With a Little Help From Your Fans

Last year, at least one institution scuttled its rebranding effort when students, faculty, and staff took to Facebook and soundly panned the identity before the planned launch. Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, is hoping to avert this outcome by asking its constituents—at least, those who are Facebook fans—to vote on a new logo. Stevens will roll out this logo in celebration of its 140th anniversary.

The poll is the latest step in a process that began last summer. The resulting logo and institutional rebranding is linked to plans for Stevens’ anniversary celebration. Michael Schinelli, the Institute’s associate vice president for graduate marketing and communications, notes that their design partner, Spiral Design, had developed identity materials. “We were going through the normal approval process until earlier this year when we talked about getting the community to give input on the designs. I suggested that we create a Facebook campaign that would allow stakeholders to vote—and also grow our social media fan base.”

Spiral developed four concepts. Schinelli reports, “The designs went through a series of revisions and we settled on four that we thought were both divergent enough to offer a choice and strong enough to be a winner. The poll also has info on the design elements, such as the authentic characteristics, history and aspirations that would identify Stevens better than our current logo. These include our gatehouse, the river (we’re perched above the river, overlooking New York City), Alexander Calder’s artwork (he was an alum), the University motto “Per Aspera, Ad Astra” (Through adversity to the stars), and the S for Stevens.”

Stakeholders can cast their vote via a Facebook poll to be launched today. The poll will be open through 9 a.m. Friday.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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From the Video Vault

It’s been a great week for discovering randomly awesome video content made by colleges and universities. My favorites so far:

President’s Day at Macalester College.
A few years ago we did a consulting project for Macalester. As part of that project, I met with President Rosenberg - a really smart, really interesting, Dickens scholar. While it was clear at the time that he was a pretty funny guy, I had no idea he had something this hysterical up his sleeve:

Via Jill Grossman of Connecticut College (@jillgee).

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William & Mary provides an unexpected look at campus statuary.
There’s a top-secret area of the William & Mary website for those in the know. Once you’ve clicked on the hidden link (hint: it’s on the homepage) you’re brought to a page showcasing quirky videos by and about WM. The latest addition? Lord Botetourt Makes a Movie. Statuary on the WM campus comes to life to discuss making a movie about the Stamp Act.

The top-secret video vault is maintained by WM Creative Services (@wm_creative)

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OK Go’s newest music video features the Irish.
This one wasn’t produced by a college, but the Notre Dame Marching band is prominently featured. Good stuff.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Via Laurel Hechenova who sits around the corner from me at the office (@hechanova)

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Hometown Newsmaker Shares News That People Care About

We’ve all read about how the news business is changing. About the death of newspapers. It’s pretty grim.

At least it’s grim for big metro dailies and national newspapers like the New York Times. I live in a small town in Vermont and here, our local (weekly) newspaper is thriving. And in the suburbs, the local newspaper is valued. People may have other sources for national and international news. But whether we read a newspaper every week, or use a local newspaper’s website, there is often no other way for people in small towns and suburbs to get local news.

And what are we looking for? In a community like mine, people want to know what their friends and neighbors are doing: we want to celebrate their accomplishments and join them in mourning their losses. And help them through the rough spots when we can. So news about local people is an extremely valuable commodity, one that people will read and share with their family and friends.

Don’t believe me? Consider these findings from research conducted for the Suburban Newspapers of America last year. They found that suburban newspapers, even free ones, were valued and trusted sources for local news:

• #1 Source for All Things Local – Suburban newspapers surpass metro newspapers, television, radio and the internet as the top source for community and neighborhood news, local youth and high school sports, local business news, local shopping and advertising, and local entertainment news


• Valued – Nearly 8 of 10 adults rate editorial quality as ‘good to excellent’


• Informative – More than 8 of 10 adults say their suburban newspaper ‘informs them’

This is one reason that I find readMEDIA’s Hometown Newsmaker so intriguing. This service distributes news that people care about—information about the accomplishments of students, such as academic honors and athletic accomplishments—directly to newspapers, which can easily repurpose that news on their websites and in print newspapers. Turns out news that can be borrowed from authoritative sources can be a valuable commodity.

Listening to their clients
I asked Colin Mathews, president of readMEDIA, how his company dreamed up Newsmaker:

The idea came from the colleges themselves. We had launched Newsmaker (a product that is aimed at combining traditional “local” press release distribution with high-end web/social media posting in an easy package), and some schools started asking if we could handle hometown news. I had no idea what they were talking about, so I went on a road trip and interviewed almost three dozen college media relations departments to find out if hometowners were important (yes!), if they were easy to do (no way!), and what they would do if they could wave a wand and make it appear.

Then, all I did was sort and sift those interviews down into some product requirements and then our very smart team build a beta version to try out. The things that didn’t work in the beta were my ideas—where I had added to what I had heard in the interviews. So we took that stuff out for the launch version and focused on making everything as easy as possible. Since then, every new feature comes from customer feedback.

There are a number of elements of his comment that I find compelling. One is that readMEDIA responded to a real need. Indeed, hometown releases like these were the bread-and-butter of college news offices when I was a young professional—and always difficult to produce and mail in those pre-computer, pre-Internet days. Second, their customers are driving product development.

A typical client, the Albany TimesUnion, runs Newsmaker content on its local news pages [here’s one for Schenectady] next to local news and sports events.

Content that people value—and so do institutions

Let me reiterate, for our local paper—and many others—this kind of borrowed content is extremely valuable. When it’s posted on a website, it offers possibilities that make it extremely valuable for students, parents, families and friends: the ability for it be shared on social networks.

It’s also valuable to colleges. St. Michael’s College in Burlington, VT, has used Hometown Newsmaker for about a year and a half. Buff Lindau, the long-time media relations person on campus and now its director of marketing and communications, emphasizes the value of these humble news stories to her college:

Although most small colleges claim it, Saint Michael’s has surveys of students, parents and alumni that show this college to be a remarkable community wherein faculty help students in and out of the classroom and care about their futures. Students make lifelong friends, and the rest of us feel a part of that vibe as well. Because of the strong sense of community, we are keen on reinforcing parents’ good feelings by finding ways to showcase their students’ accomplishments. Getting students recognized in print on online in hometown media outlets is just another way of enhancing these connections with the college and making parents proud and happy.

SUNY Oswego is beginning its second year with Hometown Newsmaker. Tim Nekritz, associate director of public affairs at Oswego, agrees, saying,

The main value is twofold. Most obviously, it’s great for the students and their families to have their accomplishments recognized in the local media. I have students tell me how excited they were to see their name in the local paper, which is cool. But it’s also great to get the Oswego name and message out there. And who knows—maybe someone will see someone in their neighborhood is studying, say, software engineering, at SUNY Oswego, not realize we offered a major they’re looking at and start considering us.

Lindau doesn’t confine her use of Hometown Newsmaker to the obligatory stories about academic honors and graduation. “In addition to dean’s list and graduation hometowns, I do stories on students who appear in a play or serve as writing center tutors, or go on a chorale tour, or serve as RA’s. I’ve gotten adept enough at the process that I use it frequently without spending too much time with it.” she writes. She’s careful to limit the time she spends on this activitiy, but notes that “I still think the time investment, which I carefully limit, is worth it.”

Nekritz, himself a former reporter who is now active in social networking, noted, “The media landscape is increasingly fractured, but people will never tire of seeing themselves or people they know recognized. Just when you think no one reads papers any more, you run into a student excited because their parents emailed them an article about them being on the Deans’ List. Or they end up posted on a Facebook wall, or tweeted as a link. No matter the delivery method, good news will never go out of style.”

One of Hometown Newsmaker’s clients that is showing how powerful this is is the New York National Guard. Mathews said, “They use Hometown Newsmaker to announce deployments, promotions, training exercises and the like and their Facebook traffic is terrific: each hometowner is getting ~5 additional page views via Facebook when a solider (or family member) pushes the story into their news feed.” And he told me, “We now get more referral traffic to hometowners from Facebook and Twitter than from Google News, which tells me that people are actively incorporating school-sponsored news about their kids into their social graph.”

Newspapers also benefit from this kind of traffic. Mathews said that TimesUnion staff has told him that they’ve has seen their page views double since pulling in hometowners. readMEDIA sees clickthrough rates between 5 percent and 10 percent on these stories—huge engagement rates, at zero editorial time and cost.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Job Posting: Associate VP Marketing & Communications, Cal State U Northridge

California State University, Northridge (CSUN), seeks a strategic and analytical Associate Vice President of Marketing and Communications who is committed to the University’s goal of educating a diverse group of students and preparing them to be productive and learned citizens.  The Associate Vice President assumes responsibility for the planning, coordination, and management of the University’s public relations and strategic communications program; to communicate effectively the University’s mission to its varied constituencies and ensure overall continuity of institutional brand consistency and image; to recruit, manage and mentor a marketing and communications team ; and to collaborate with the Vice President of University Advancement in setting the overall strategic direction of the department.

The ideal candidate will have at least ten years of progressively responsible experience in public relations, press, communications, publications; and strong supervisory and personnel management skills.  This is a unique opportunity to partner with an esteemed leader in the field of higher education and serve as an architect and builder of a marketing and communications program at one of the nation’s leading public universities.  Together with the Vice President, the Associate Vice President will engage the University’s various constituencies at an increasingly deep and meaningful level and will direct a complex public relations program including the development of strategic marketing plans for promoting the image of the university; secure cooperation from representatives of the communications media; communicate clearly ideas and recommendations; manage and supervise the operation of a fast-paced and visible department; and maintain cooperative working relationships with students, staff, faculty, public agencies, private agencies, the community, and the media.

Download a job description in PDF format.

More detailed information on the application and hiring process.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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mStoner Heads to SXSW:Interactive

mStoner had fantastic news for Laurel and me last month, asking us to attend South by South West:Interactive on behalf of the company. Since 1994, the Interactive event is an extension of Austin’s legendary music conference. We’re getting ready for five days of keynote speakers, panel discussions, interactive readings, workshops and social events. It will be a great opportunity to mingle with and learn from some of the giants in the industry of interactive media. Will you be there too? Let us know! We’d love to meet for a meal or beverage. There’s a higher-ed buzz, and we’re charmed by the thrill of it all. Check back for pictures and report. 

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Human RSS

Need another reason to work with smart, interesting people? They act as a living feed reader. Hook your coworkers up to a quick-communication tool like Yammer and Hello! A human filter for your Internet. That’s pretty much the setup here. Below is some of what the mStoner hive mind fed itself recently:

From Volt: Harvard professor and staff writer for The New Yorker, Louis Menand has a new book out titled The Marketplace of Ideas. In it he argues that the intellectual sanctuary currently occupied by the American liberal arts professoriate has turned their main task into one of increasingly pointless self-replication (e.g. English Literature professors are best at making more English Literature professors). Oh snap!

From Rob: Tech evangelist Robert Scoble interviews George Revutsky and Dustin Kittelson of ROI.works on how search engines like Google and Bing are getting wise to the tricks of SEO hacks and giving content its throne back bit by bit.

From Jeremiah: PDF My URL. Aside from sounding oddly inappropriate, it does what it says and turns a webpage into a handy PDF.

From Kevin Z.: The New Rubik’s Cube is now weirder to use and more expensive! If the ability to retain the mental list of algorithms required to solve the original cube wasn’t alienating enough, you can now own a version of the puzzle intended for use in a dark room by rich people!

From Doug: How much did your iPod cost…the planet? Sourcemap, a collaboration-based online tool can feed your guilt the facts about where the things you carry came from and how much carbon it took to put it in your hands. (You’re welcome.)

From Patrick: Disney/Pixar’s Up plus some Australian guy’s genius for mixing samples = a convincing argument for easing up on copyright restrictions. The seemingly sanctioned “Upular” borders on magical.

From Kevin R.: “Here we are now, entertain us…” Through submitted photos and short quotes, Jason Lazarus’s Nirvana documents the moment people were introduced to the iconic Seattle band. It’s a great look at the less broadcasted side of pop culture—the side of the receptors.

From Beth: Lastly, a WikiHow on “Deskercise”. Self-explanatory, I believe. You probably don’t even have to consult your physician. As a bonus, the video at the end can be viewed on its own as a scathing dissection of what it means to be a 21st century office worker.

Posted by Laurel Hechanova
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Me and My iPad

Let me be clear: as far as the iPad is concerned, I want one. Preferably now.

I’ve been following the screeds about this device with a lot of amusement and enjoy reading as many of the pros and cons as I can. I get a lot of the “here’s why the iPad is awesome” posts through RSS. One of the people I follow on Twitter (you know who you are, @williamgarrity!) has been helpfully forwarding along many of the “here’s why the iPad sucks” sources.

Who knew there were so many things to love? Who knew there were so many things to hate? Especially because this is a device that only a few hundred people have actually seen and held. Whatever happened to “wait and see?”

I’m especially amused by the folks who already despise the iPad because it’s not all-inclusive—it doesn’t play Flash; it doesn’t have a huge array of connectors (USB! HDMI! Firewire!)—or because it’s not a netbook of some kind or because you can’t mod an iPad or because .

Katie Hafner gets it: she wrote an intriguing piece for the Times on Sunday. The article, When Phones Are Just Too Smart, appeared in the Fashion Section of the paper edition—so it’s amazing that I saw it. But the point Hafner makes is that while a lot of people own a lot of iPhone apps, they tend to use 5-10 apps regularly.

There was another article in the Times onn Sunday that made a related point. In Steve Jobs and the Economics of Elitism, Steve Lohr writes,

From computers to smartphones, Apple products are known for being stylish, powerful and pleasing to use. They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.

KISS, we were reminded just yesterday by @bluefuego.

Indeed. I don’t want really complex stuff on websites I visit. And I certainly don’t have the time or patience to deal with highly complex products. I have a lot to do, every day, and I don’t enjoy having to figure out how to use a highly complex tool with largely inscrutable instructions.

So am I that strange? I don’t think so. I think many people yearn for simplicity and respond to a product that provides a very high level of functionality, even as it eschews needless complexity. Some of my friends like to tinker with stuff and figure out how it works. I admire them, I really do. But I’m someone who’ll pick up a santoku rather than start up a food processor to julienne a carrot or chop some garlic.

Why is the iPod so successful? Not because, feature-for-feature, it’s the best MP3 player, but because Apple made smart choices in creating a device that many people could use, easily. [It doesn’t hurt that the iPod looks great and that iTunes makes it easy to buy content and download it to an iPod.]

So back to that iPad. I’m expecting a small, light, multi-purpose device that can replace my laptop in some situations like when I travel, especially when I travel for pleasure. I’ll be able to read on it, watch movies on it, check websites, do light email. It’ll be great in that situtation. Will it be perfect? Nope, you can bet it won’t be.

But I expect it to be most of these things because it’s an Apple product.

Can I have one, now, please? Naysayers be damned.

And who knows? It might even be good for the web. I, for one, won’t be sorry to see fewer stupid deployments of Flash.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Opening at Kellogg for a Web Design/Content Management/Content Editor

Our friends at Kellogg just passed this job opening on to us, check it out:

http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/web/1539932196.html

Challenging job responsibilities, top-notch institution, and best yet, you’d be working with some really good folks!

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Recipes for Success: Independent schools break the mold when it comes to social media

My article “Recipes for Success: Independent schools break the mold when it comes to social media,” appears in the print edition of January’s CASE Currents and on CASE’s website [though a login is required to read it].

Here are some key takeaways:

• Because of their small scale and relative lack of bureaucracy, it’s often easier for schools to experiment with social media.


• Aside from embrace of social media—with some encouraging results at places like Baylor School and Beaver Country Day School—there’s some really innovative work going on. Northfield Mount Hermon has merged social media feeds into its website and Worcester Academy’s mashup brings the voices of many members of the school to WAMash.

CASE has generously given us permission to distribute a reprint of ”Recipes for Success.” [Thank you, Currents staff!]

And I wrote up interview notes from some of the people I talked to as a series of case studies:

• Baylor School, Small Staff, Smart Choices Yield Social Media Success So Far for Baylor School


• Beaver Country Day School, Social Media in Action at Beaver Country Day School


• Northfield Mount Hermon School, Northfield Mount Hermon: Social Media Done Right


• Proctor Academy, Innovator: Chuck Will, The Longest-Running Blogger in Education?


• Worcester Academy, Living Institutional Life Online at Worcester Academy

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Learning from Teens About Social Media

Not surprisingly, teens are pretty smart about the way they use social media. Tim Nekritz wrote about this in a smart blog post on 22 October:what 15 freshmen taught me about social media. Here’s one of the most telling lines of Tim’s post:

I asked if they would feel different joining a group started by an institution vs. one started by a student. The enlightening response: We don’t even look for that or care. We just want to meet other students. Some even said they would prefer the groups be created by the college because they would trust the information more.

For these teens, it’s pretty clear: Facebook is a social experience. Tim’s small sample confirms what lots of other researchers, including danah boyd have to say. Karlyn Morrisette made a similar point:

Teenagers have always made a really clear distinction between things they use for their social lives and things they use for “business”. Friends are for social media. Colleges are “business.”

Disentangling professional and personal

So I’ve decided that I need to emulate those teens and straighten out my social networks. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to avoid engagement fatigue, or just organize my online life more effectively. Or maybe because my inner introvert nature is asserting itself.

But, whatever. Here are some of the changes I’ll be making.

Facebook: I resisted Facebook for a long time. Now that I’m using it regularly, I’ve become aware that its value is for me to communicate with friends and family. I really like the fact that a lot of people from my local, physical community are on Facebook. It’s a reality of my life that I can’t be as involved as I’d like to be with some of my neighbors in FTF relationships and Facebook offers a way for us to keep in touch: it’s better for me than the telephone. Same with family and more far-flung friends.

Some of my Facebook friends are people I’ve met professionally—folks with whom I have a relationship that goes well beyond what LinkedIn can offer. I’ve learned about their spouses and kids and it’s nice to have the glimpse of their lives that Facebook affords.

But the truth is that I’ve also friended a lot of folks I barely know, for the vaguest of reasons. So in the next week or so, I’m going to unfriend a slew of people and resign from a mess of fan pages. No offense to anyone: but I need to keep Facebook as a place where I stay in touch with people that I know fairly well.

LinkedIn: Yeah, I agree: LinkedIn has some deficiencies, but it’s the best we’ve got right now for professional networking. And it’s what I’m going to rely on for business relationships. If you are primarily a business friend/acquaintance, I’d welcome the opportunity to connect with you LinkedIn if we aren’t already connected. But not on Facebook.

Twitter: If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably guessed that I’ve grown to like it. [Thank you once again for the incentive to join, @KarineJoly!] It’s amazing to see how much you can communicate in 140 characters. I work alone some of the time, so Twitter provides a bit of a watercooler experience for me. And I really like the fact that Twitter provides the opportunity to segment one’s identity.

I have three Twitter IDs; most people reading this blog post will be interested in following either mStonerblog, which I use for business-related tweeting, or, for the next few months, CASE5sm. We set this up to communicate around the pre-conference workshop on social media at CASE V. I’m going to do some selective pruning of the people I follow on @mStonerblog: nothing drastic, but shedding some people whose insights are less valuable to me than others.

Making choices
I’m focused on these three tools because I’ve already found them personally valuable and, for now, they’re where I want to focus my activity. I am well aware that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other communities in which I can participate if I choose to do so. I’m not much of a photographer, for example, so I’m really not into Flickr, and though I watch videos on YouTube like any netizen, I don’t spend a whole lot of time commenting on them. So Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter offer the best possible options for connecting with the other people I value in my personal and professional life.

Others are making similar choices. For example, I was interested to see last week that even Mr. .Edu Social Networking himself, Brad J. Ward, pruned his Twitter account. The blog post explaining the how and why makes fascinating reading.

One of my continuing realizations is that I just don’t have enough time to have a healthy marriage, do my work, stay connected with my mStoner colleagues, our clients, and the people I value in my personal life, and try every new tool or social networking trend that surfaces.

And, you know what? As social networking mania fades, people will make the same kinds of choices I’m making. Our audiences, members, supporters, alumni, donors, prospective students, etc.: they will also experience their own “a ha” moment, if they haven’t already, and start to think a lot more carefully about how they manage their online social life.

Can they really follow every fan page for every group they’ve had a tangential association with? How many updates from people they barely know are they willing to read when they open their Facebook page? How many Facebook games can they play? How many tweets from how many sporting events can they stomach on a Sunday morning when they log into TweetDeck or Nambu?

It all comes down to relevance. How relevant the content we’re consuming—in the form of tweets, blog posts, YouTube videos, Flickr images—is to our personal needs and interests. Time and attention are my most precious resources and I want to use them as wisely as possible.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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