Posts filed under 'Blogs'
In his presentation at the 2008 AARAO Conference earlier this month, Academica Group’s Ken Steele pointed out the benefits of utilizing social media in student recruitment. Web 2.0 is not about technology, but its use to fulfill people’s desire to connect and be heard. At the bare minimum, PSE institutions should monitor what’s being said in social networks, where students, applicants and alumni are driving the conversation. Ken recommends schools consider using Facebook, blogs, YouTube, podcasts and banner ads. Download Ken’s Slides
Melissa Cheater
eStrategy Consultant, Education Marketing
Academica Group Inc.
Full Cycle Marketing for Higher Education™
131 Wharncliffe Road South, Second Floor, London, Ontario
tel 519.433.8302 ext. 226 1.866.922.8636
fax 519.433.8062 melissa@academicagroup.com
email | web | blog | facebook | twitter | del.icio.us | skype: MelissaAcademica
Check out our new application for the Facebook platform, “SkoolPool,” that helps potential students track their consideration set and share it with their friends. www.skoolpool.com
June 20th, 2008
What do you do when someone else walks their dog on your yard? Twice in just the last week, I’ve been presented with situations where a competitor school is promoting themselves on another school’s web/social media. They were both very different situations, and both took a bit of sitting back to figure out - and as always there’s no “right” thing to do.
Traditionally, community colleges have a history of serving their local areas and the relationships between colleges were collegial and in many systems the territory of each school was even strictly defined. However, these boundaries are fading in today’s post-secondary sector and we are seeing more and more schools cross the lines to market aggressively in communities that had been traditionally owned by their competitors.
Even though social media is global and wonderful and laughs in the face of geography and distance, competitors are still finding ways to sneak onto your lawn. The new social Internet opens all kinds of doors for students, staff and prospects to air their opinions loudly, and publicly. This is scary enough for some traditional marketers to grasp, so add in the fact that your competitors can just as easily use all the same doors to push their own programs and it becomes terrifying.
About 2 weeks ago we had a school come to us because one of their key competitors had posted a list of their own equivalent programs on their SkoolPool profile. (School A said that School B was promoting School B’s programs on School A’s page). Maybe this is sharp thinking by School B - I mean after all, it’s free right? School B’s strategies hopefully considered how cross-posting like this would make them look, because I would be a little concerned about that…
School A has so much more to worry about, all thanks to one quick little post that took School B all of 30 seconds to submit. First, SkoolPool runs on Facebook which puts all user content live without the option for moderation before hand (although there are many new features designed for PSE marketing in the Fall 2008 SkoolPool v2, hint hint). School A has to decide if it will ever delete any of the user-submitted comments on its page - and it is best if this decision is made before a controversial post presents itself. If you are going social any time soon, make sure you pencil in time to decide your comments/moderation policies. And make sure these policies are available to users before they submit posts.
Most conversations about content control and moderation tend to focus on content submitted by the audience. Some say that both positive and negative content should be allowed to stand, as long as they are respectively said and are constructive to the ongoing dialogue. Outrageous slander, as well as socially unacceptable content such as promotion of crime, racism, etc, should be deleted without hesitation. But where does competitor content fit into this equation?
The majority of the happy, ethical blogosphere isn’t worried about competitors. They are issue blogs, knowledge blogs, life blogs, news blogs. Blogs and other social media platforms owned by schools, companies and brands cannot just as easily throw caution to the wind. We have competitors and consequently our moderation approach just got a lot more complicated.
The gut instinct is to delete competitor comments. Get them out of there. Be gone. Before you hit delete, stop and ask yourself on what grounds are you deleting this comment? Refer to your comments policy. Did it include a statement on competitors? (If it doesn’t, you’ll probably want to go add one because this trend is not going to go away anytime soon). If it includes a statement on competitors, then you’re gravy. You obviously thought about this before hand and you already have your answer. Congratulations.
For those of us who didn’t see this coming, we’ve got to figure it out and fast. Your website, blogs and social media profiles are your marketing pieces. You can’t control the message the way you can in a broadcast campaign, but it’s still marketing. It would be unacceptable for your competitors to paint over your signage with their own logos. And it is frowned on to slam a competitor’s product outright in a television ad. Taking this approach, your competitor was out of line and you are welcome to go ahead with delete. Just make sure your new decision is added to the comments policy.
Normally I recommend that you contact a user before deleting their comment. In this situation, I’ll leave it up to you whether you let them know that you nixed their post.
I’ll just throw this out there for spice - depending on what your competitor posted, you might actually be able to redirect the negative light on them for poor behavior - by leaving their little attempt at attacking you up for the world to see. Your community might also put this person in their place before you even get a chance to see the comment. This depends on how much traffic your page gets - and how active its visitors are - and whether your visitors are supporters, critics or undecided. If you’ve got fanatics, I’d say leave the comment live and let them start shredding it to bits.
The other situation we looked at this week was when a competitor advertised one of its grad programs on a community that was related to your school, but run by a private individual rather than yourself. This is where leaving it live gets a little more likely. First, you can’t delete it. If the comment is going to come down, you’ll have to ask the page’s owner to do it for you - and they might say no. Second, whether or not the owner goes along with the whole deleting thing, your request says that you feel threatened by the post and that possibly you are making requests like this on how many other websites as well? You may not be threatened, you may just be offended, but the page owner doesn’t know that. All they know is that you want that content out of there.
Do you even have the right to request a delete? In my first case (School A/B), one school was promoting its undergrad programs on the page of another undergrad institution. In this second situation, School B is promoting related graduate programs on a community of undergrad alumni. Obviously you want your grads to continue their education with you, if you have grad programming available, but students don’t always do what you want and a lot of alumni choose to experience another campus for their graduate degrees - whether for change, or just because the program happens to be more attractive than your equivalent. Your alumni may actually find your competitor’s post interesting. All they are concerned about is making yet another decision between schools, and knowing the available options is definitely part of that. Also, your school might not even have an equivalent grad program for them to consider - so is the competitor even actually “competing” with you?
After sitting on this for a few days, I can tell you what I would do - but I won’t say it’s the right answer, because the social media rulebook has yet to be printed. If your school has an equivalent program, consider adding your own post to the community - and even contacting the community administrator privately and seeing if they will consider adding their own voice to your school’s information (it looks so much better from a peer …). If you have no equivalent program, and your competitor’s post was respectfully written - and possibly actually helpful to the community members - then I’d say bite your tongue.
The spice approach is to go one step further and even submit a post that says very graciously that yes, School B has this program and that your grads tend to do well in it (if that is the case). Then add relevant information about your own graduate programs and encourage the community members to talk to you about the possibilities. Confident, polite, open, professional.
How is your school handling these types of situations? We’re all learning as we go here, and the rules are changing every day - it would be great to hear about your experiences.
Thanks for staying with me through the long read!
Melissa Cheater
eStrategy Consultant, Education Marketing
Academica Group Inc.
Full Cycle Marketing for Higher EducationTM
Check out our all-new website - www.academicagroup.com
131 Wharncliffe Road South, Second Floor, London, Ontario, Canada N6J 2K4
tel 519.433.8302 ext. 226 1.866.922.8636
fax 519.433.8062 melissa@academicagroup.com
email | web | blog | facebook | twitter | del.icio.us | skype: MelissaAcademica
Check out our new application for the Facebook platform, “SkoolPool,” that helps potential students track their consideration set and share it with their friends. www.skoolpool.com
Subscribe to Canada’s only FREE daily higher education newsbrief at
http://www.academicagroup.com/resources/Top10subscribe
Academica provides market intelligence and marketing expertise to institutions of higher education, particularly in the areas of student recruitment and alumni relationship management. Our annual University and College Applicant Surveys, the UAS and CAS, are the largest and most comprehensive in North America.
June 20th, 2008
EDIT: With all my talking about how to moderate appropriately, I seem to have forgotten to point out that I am almost always against moderation. That said, we don’t always get our way - and that’s where moderating “appropriately” comes into play. M.
When it comes to social media & content control, I’m a bit of a hippie. I can afford to be because I entered the field as an academic rather than a marketer. After almost two years of working side by side schools as they approach the social media question, it has become overwhelmingly clear that content control is a big concern - and often a very valid one. And sometimes isn’t as clear cut as ideals try to make it seem.
Last year at eduweb 2007, presenter after presenter reported that the dreaded flood of negative comments had yet to happen. The fact that the vast majority of schools who have gone 2.0 avoided comment disasters is not proof, but it does still help to quiet a few fears. Regardless, some institutions will be deadset on moderating. And when it comes down to it, at least they are still thinking somewhat social - even if they aren’t ready to go without content control. It’s a baby-sized first step, but it’s in the right direction.
(And actually, even at my own blog I preview all comments before they are posted, to ensure that nothing violating our terms of use is posted - such as highly offensive content, and the inevitable flood of spam-bots.)
The tips I give when it comes to content control are as follows:
- If you are going to delete material, make sure your users know that ahead of time by publishing your policies (or they will feel betrayed, and will get even more vocal).
- Contact each person directly if you delete their content, to explain and offer a chance for them to explain their in return1. This gives the user a way to negotiate, making them less likely to go galloping angrily to their own blog or list-serves.
- If your institution is highly concerned, it is better to moderate comments before they go live rather than deleting them after the fact. AND make sure this is communicated near the comment submission form - rather than buried in a hyperlinked TOU policy.
I can see why any school or company would be nervous about opening the flood gates to student and consumer comments, but even if the dreaded attack does come it may actually serve to engage your supporters and bring out community spirit.
My favourite analogy for this is Virginia Tech ‘07. Obviously a negative comment from a disgruntled student or employee is not the same as a campus crisis but there are a few parallels we can draw. After the shootings at Virginia Tech last spring, there was buzz in the media that enrolment numbers would most likely go down. VT’s numbers actually went up - thanks to the wave of “hokie spirit” that carried the community through and showed applicants a community that they wanted to be apart of.
The key in this situation was that people love Virginia Tech. Its supporters are well known for their feverish loyalty. If you are thinking of going social, it is definitely important to take a step back and ask yourself if you are liked.
For example, Target’s social media efforts went over well but Wal-Mart’s met with backlash (Groundswell). If your school or program has more critics than supporters than you will definitely want to approach social media more cautiously and most likely with a much different strategy than a brand with dedicated followers.
Almost every social media presentation references Wal-Mart and the backlash to its Wal-Marting Across America campaign. Wal-Mart has its enemies and it may have benefitted from a more gradual approach to social media, to test the waters so to speak. Their biggest mistake was thinking like traditional marketers. They saw the splash, they saw the content, they saw the message - they didn’t see the new rules, and they didn’t see the consumers as an active voice (or in this case, reactive). Wal-Marting Across America wasn’t legit. If the company had been upfront that they were financially supporting the trip, the backlash would have been lessened, if not squashed altogether. But because the campaign portrayed itself as something it wasn’t, the community fought back.
On the other hand, Dell was able to turn around its “flaming laptop” disaster by taking a very honest approach on their corporate blog. They started with the appropriate corporate messaging and then when the blogosphere revolted, they threw caution to the wind and honestly admitted that yes a dell laptop had caught fire and no they didn’t know why - other than it was linked to the battery (a battery type that was used by many brands other than just Dell). Was the PR department happy about this admission? Most likely not. But the honesty won over a blogosphere that had previously been very much opposed to the brand even before the laptop ball of flames.
Case Study: The Money Lounge
The Money Lounge is a Facebook community of more than 11,000 users. The community is run by TD Canada Trust, one of Canada’s largest national banks. As one of the first brands to really take to Facebook, TD had to beat its own path in regards to how they should handle an environment where users have so much to say.
Wrong information was quickly corrected by users (the Wikipedia phenom), although TD kept an active watch to make. TD was also an active “host’ and jumped in to post official corrections when required. In regards to negative content, they found that any random attack was disregarded by other users for simply being unfounded and unprovoked. It simply wasn’t given any credit.
I will point out that TD had part of the decision made for them. Facebook does not offer the ability to pre-approve user content before it goes live. Also, with a Facebook Page, I haven’t yet found a setting that will notify you of new user content such as is done for the individual profiles - which can require a staff with time to keep an eye on the page. If you have a strong IT team, you can definitely work around both of these. And as always, there are always third parties with solutions - such as my own pet, SkoolPool.
Case Study: CEO Blog - Time Leadership
To look at the other side of the coin, let’s take a look at an executive blog that keeps an eye on content but still manages to be honest and accessible. Type CEO blog into google and Jim Estill’s blog “CEO Blog - Time Management” is your first hit - and has been for years. Rather than letting everything go live and then moderating if necessary (like TD), Jim has all comments queued for approval before they go live and posts them only if there is value in it. Value meaning for other readers, such as dialogue/questions and thoughtful commentary. Personal notes to Jim and irrelevant content, among other things are read by Jim but not published on the blog. The social media purist sees this as an interruption of the conversation, a violation of the user’s right to speak! The marketer takes a step back and sees that Jim’s blog is one of the most successful executive blogs out there and definitely is setting a strong standard.
While it is not the perfect Web 2.0 ideal, pre-screening blog comments and other user-generated content is definitely the standard in corporate settings. And that’s OK. The fact is that you may not get sign-off on your proposal for a presidential blog unless you include screening. If moderation is a requirement by your higher levels, it does not have to be the end of the world. As shown by Jim Estill, it can be a part of a very successful and active blog. Be transparent, let people know up front how your comments work (right beside the submit form, not hidden in a linked TOU policy), and you should be fine.
If you choose to leave negative comments on your site (which I do recommend almost 75% of the time), it is definitely a good idea to have a rep from the school that acts as a voice and offers a gentle counter-opinion and invites more questions etc. Be friendly, be open, be factual.
I’d love to hear back on how your school handles UGC and comments - and I’m sure others reading would be interested too. It’s one of the first questions I get from every school, so it’s definitely pushing some buttons in higher ed!
Cheers,
M.
Melissa Cheater
eStrategy Consultant, Education Marketing
Academica Group Inc.
Full Cycle Marketing for Higher Education™
Check out our all-new website - www.academicagroup.com
131 Wharncliffe Road South, Second Floor, London, Ontario, Canada N6J 2K4
tel 519.433.8302 ext. 226 1.866.922.8636
fax 519.433.8062 melissa@academicagroup.com
email | web | blog | facebook | twitter | del.icio.us | skype: MelissaAcademica
Check out our new application for the Facebook platform, “SkoolPool,” that helps potential students track their consideration set and share it with their friends. www.skoolpool.com
Subscribe to Canada’s only FREE daily higher education newsbrief at
http://www.academicagroup.com/resources/Top10subscribe
Academica provides market intelligence and marketing expertise to institutions of higher education, particularly in the areas of student recruitment and alumni relationship management. Our annual University and College Applicant Surveys, the UAS and CAS, are the largest and most comprehensive in North America.
1 This best practice comes from a presentation by TD Canada, and I swear by it in my own work.
June 10th, 2008
As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s never been easier to shoot, and edit video. So, why is it so difficult to put video on our websites? Playback quality, browser compatibility, and other complexities make it so challenging that we end up doing something we really shouldn’t — putting videos on YouTube and using the embed code to display them. Go ahead and admit it, we’ve all done it! It might not even seem that bad of an idea, right? Not so!
Posting video to your campus website using YouTube can pose a problem. Your video production will be YouTube branded. Furthermore, if you click on the video while it’s playing, you’re redirected to the YouTube website. Allowing your visitor to be redirected to an external website is clearly not good marketing strategy. You may never get them back.
To keep in control of things, OmniUpdate is now offering a free service called Transcode-It. The idea is to make things really easy for you to take any video and play it right in your web page. Like this…
View the video playing in a fictional university web page.
Transcode-It is a free service that allows college web professionals to quickly convert any video, then upload and display it as a high quality Flash video embedded right in any web page. It’s as simple as inserting an image into a document. Feel free to try it right now at http://www.transcodeit.com/.
Transcode-It requires no software installation and creates a video file that plays on all modern browsers (Windows and Macintosh). Your resulting video will not be branded by Transcode-It, and will not redirect viewers away from your site.
In the spirit of community, we at OmniUpdate hope that colleges and universities will find Transcode-It a helpful service. We offer it as one more tool in your arsenal for reaching that often unreachable audience.
Lance Merker
Guest Blogger, May 2008
CEO
OmniUpdate, Inc.
lance@omniupdate.com
May 27th, 2008
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” Such is the case for traditional forms of advertising when it comes to prospecting a student population. High school students just aren’t getting the message because they are becoming unplugged from TV, radio, print, and even email. They TiVo or DVR past commercials, and get their news, sometimes inaccurately, through online social communities like MySpace and Facebook. Information, both good and bad, spreads like wildfire via blogs, RSS feeds, chat and private email sent through social networks.
What’s a college to do? Embrace the change!
Your website is still your most valuable marketing asset. And, when used in combination with some truly amazing Web 2.0 technologies, one of the most powerful as well. Consider for example:
1. RSS feeds are an extremely effective and easy-to-add form of communication. Feeds can be directed by students to their preferred medium, such as a cell phone (through text messaging) or to a Facebook account; these can even be used to communicate urgent messages in a crisis situation. I’ll expand further on the value of this feature later.
2. It’s never been cheaper and easier to record and post video to a college website. Rich media is engaging, commonly shared, and expected by your audience.
3. Online chat gives your staff the unique opportunity to speak one-on-one with a student, perhaps providing that nugget of information that might just be the key to influencing his or her enrollment decision.
A content-rich and well-managed higher education website will contain some, if not all, of these features. If your website has not progressed that far yet, you’re not alone–most sites aren’t there yet either. But, keep moving forward. Remember the old saying, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” Start a pilot today of just one new Web 2.0 technology!
Lance Merker
Guest Blogger, May 2008
CEO
OmniUpdate, Inc.
lance@omniupdate.com
May 20th, 2008
In my last post, I left with the idea that stimulating regular visits to your blog can be about “wanting more.” The cliffhanger approach to blog posting is certainly one method that works. The fact that you are reading is proof itself. But there’s more. And, last time I promised you three more tips to keep your audience coming back. So, here they are…
Tip #1
Give them what they want!
If your institution is blogging as a means of communicating with prospective students, current students, and others of the “millennial generation,” don’t force institutional messaging into blogs. Create an environment where students themselves can participate (in a controlled manner) in the blog posting. Believe me, your student bloggers will know what topics are most interesting to their peers. Now this might seem very obvious, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. The software and contractual controls you put in place should ensure that you can monitor and veto blog posts before they are live on the web (as marcom professionals it’s your responsibility to the institution). But, don’t get trigger happy with the veto button. Work with your student bloggers to ensure they know where you must draw the line, yet let them be creative with the subject matter to ensure it’s
relevant and interesting to the audience you’re trying to reach.
Tip #2
Embed Videos
The popularity of plopping YouTube videos right into blog posts should come as no surprise. Blogging is very much a Web 2.0 phenomenon and mixed media is a big part of the equation. Offer your bloggers a way to add videos — and if YouTube is just not acceptable (I’ll talk more about that later), then offer ways to convert and upload video files directly to your server. Don’t be afraid of video, embrace it.
Tip #3
Use the 1 in 5 Rule
For every five bloggers you recruit, you’ll only get one that keeps it going. Believe it or not, for all the concerns your administration might have about “appropriate” content issues, the biggest problem you’ll have is a lack of content. Most of your bloggers will disappear on you. And, worst of all, you won’t know which ones until it’s too late. The most enthusiastic, the best writers, or the ones you’re certain will be great are the ones you’ll probably lose first. The solution is to get lots of bloggers. If you figure you’ll have one in five who make it, you won’t be disappointed later.
Ok, let me get off my blogging horse, and get to one of the biggest issues of online communications!
Ah, but for that, you’ll need to wait until next time…
Lance Merker
Guest Blogger, May 2008
CEO
OmniUpdate, Inc.
lance@omniupdate.com
May 7th, 2008
Movies once did it well. Daytime TV still does it well. Some of the biggest budget shows ever aired on TV do it amazingly well–for example, The Sopranos and Lost. I’m talking about the art of the “cliffhanger.” So, why is it that blog posts rarely give you a reason to come back for more?
I’ll come back that that question in a moment…
The purpose of my first post as guest blogger for the month of May is to introduce myself, so I’ll start there. My name is Lance Merker and I’m the CEO of OmniUpdate, Inc. Of course I didn’t start my career as CEO, and fortunately for you, I also didn’t start off in finance as many CEOs do. No, I paid my dues in Marketing for many years, and I can relate well to the efforts you make every day promoting your institution’s brand and identity. I’m here this month to help you with a few ideas, practical tips, and suggestions to help amplify your on-line efforts and make you more successful in your job!
Ok, enough with the formalities. Let’s get back to the topic of cliffhangers…
Blogs are used is so many ways today. They’re used for news, gossip, politics, marketing; the list goes on and on. Not surprisingly, blogs that are wildly popular offer some reason for the reader to return. Sometimes it’s just to read the latest “happenings,” but even those are only popular when readers know something interesting will come next. Regular frequency also creates expectancy in the readership, and helps stimulate more visits. In a nutshell, keeping blog visitors “wanting more” is a huge driving force to successful blogs.
So how can you keep your blog visitors “wanting more”? I’ve got three important tips that I’ll share with you. But, in the spirit of cliffhangers, please tune in next week for these and more…
Lance Merker
Guest Blogger, May 2008
CEO
OmniUpdate, Inc.
lance@omniupdate.com
May 1st, 2008
I am also posting this to my blog, Insights on Admissions Marketing.
The struggle I have with participating in a group blog program is ensuring the relevence of the information I provide, in comparison to what everyone else has done over the course of the year and making sure not to simply repeat previous items. Obviously, this is especially difficult when you are the last blogger of the year! 
However, there is one item I haven’t seen covered at all (maybe I missed it?) since the start of 2007…which I found surprising. That is email marketing. Especially, with all the changes in email since earlier in the year (the release of Outlook 2007, changes in Yahoo and Hotmail), I thought I would share a few thoughts.
Email continues to be one of the most widely used outreach tools by Higher Education professionals and yet, is also the tool I see used to the least effect. Too many poorly formatted text emails…too many HTML emails that play by old rules and thus cannot get to a recipient’s in box…bad subject lines or general mismanagement of the campaign, messages that don’t respect the recipient and as a result create roadblocks to future success. Especially with changes by both ISPs (internet service providers) and programs such as Outlook 2007, the rules are evolving. Are you evolving with them?
Delivering to the InBox
As with all marketing, content still rules. But while it used to be enough to avoid being blacklisted and ensure you weren’t using “banned words” you were usually in the clear. That is no longer the case. ISPs and the technology they employ to eliminate spam have gotten more comprehensive and aggressive. ISPs are concentrating on WHO sends the email as much as they are on WHAT is sent. If your emails are opened regularly, then you are in the clear. But, if a large enough percentage of individuals mark your emails as SPAM, ISPs will trace that back to your sending domain and IP address. In many cases, they will then block any subsequent messages you send. As a result, even the normal process oriented messages and individual communications you send (or others send from the same IP) will be blocked, thus hampering your efforts in other areas. So, if the ISP doesn’t trust you, you aren’t going anywhere. And the ISP is only going to trust you if your recipients trust you. So, what to do?
1. Get their permission and make it easy to keep it: Make sure, every chance you get, to get the permission of your recipients. A big part of this can even be the lists you purchase. Only work with reputable vendors that qualify recipient permission. Avoid small, internet-based lead generators. They will be less likely to have qualified a recipients permission or even interest…both of which will leave your messages more likely to be perceived as SPAM. Also, make sure you make it easy for them to unsubscribe at any point, even if they have been receiving your emails successfully in the past.
The biggest mistake you can make is to not respect someone’s desire to stop receiving your emails. If you don’t make it easy…they will simply block you as SPAM, which is a much bigger concern for your future. So, make it easy…make it apparant and help the user out. In addition, make sure you are managing unsubscibes quickly/automatically whenever possible. Don’t make this a manual process where someone is pulling the name from a spreadsheet. That is too much work for your recipients and for you. Also, it increases the chance that the unsubscribe request may not be respected.
2. Respect your recipients: This is a two part issue. First and formost, send them relevent information in easy to consume pieces. Don’t send long, rambling emails talking about the advantages of your institution. Have a goal or piece of information to share, get it to them quickly and simply (in format, whether text or HTML) and then make it easy for them to find follow up information on your web site or a landing page. If appropriate, step recipients through a process of automatically generated emails that or only sent if previous steps are completed, allowing you to extend the dialog beyond a single message. If you cannot be relevant (from the recipient’s standpoint…not yours) and provide information with specific value, then you are setting yourself up to fail. In addition, wherever possible set expectations for e-marketing and stick to them. If you allow someone to subscribe to your weekly email newsletter, make sure to send it once a week and once a week only. If you tell me you will provide periodic updates on campus events, don’t send me messages every week. Failing to meet the recipients expectations that you have set is a sure way to end up in the SPAM file.
3. Last but not least, work with an experienced e-marketing partner on a robust platform. Make sure you review your campaign reports and ensure you are getting a good return and connection with your recipients. If not, move to another vendor that better suits your needs. Avoid sending large marketing campaigns from your own servers and IP addresses. It has the potential to cause you abundant issues down the road if you aren’t careful or if you do a lot of e-communications.
Have a great week!
December 17th, 2007
When I started as November guest blogger, I promised frank talk about web content management systems. Well, with a few hours left in the month, I want to make good on the promise.
Of all the web technologies, CMS causes the most visceral reactions and intense debates when I talk with web people – bar none. It’s a perennial love-hate relationship. Put two college web pros together in a room, and the first question usually is: What CMS do you use?
So let’s acknowledge the essentials: CMS is a necessity. It’s the glue that holds your website together. It provides the tools to manage a compelling site. It supports diverse website ecosystem (email marketing, analytics, etc.).
But, why is such a web “necessity” also a “necessary headache” on many campuses? What causes many CMS initiatives to fail in some way?
Welcome to The CMS Myth. Understanding it can help make your CMS project succeed.
What’s The Myth? I see it as a fundamental gap between the promises of CMS vendors (“Easy to integrate and use!” “Affordable!”) and the reality web pros experience in the trenches. This isn’t saying vendors are at fault. The Myth is more dramatic: CMS success is NOT about the technology. It’s about your plan, people and process.
Full disclosure: Along with some colleagues in ISITE Design’s CMS Practice, we launched a new blog at the Gilbane CMS Conference in Boston this week. It’s called The CMS Myth (www.cmsmyth.com), and it’s purpose is to shine a light in the dark corners of content management and to address the reasons behind most CM project failures.
The CMS Myth strongly believes in the power of web CMS to be a key enabler for achieving higher education online success. Done right, a web CMS can be the nucleus of your web strategy and lift up all of your online initiatives.
Everyone talks about adhering to best practices with their CMS, but in reality, many best efforts fall short.
So, to provide some baseline concepts to think about if you’re heading down a CMS implementation path (or, if you already run a CMS):
- “Content management” is a business process and a discipline; CMS is a software tool. You need both. But don’t equate one with the other.
- If you haven’t established a clear and coherent web strategy, get one. If you don’t have a strategy, don’t get a CMS. A CMS is not a web strategy.
- A CMS doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a central part of a diverse website ecosystem. It’s frequently the glue that holds together various applications. So, think beyond the CMS.
- Plan ahead and document your plans for your web CMS. And when you’re done, plan some more. There’s no such thing as too much planning before you tackle a CMS project.
- All vendors say their CMS is easy to use. If you buy that, then also be prepared to invest in user training and mentoring – and potentially lots of it.
- You’ve probably spent way too many hours (months?) researching CMS features, price, and other criteria. Sick of sifting through RFP responses and feature matrix comparisons? Turn instead to trusted market observers (e.g. CMSWatch, Forrester, Gartner, Gilbane) who’ve done the heavy lifting and can deliver a valid short list of CMS systems that would meet your needs.
Certainly this isn’t a comprehensive list of things to consider to avoid CMS-related pitfalls - there’s a vast range of concepts to live by. But it’s a place to start and a chance to reflect before diving into a CM project. Best of luck for your online initiatives in 2008.
David Aponovich, CMS Strategist
ISITE Design
November Guest Blogger
November 30th, 2007
2007 is turning out to be a tipping point for many colleges and universities when it comes to their online budgets. Many web, marketing and admissions professionals have told us that, for the first time, they’re spending in excess of 50% of their marketing budgets on the online channel. One university tells us that is has completely flipped the ratio in 2007, directing 90% of their budget to online, and just 10% to traditional (offline) marketing. Our anecdotal discussions hardly amount to a rigorous research project. But we’d wager that the trend is more the norm than the exception at this point.
Exactly where schools are spending is worth a closer look. Among the areas of rapid web investment: online video creation and production. Campus tours, professor interviews and student talking-heads support a more personal, interactive web and these deliverables have morphed into great recruiting and retention tools.
Another area of new investment: staffing up website, marketing and communications teams to support the online mandate. One case in point from EduWeb 2007 is Norwich University, which indicated it has hired a full-time interactive recruitment management to focus exclusively on recruiting students leveraging new technology and media.
Finally, as more higher education dollars flow online, we’re seeing another effect, a move to shore up (or just plain establish) a true web analytics strategy to measure and quantify the success of all these online investments.
One unsolicited tip we gladly offer to readers of the EduWebBuzz blog is this: if you’re dipping your toe into the web analytics pool and don’t know where to start, try Google Analytics. The price is right (free) and provides substantial functionality if you’re trying to quantify your success and optimize your site.
Are you shifting your budget focus? Are you spending in new areas related to web? Submit a comment; we’d all like to know.
David Aponovich, CMS Strategist
ISITE Design
November Guest Blogger
November 21st, 2007
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