless. I would say excellence in academics falls into that category. Just what does that mean?

Thoughts? I'd appreciate even a brief comment or two, I'm not sure that I'm not just typing to myself.

Smells like marketing

2006-09-25T11:44:00.000-07:00

Starbucks is an incredible brand. When I worked at a college in North Dakota the people I traveled with used to make fun of me because I always printed a map to the nearest Starbucks whenever we traveled out of state. Because it’s such an incredible brand Starbucks is one of the top branding metaphors, and to explore it further is probably to invite folly, but the other day I came up with the reason I think Starbucks is the perfect branding metaphor for a Christian college like the one I market.
When I say “brand” the biggest problem I seem to have lately is getting people thinking beyond the visual. To so many the quick minds eye picture of a brand is a logo or other visual element. To make this problem worse the highway to marketing nirvana is littered with branding programs created by consultants, three day seminars and magazine articles.
The reason Starbucks is a great metaphor for me is that the Starbucks brand is not about the visual, it’s about the aroma. The bottom line is that if you don’t like coffee, you won’t like the smell and no amount of cool visual vibe can overcome the basics of what Starbucks is about – great coffee. Our campuses have to have a certain aroma, the aroma of what we stand for and what it means to be a part of “us”. Like Starbucks there are a lot of rooms for flavor, and we will even accept caffeine and decaf drinkers alike, but in the end we all care about the same thing.
Beyond the aroma, there are a lot of things to like about how Starbucks brands. There is the music, and of course great visuals, and a certain sense of style but what it all adds up to is that brand is about way more than what you see. If we can create CCCU brands that reflect that ethos, we can change the world.

Telling the story over, and over, and over

2006-09-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had an interesting visit with the campus leader. At the end, basically I said "You have to remember that about the time we get sick of a theme the general public is just starting to get it." I think this morning I had an object lesson in how that applies not just to marketing messages but in telling the message of the importance of marketing.

This morning I got an email from a senior leader who I have had this discussion with a few times. In a way, it is even issues within his division that led to the process, yet I got the vague sense this morning that one of the issues in the email is that he is still not sure how this will benefit him or his part of the college. I believe it will, but I've done a poor job of communicating the benefits to him.

It's a good lesson for me to look back and say I need to always talk about the benefit of acting according to a campus wide marketing plan and not letting people get mired in the process of creating the plan.

In a way, I wanted to get frustrated and throw up my hands - but in the end I think it's just a good lesson of what needs to be communicated. Either that or the prozac is working.

Good P.R. raising the stakes

2006-09-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

This article from Missoula, Montana http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/09/08/news/top/news01.txt serves as both a great piece of public relations and an indication of how high the stakes are getting for colleges in terms of production values. I have worked with some of the people on the UM campus and I can tell you that they are definetely top notch and the production crew that was in place was top notch as well.

Plus, how many of us in higher ed marketing wouldn't give our right arm to hear a professor say in the newspaper that promoting the college is a priveledge. We all have professors who feel that way, but to see one quoted so well in a publication is priceless.

Ready, Set, Whoa

2006-09-06T09:14:00.000-07:00

The stage has been set and we have launched the plan for how we will go about getting feedback into the plan. We are going with a parent committee that is relatively small, four standing committees in specific areas, and then we are using a focus group approach to gain feedback from a wider group.

The timeline is that we are going to get the first round of feedback by October 30, so I have a lot to do. It will be a strange year as we work simultaneously on the new "look" and brand plan at the same time we are talking about doing some major surgery.

If an area of concern has come up recently it is in the adult programs. For so many years online and adult programs were very low hanging fruit for us. Basically, it was put a few ads in the paper and they would come. To me it is a key brand indicator, because what it says is that locally we just still aren't that well known.

I'm also starting to think about larger economic forces and wondering what an economic slowdown means for a campus like ours. In short, I think it means we better get a lot better at proving that what we do is valuable, and that is in the back of my mind as we begin coming up with key messages. I don't think in the coming years it will be enough to be "fun" or "a great experience", I think we are going to have to talk about the kinds of outcomes that two year colleges and others have been talking about for a lot of years. However, the classic debate of what the outcomes of a private, more or less liberal (in a completely conservative way) college type experience should be are likely to be a key point of debate.

Philosophical Differences

2006-08-29T07:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in meeting with two senior leaders we had a clash of philosophy that led to change in strategy. The basic change is that I was building a committee of 10-12 which included some senior leadership and now we are looking at a much smaller committee of 4-5 which includes almost exclusively senior leadership. It is a change that is minor at the outset, but has tremendous strategic consequences. For instance, I was using the committee as a place to get input, but also to get buy-in. Now I need to do that differently.

Another change is that the parent committee will be making the charge, and the subcommittees will be actually drafting the first core messages and possibly a new tagline for general campus use. The parent committee will be the final refiner and approval.

I was basing my model on Larry Lauer and Robert Sevier's work and recommendations in their writing, and it seems like now we have taken a turn that I'm not sure will get us where we need to go, but I'm passionate enough about the goal to press on.

I had the insight today that being a "director" means I have to get along in the organization like a middle weight fighter. I still have to jab and move, but I have the occasional knock out punch. The cabinets are the heavyweights, they don't have to adjust or move as fast because they have the "weight" to take the punches and can deliver the knock out when needed. This is different than entry-level positions that require the cost bobbing and weaving of a lightweight.

It's not a great analogy, but one that I was pondering this morning.

The Squeeze

2006-08-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

One of the challenges that faces someone with the title "director" is setting a campus wide marketing agenda is that they are often faced with someone or several someones with titles that signify they have more power in the situations. However, the nature of the college campus is collaborative with the least being the most in some cases. This challenge is on full display right now though and without a plan we have all agreed on I think the squeeze is more painful.

The squeeze occurs when two V.P.'s both ask a director to do something and that something is contradictory. I see one of the primary values of having an integrated marketing plan as being the fact that it will give me an agreement to go back to and negotiate. For instance, I can go back and say, "Well, maybe we should do this because it fits with the marketing objectives." Then again, I may be living in a fantasy world of preplanning when the world looks rosy.

I have decided that it doesn't do much good to use the blog unless I link to some of the documents we are working on. I'm working on how to do that.

Better life through marketing

2006-08-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

As I wait for meetings to start the process of creating the marketing plan I have been contemplating the why's of marketing. Basically, part of it stems from the believe that if we communicate better we can change the world through our students. Part of it is just my natural bent toward process and trying to order a world that is by it's definition chaos. On its best days the inherited structure of higher education is chaos.

There is a good artilce on the Christianity Today website right now about "Organizational Pain". While I would say I'm in an organization that isn't exhibiting a lot right now, I see some signs that are worth paying attention to. The article is at http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2006/002/11.41.html .

The biggest challenge ahead is getting everyone to really see the value in this process and to see how each department can contribute to a greater overall impression. I think it was the Greek Tacticus (I may be wrong) who said "Self interest is the enemy of all true affection." I take that to heart as I survey the landscape and see that we really need to each give a little of our own agendas to make this great, and it could be great.

Research my be a key to this. Asking our stakeholders what they think instead of guessing is a good place to start. But having done everything from surveys to focus groups I know that research takes a lot of work, and good research takes even more work. However, I also know that nothing is as valuable.

So it begins

2006-08-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I was supposed to have a meeting with the new Executive VP and the VP for Advancement, but alas one didn't show. Building a marketing plan is a team process and one of the hardest parts on a college campus is getting everyone in the same room at the same time. The good news is that the Executive VP and I had a good talk and there is a lot of support for the process.

Basically, we are starting by forming a committee with 3 of the VP's and representatives from admissions, marketing, advancement, athletics, music and some at large faculty members. The other good news is that I convinced a faculty member with some marketing expertise to be part of the committee. As a side note - marketing faculty don't always do well on these kinds of committees. In the past I had one notable disaster with a marketing faculty member.

In his great book on college marketing, "Competing for students, money, and reputation: Marketing the academy in the 21st century by Larry D Lauer talks about the process of building support for markeitng at Texas Christian Univ. On a campus that size he had many more constituents than I need to deal with, but we are currently looking at a committee of about 12.

A former boss and chancellor at mid-size public university used to challenge me to think of the per hour cost of meetings, especially when those meetings were Deans and VP's. It's a good way to think about it, and it challenges me to come up with agendas and exercises that will be valuable enough to get them to care. When that doesn't work, I'll probably just start buying doughnuts.

Rankings Rant

2006-08-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, many of us in the PR/Marketing world found out if we are winners or loser according to the latest U.S. News and World Report ranking. Today's Inside Higher Education had a few good articles on why the rankings are a bit (or horribly) flawed. It can be found at http://www.insidehighered.com/.

Let me say this. It is great for the CCCU and private colleges in general that some of the institutions represented have done really well, but having been on several ranked campuses and knowing colleagues at others, I know that the story those rankings tell is largely false.

I also think that the media over emphasizes how many students pay attention to these rankings. The top 10% absolutely due, but the average student at an institution like ours cares little about that list and even fewer understand it. In a lot of ways, the rankings seem to highlight what is wrong with higher ed, because so few of the measures have even a slight impact on the lives of individual students. If higher education is about educating students for life then rankings don't really tell much about the institutions ability to do that.

Or I could be horribly wrong when my institution moves from the third tier to somewhere higher next year and I put that pretty little U.S. News symbol on all my publications.

The big five

2006-08-17T14:04:00.000-07:00

As I'm looking at the marketing plan there are many, many stakeholders. It is one of the things that makes it difficult. But I'm also struck by the question, "What differences make a difference." For instance, I know an adult student is very different than a 17 year old prospect. They need different communication. But as I start to look at targets is a prospect from South Carolina significantly different than a prospect from South Dakota. More importantly are there reasons for choosing or not choosing us important. As one adds donors to the list this gets even more interesting.

Right now I'm starting with the premise of the big five: General (all audiences, the community at large),Admissions, Advancement (alumni and fundraising), Athletics, and Music. These seem to be the ones in the most desperate need of a marketing plan and as I think about who is stepping on whose toes these seem to be the players on my campus - who am I missing?

My theory that some of those I have missed, like academics, I have missed because they don't market directly. We desperately need their involvement in marketing and we even need them to sometimes make marketing sensitive decisions. However, I think the plan has to distinguish at some point and having worked at three institutions I know getting that group exciting about this process is easy - but getting them to do the grunt work is hard. Right now, I need grunt work.

Buy in

2006-08-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

I'm a marketing director, which means in the lexicon of the modern American college or University that I am middle management. Therefore, it will be as important in the process to manage up as it is to manage down. As I go about trying to create a new comprehensive marketing plan for the college I have visions of a plan that includes admissions, alumni, fundraising, music, athletics and the many other groups that all showcase the institution in some way. I'm also hoping to tie all of this to outcomes, research, and most importantly budget. As the great Dr. George White a former collegue once said, "If the strategic plan isn't tied to the budget you don't have a strategic plan, you have a budget."

The first step was today when I met with the VP of my division to discuss a basic plan for how this might be accomplished. It seemed to go well and the first step of buy in is complete. I now have two other VP's to meet with, and then it will be on to my staff who have already been involved in part of the process, but have not seen the entire plan.

It is overly dramatic, but I'm somehow feeling like I'm planning D-Day, but I know it is possible. My readings of and in some cases discussions with the likes of Robert Sevier and Larry Lauer of TCU indicate the tremendous potential of a campus wide plan. However, right now what I have is pieces of a plan ready to come together. In the words of Hannibal from the A-Team, "I just love it when a plan comes together."