Job Posting: Content/Information Strategist at Columbia University

Want to help shape the information strategy for one of the most important initiatives at one of the world’s best universities? Here’s your chance.

Columbia University is seeking a chief information strategist. Reporting to the chief of staff in the Office of the President, the chief information strategist will be responsible for developing an institution-wide information architecture and content strategy for Columbia’s Global Commons Initiative. According to the posted job description: “The Chief Information Strategist collaboratively identifies content-driven ideas relevant to Columbia’s global impact, champions and increases understanding and assimilation of Columbia’s global resources, and assembles and leads a team to develop and support the user experience on the Global Commons website.”

Minimum qualifications include a bachelor’s degree and at least seven years of related experience; an advanced degree in global or public affairs, design and technology preferred.

Complete job description and details here.

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Farewell to 2011—A banner year for mStoner

All told, 2011 was quite a year for mStoner. Here’s what I mean:

• The tenth anniversary of our founding.


• Our most successful year financially, ever.


• Exciting new projects that allowed us to expand the range of services we provide.


• New staff members who brought new energy and experience to our team.


• Major initiatives toward our ongoing commitment to share what we learn with our colleagues on campuses around the world.

I want to bid farewell to this banner year by calling out some highlights.

Happy birthday to us

I’m still a bit stunned by the fact that we celebrated our first decade in business in November.

Ten years: it’s hard to believe! We’ve grown a lot since early November 2001 when Voltaire and I stared at each other across the office we’d rented in an old factory not far from Wrigley Field and wondered what came next.

Here’s what happened, in brief: mStoner grew; we acquired our long-time technical partner, Global Image; we recruited an amazingly talented team; and we’ve worked for some of the best clients any agency could wish for.

I’d like to thank our smart, hardworking, and dedicated staff who are key to our success. I’m constantly amazed by my talented colleagues and the insights and energy they bring to our work. While it’s always bittersweet when valued colleagues leave, we added some new staff members last year—and they bring some exciting new talent and experience to us and our clients.

An institution’s website is its virtual campus—one of the most important representations of institutional life. As I look back over our first decade, I’m humbled by the number of institutions who have invited us to work with them on this most important element of their marketing, recruiting, advancement, business and learning/teaching presence. We’re often told by clients (and prospective clients) that we’re the best in the country at what we do. I don’t believe that it’s arrogant to say that I pretty much agree. Still, we learn a great deal from our clients and I want to thank the many great people we’ve worked with over the last decade: far too many to list in this post.

Clients and client work in 2011

This year, we launched websites for eleven institutions: Clarkson University, Elizabethtown College, Mount Mercy University, Alverno College, Middlesex School, Waubonsee Community College, Connecticut College, Trinity College, Loyola University Chicago Undergrad Admissions, and The University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. And we implemented these sites on an interesting mix of content management tools, including HannonHill Cascade Server, OmniUpdate, Drupal, Terminal 4, and WordPress.

Of course, it’s no longer good enough to have a great website (though that’s more essential than ever). With the advent of Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels, the web is a lot bigger than it used to be. You may know that we work with CASE and Slover Linett Strategies on a survey of social media in advancement, which explores how institutions around the world use and manage these essential engagement channels. This was the second year of our survey (here’s where you can learn about our findings).

Not surprisingly, our clients recognize that social media should be tightly integrated into their advancement activities and other aspects of campus life. In 2011, we developed social media strategies for New Mexico State University, Kenyon College, the Ensworth School, and Alverno College.

Another big theme this year was mobile: we designed mobile sites for ten institutions. Three of them are live (at Trinity College, UIC, and Loyola University). The rest are in production or nearly ready to launch.

Although we’ve built our reputation on our websites and online work, we work in other media, too:

• We worked on a branding strategy and a visual identity system for the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University (the Hofstra Law website will launch in 2012);


• We created videos and two beautiful viewbooks for The Ensworth School;


• We collaborated with the College of William & Mary on development of the innovative Ampersandbox (print and web) student recruitment campaign.

New colleagues
As some of our team members moved on to other opportunities, we were able to bring a number of talented newcomers to our team. Note that while these folks are new to mStoner, they have extensive experience in their fields:

• We got to know Susan Evans first as our client at the College of William & Mary and when a position opened up for a senior strategist, it was a no-brainer to hire her. Susan brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to mStoner—and to the clients she serves.


• Anne Glista joined us in October as a designer. She’s worked on projects for Widener University and Oakton Community College and has contributed a lot to the design of our new initiative, EDUniverse (see below for more).


• Kate Smith joined us in September as our controller. Already she’s made a huge difference to us by helping us rethink how we manage our business. Internally, we call her “Dr. No” because it’s her job to keep us running efficiently and profitably, which means saying no to everyone at some point. (In a good way, though.)


• Finally, Mallory Wood came aboard as our marketing manager in August. She’s responsible for our external presence, managing our blog and website, reviving our Intelligence email newsletter (you can subscribe here) and helping us to connect more effectively with the community we serve. We’ve already seen Mallory’s talents in action in many situations, but perhaps most memorably (so far) in planning the announcement and launch of EDUniverse.

Community service
Early in 2011, we began developing a major initiative that we announced at our anniversary celebration in Chicago. If you haven’t heard about EDuniverse, here’s the short version:

Find inspiration, learn how others have solved problems, and network with other .edu professionals at EDUniverse, the hub for education’s freshest ideas and latest content. Anyone can easily access and contribute resources like presentations, white papers, blog posts, and more. Create a profile to share your content and generate dialog by liking and adding to the discussion. EDUniverse strengthens education and provides resources to anyone who wants to learn more about marketing, web development, social media, and related topics.

You can learn more and and join the nearly 600 others who’ve signed up for notification when EDUniverse launches. And if you’re in Cambridge and don’t have plans for 24 February, join us at SCVNGR headquarters for our launch party (but please let us know you’re coming first!).

EDUniverse is a larger and more complex manifestation of our long-term commitment to contribute knowledge and share what we learn in our consulting practice with our colleagues in higher ed. We celebrated eight years of blogging at mStonerblog in 2011. And Susan, Mallory, Kevin Zink, Doug Gapinski, Mark Sheehy, and I presented at various conferences: HighEdWeb, CASE Social Media, CASE Summit, AMA’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, and others.

The year ahead
In bidding farewell to 2011, I also want to welcome 2012. We’re starting the year with a plethora of fascinating new projects for some new clients. Here are just a few glimpses of what lies ahead for us:

• relaunching mStoner.com and mStonerblog.com;


• Working with the Office of the President at Columbia University on a new initiative;


• developing new websites for Whittier College, Widener University, Webster University, Drake University, Miami University, UC Hastings College of the Law, and the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management;


• creating a social media strategy for The Pingry School;


• working with the communications staff at Georgia Tech do develop a strategy for recreating GaTech.edu;


• welcoming new staff members Monica-Lisa Mills and Fran Zablocki.

We’re excited about these projects—and others to come! And very pleased to welcome our new colleagues. Best wishes to you for a great 2012: and if mStoner can help your institution be more effective at recruiting students, engaging alumni, highlighting research, or achieving other institutional goals, please let us know.

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Want to Advance a Great College and Set Standards for Social Media in .edu?

Kenyon College seeks an experienced communicator with a passion for social media to serve as social media director:

Reporting to the director of public affairs, the social media director in Kenyon’s Office of Public Affairs serves as the primary social media strategist for the College and works with colleagues in Public Affairs and in other offices to develop content for Kenyon’s communications and to implement socially driven campaigns for its social channels.

This is a terrific opportunity to work with a team of talented colleagues at a great college. Job description and application here: Social Media Director at Kenyon College….

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What Should a College President Know About Social Media?

Maybe your president knows quite enough about social media. Or maybe he or she needs some help understanding what it is and why a president should pay attention to, or even use, Twitter or Facebook (or both!) himself or herself.

So what should presidents know about social media? Why is it important? Why should they use it themselves? What are the benefits to them? To their institutions? Who will pay attention to their tweets or updates or posts? Do you know of a president who’s doing a great job with social media?

And: why am I asking these questions?

It’s simple: I’m doing a workshop next month at CIC’s Presidents Institute. I’m really pleased to be co-presenting in this session with Dr. Robert L. Wyatt, the president of Coker College. President Wyatt tweets as @robertlwyatt.

So this is your opportunity to influence the thinking of the leaders of some of the best colleges in the country. Don’t delay: act now! Share your thoughts via the comments below or send me michael.stoner(at)mstoner.com.

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SCVNGR Treks Augment Admission Events & Tours

Soon, prospective students staring at their mobile phones on your campus may not be texting their BFFs, but participating in a game that’s designed to introduce them to the college—and increase their interest in applying to and attending your institution.

Early adopters in admission offices across the country are experimenting with using SCVNGR, a mobile gaming platform, for a variety of admissions-related purposes. Their experience suggest that teens—and their parents—can enjoy a good challenge while they’re visiting campus and participating in other activities.

SCVNGR is used by more than 400 colleges and universities around the country—and museums like the Smithsonian, art galleries, and businesses like Dunkin’ Donuts. Participants in a SCVNGR trek participate in challenges (“Take a picture of the library clock and upload the image”), earning points. And SCVNGR can be played on any mobile device via text message or by using a free iPhone or Android app.

A “trek” consists of a number of linked challenges. Participants can play casually by doing a couple of challenges. Or they can play more seriously, competing with each other to accumulate points, often in order to win prizes.

Colleges and universities develop SCVNGR treks for many purposes, including alumni engagement. But, given the teen penchant for video games, it’s unsurprising that admissions offices are looking closely at it. Here are some ways in which admission offices are using SCVNGR.

Complementing In-Person Events
Both Clarkson University and Penn State University created SCVNGR treks to give attendees at admission events something to do that’s less structured than the typical agenda.

“At Clarkson our goal was to teach participants things that they wouldn’t hear on a campus tour or learn throughout the rest of the day.” said Jessica McPherson, a staff member in Marketing & External Relations, “We had approximately 600 students and their families on campus for a jam-packed day of events. Knowing the schedule, we decided that if we were going to have a SCVNGR trek on such a busy day, it would have to coincide with event locations and stay quite simple.” The trek had five challenges in three different buildings.”

At Clarkson, at least 60 people participated, McPherson said. “We thought that was great! We even had parents playing. We were surprised that so many participants played via text message instead of with the app.” She added, “People loved the prizes and the idea that they learned something that others might not know.”

[Learn more about SCVNGR Treks at Clarkson and see SCVNGR’s case study about the Clarkson trek.]

Penn State developed a series of treks to supplement its summer visit event. Jenna Spinelle, an admission counselor, explained, “Penn State Undergraduate Admissions used SCVNGR for Spend a Summer Day. We bring almost 10,000 students and families to our University Park campus over six days in July and August to learn more about what Penn State has to offer. Our trek included challenges at some of our landmark locations around campus (the Nittany Lion Shrine, University Creamery) and other areas that we wanted to highlight (campus computer store, information fair with student organizations, etc.). Several hundred people participated over the course of six days, representing about 10 percent of total attendees.”

[Spinelle wrote about the university’s experience in “Spending a Summer Day with SCVNGR.”]

Augmenting (or Replacing) In-Person Tours
At Dartmouth College, SCVNGR treks are being used to augment in-person campus tours. The admissions office at Dartmouth created seven SCVNGR treks highlighting different aspects of campus life and learning so that visitors have something to do when campus tours aren’t operating.

In a post on the Wired Campus blog, Josh Keller observed that Dartmouth tours simply can’t accommodate the more than 20,000 visitors to campus every year. Using SCVNGR, Dartmouth can develop treks around special-interests like sustainability in addition to highlighting campus landmarks like the library.

John Beck Jr., senior assistant director of admissions, at Dartmouth noted, “Many low-income teens are more likely to access the internet over their phone than high-income teens, so we’re not shutting out a part of our population by socioeconomic means.”

Other institutions, like the University of California Santa Barbara, offer links to SCVNGR right from their Campus Tours website.

Keys to Success: Swag, Marketing & Mobile Access
Both McPherson and Spinelle commented on the importance of awarding prizes for playing SCVNGR. Clarkson erected a booth in the Student Center to distribute prizes to players, handing out a variety of Clarkson items, such as Frisbees, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and pen sets. Penn State gave a small prize to anyone who stopped by their social media table and showed that they had completed at least one challenge. Each day, they picked one person from those who had competed to receive a gift bag of Penn State and SCVNGR t-shirts, water bottles, sunglasses, and other swag.

Advance publicity and on-site help with using SCVNGR will boost participation rates. Penn State started promoting its trek a few weeks before the actual visit day, using Facebook, Twitter and in an e-mail reminder that went to students who’d registered. Both Penn State and Clarkson produced small flyers explaining the trek and how to participate.

But on-site, in-person promotion, can help, too. McPherson notes, “We missed an opportunity to educate potential participants on SCVNGR. The accepted students had between one and two hours of downtime depending on when they arrived and registered on campus. Having a table set up next to the registration table would have been ideal to fill that void in activities and to teach students/families about SCVNGR.”

Both Penn State and Clarkson plan on expanding their use of SCVNGR next year. For those who are thinking about initiating a SCVNGR trek, McPherson advises, “Have some goals in mind, both for the outcome of the trek (were people glad they played?) and for the trek itself (what should a participant get out of playing?). Starting out, qualitative goals are equally as important as quantitative. We tried to get a lot of feedback so that we can continue to improve our treks and challenges.”

She also noted that one particular issue her rural campus faces: not all mobile phones work in Potsdam, NY. “We did not anticipate that we would have a lot of students with T-Mobile as their wireless provider and that they would not be able to use their phones at all.” Some resourceful Clarkson students saved the day for T-Mobile users who wanted to play SCVNGR, writing the challenges down and posting the answers for them. “The people they helped were especially grateful and we learned a valuable lesson. Next time we will print out a few challenge sheets in case this happens again.”

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Common Sense and Plain Language Take Your Visitors Where They Want to Go

Have you ever shopped the websites of an online clothing store like The Gap, Lands End, Boden, or Bluefly? These sites have certain things in common: they sell clothing for men, women, maybe kids; they may have a specialty or two like shoes or fragrances; and they have sales, new items, and other specials they want to highlight.

Each strives to differentiate itself from competitors. But if you glance at their websites, you’ll notice that terms like “Women,” “Men,” “Shoes,” “New Arrivals,” “Sale” appear on these (in fact, most) retail shopping websites as key labels in the primary navigation.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. These sites are designed to move product and are organized so shoppers can find what they already want and spot other items they may find appealing.

When shoppers arrive at a site like Bluefly, they’re often interested in a certain item—a woman in search of the perfect black dress. Bluefly’s home is intuitive: click “Men” and you find men’s clothing. The choices are intuitive so that visitors can move on to exploring—and maybe purchasing.

It’s also pretty easy to see that websites that sell clothing would be at a huge disadvantage if they organized themselves differently. Why would someone who had just shopped Bluefly or The Gap spend any time on a site where shirts, slacks, and jackets are grouped together, with women’s and men’s clothing thrown into one long list? Shopping a site like this would be incredibly frustrating and visitors would leave, clicking to another site that made shopping for a man’s shirt easy.

In fact, you could argue that because shopping sites all have a similar organization, marketers can focus on differentiating these brands by other attributes. Bluefly—designer clothes at discount. Nordstrom—great service & well-curated selection, plus real stores.

Labels and the .edu website

Given the fact that this makes so much intuitive sense, you’d think that colleges and universities would understand that they don’t need to reinvent the information architecture (IA) and labels on their websites. As Chas Grundy pointed out, people who focus on solving similar problems often develop similar solutions. Embracing standards should allow institutions to focus on other challenges, like communicating the attributes that make them stand out.

And in fact, most colleges and universities do use a fairly standard set of labels for the primary navigation on their websites:

About / Academics / Admission / Athletics / News & Events / Research / Student Life

Some institutions may add an additional label or two depending on the need to highlight some significant area of specialty. But notice that all these words are fairly understandable, both to insiders (faculty, students, staff) and to even the most naive visitors.

It’s not a huge stretch to realize that “Academics” relates to classroom activity, courses, and majors. And most people understand that information about enrolling and applying can be found under “Admission.”

This isn’t just common sense: usability testing supports the approach I’ve described. Even teens understand these terms. Why is this important? Because when Noel-Levitz asked teens Noel-Levitz E-Expectations 2011, “academic programs” and “enrollment and admissions information” topped the list, by far.

So imagine this: a prospective student visits ten university websites. On nine of them, she can research majors by clicking on the “Academics” label. At the tenth, some “creative” site designer decided to relabel “Academics” as “Learn.” Now, our teen visitor has to figure out whether she can “Learn” about majors by clicking on that tab, or if she’ll “Learn” about student life, residence halls, or how to apply instead.

A bit confusing, right? May I remind you of the wisdom of the Don’t Make Me Think mantra, which underscores the fact that the more people have to consider their choices on a website, the less happy they are with it.

Noel-Levitz found that “One in five students said they removed a school from consideration because of a bad experience on an institution’s Web site.” You don’t want your institution to be the one rejected because of decisions to institute a nonstandard IA, do you? Yet just this week, I saw a newly launched, redesigned website that not only used nonstandard labels for its primary IA, but saw the need to double-label everything. That approach is neither smart nor innovative.

Of course it’s important to think about every aspect of your website. It shouldn’t be a static entity: it must evolve to accommodate changing visitor needs and institutional realities.

And you should even evaluate your information architecture. But be wary of changing it just to be different or because a design partner thinks it would be “creative” to do so. Changes should be informed by data and guided by usability testing, including tests against peer institution websites. Before making changes, be sure that your choices are enhancing the experience of visitors to your site, not confusing them or, worse, turning them off and sending them directly to another institution.

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Welcome (and Farewell)

If you’re sitting there at your desk thinking that it would be really cool to be a consultant—like, say, me or one of my mStoner colleagues—I suggest respectfully that you take a moment to think about what it takes for us to do our job well. It’s a lot harder than most people think.

Most of the people on our team have worked at a college or university at some point in their careers, but being a great consultant is about more than being smart and having insights into institutional life and culture. That’s essential, of course (and the more the better).

One needs experience and a broad perspective on the web, marketing, analytics, social media, technology, and the other challenges and issues we deal with every work day (and, let’s be honest, nights and weekends, too). Consultants need to be able to pay attention to detail—and to the big picture. And have a certain level of maturity: we take pride in the fact that none of our team members is a prima donna. We understand that our work isn’t about us, it’s about solving problems for our clients and delivering solutions that help institutions deal with seemingly intractable situations. So many times we have to check our egos, really listen to people, and revise recommendations we’ve made that aren’t exactly right. And I haven’t even mentioned the marketing/sales and everything else we have to do to keep mStoner working.

In short: it’s very hard to find someone who has the right skill set and fit for our small, tightly knit team.

This was all running through my mind when I got one of those calls that everyone hates to get. A valued and important team member telling me he’s moved on. That was Patrick DiMichele informing me he was leaving after six and a half years. My first reaction was, ” Oh [many words redacted], not Patrick! He’s going to be really hard to replace.” My second thought was, “I wonder if Susan Evans would be interested in joining mStoner?”

I’ll make a long story short: she said YES!

So on 12 September, Susan will join us as senior strategist. That means that she’ll lead one of our consulting teams, developing the overall strategy and working with her colleagues to implement it. [Here’s her own announcement].

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to announce this news. We’ve known Susan (and she’s known us) for years through our work at William & Mary, where she’s led teams that have done some awesome work (and garnered a slew of awards in the process). In her 22 years at William & Mary, she’s worked in IT and communications and led major campus-wide initiatives with many moving parts and multiple political agendas, demonstrating her ability to plan and to build consensus time and again.

We all know Susan well enough to know that she’ll fit right in. Personally, I’m eager for her to join us because I believe she’ll be able to offer insights that will help us do our work even better than we do it now.

I don’t want to close without mad props to Patrick DiMichele. Patrick joined mStoner as a designer and left six and a half years later as senior strategist. The dedication and insights he brought to his projects have made a big difference to many of our clients. I’m glad to see Patrick find new challenges (though I’ll really miss working with him!).

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Mallory Wood Joins mStoner’s Team

I’m very fortunate to be working with a great team at mStoner: I have smart, creative, engaging and talented colleagues.

These adjectives also describe our newest team member, Mallory Wood, who will join us in August as marketing manager. She’ll be based in our Woodstock, VT, office, and will be responsible for our marketing and business development activities.

Mallory comes to mStoner from Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, VT, where she spent two years as an admission counselor before moving to the Office of Marketing and Communications as an assistant director of marketing and the college’s social media strategist. In this role, Mallory developed and executed a social media strategy for St. Mike’s; provided training for social media users on campus; created and managed content for various social networks; and produced web video. She also managed the social media efforts for the Office of Admission, working student online ambassadors to engage future students on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and other social channels.

But that’s not where I met Mallory. I got to know her first as @MalloryWood and began following her blog, where she shares insights into marketing, social media, and life.

She’s also known on the conference circuit, having presented at the HighEd Web National Conference, Penn State Web Conference, NEACAC Annual Conference, .eduGuru Online Summit, SUNYCUAD, and more. Mallory has also been a guest and a guest-host on Higher Ed Live, the weekly web show created by Seth Odell focused on the emerging role of social media and digital media marketing.

Because I was impressed by what I read—and learned subsequently—about Mallory, I was thrilled when she expressed interest in working with us and when she accepted our offer. My colleagues who have met Mallory are as excited as I am about working with her.

Before I close, I want to give a shout-out to Katie Jennings, who served as mStoner’s director of business development until a week ago. For the past several years, Katie has ridden herd over her creative and unruly colleagues to develop powerful and compelling proposals and manage our marketing. Katie assumed project management responsibilities for Beth Lee, who at this moment is awaiting the birth of her second son. Beth will return to mStoner part-time after her maternity leave.

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Email & Social Channels Help to Muster Support for Community College Rebuilding Project

We all know about how reluctant voters are to support infrastructure projects at a time of burgeoning deficits, etc. Right?

In November, 2010, Voters in Madison, WI, proved that they will indeed support building projects. Not only did they vote for a necessary improvements to Madison College, a significant community resource. But they responded to a broad-based campaign designed to educate voters about the need for these improvements conducted via multiple channels, but spurred primarily by email and social channels. The college created an extensive, multi-channel campaign designed to generate public support for the rebuilding project, an effort that passed with 60 percent of the vote.

Ellen Foley, executive assistant to the president and executive director of the communications and community development teams at the college, wrote a smart piece in the Chronicle about how the college did it.

You might guess from the title (“E-Mail Marketing Campaign Gets By With a Little Help From Some ‘Friends’”) that the effort was all about email and Facebook.

You’d be wrong, though. My take-away from her article is that despite the fact that the college used Facebook extensively, it was an add-on to the other things that they did to help build awareness. I don’t mean to diminish the role of Facebook, which was clearly important, especially in the last weeks of their awareness-building effort. But it seems to be the synergy, not just the social media, that ultimately paid off for the college.

Interesting, too, to read about how faculty and staff at this state-supported institution could use social media to “educate” during work hours and only “advocate” during free time, breaks, and before or after work.

One idea worth noting is the Future of Madison forum (there’s a screen capture at the top of this post). Foley explains how it worked,

Finally, late in the campaign, we launched a digital “idea forum” called FutureofMadison.org that awarded scholarships for big community ideas. This crowdsourcing tactic promised entrants that all suggestions for our community’s future would be placed in a time capsule inside the foundation of the first building the referendum dollars would finance. Seven winners were chosen, and while we received more than 350 ideas, we intend to expand this good idea and repeat it by partnering with our local K-12 school students, our future customers.

Very smart approach. This is worth reading. Twice!

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CASE Circle of Excellence Awards 2011: Best in Social Media

And … it’s a wrap. The judges’ report for the 2011 CASE Circle of Excellence Awards for Best in Social Media is finished. This year’s entries were generally uninspired, but we had two excellent entries that earned Golds: one of them was from William & Mary, which entered its blogs (hence the image above); the second from the University of Nottingham, which achieved amazing results from a smart campaign focused on achieving exposure for faculty experts blogging about last year’s election in the UK.

Judging for the 2011 CASE Circle of Excellence Awards, Category 12: Best in Social Media, was held at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, for two days in April, in conjunction with the judging for Category 11: Websites.

This year, the panel of judges included representatives of American and Canadian colleges, schools, and universities, both public and private. Half of the judges had never participated in one of these panels before. Three work for institutions that won national CASE Circle of Excellence Awards for their websites—and headed the teams that built the award-winning sites. Several are well known in the .edu blogosphere. One judge has earned a gold for social media. The panel included people with experience in design, web strategy, web content development, admissions, student recruitment, social media, web technology, and marketing.

According to CASE’s website:

Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards may be given in each subcategory to recognize best practices using social media within new and established programming. One overall category Grand Gold award may also be awarded for superior work. Eligible programs may come from any area of institutional advancement. Programs may be on-going or new in 2010 but must have been in place long enough to have produced well documented results. You may also enter best uses of social media in the following categories: Alumni Relations Programs: Creative Use of Technology and New Media and Fundraising Programs: Technology Applications and Creative Use of New Media.

There are four subcategories in “Best in Social Media.” Here they are, with the number of entries in each subcategory and the number of awards given:

• 12a. Best Uses of Social Media in Alumni Programming: 13 entries, no awards


• 12b. Best Uses of Social Media in Fundraising: 1 entry, no awards


• 12c. Best Uses of Social Media in Student Recruitment and Marketing: 7 entries, 1 award


• 12d. Other Uses of Social Media: 32 entries, 3 awards

Award Winning Social Media in 2011
In the second year for CASE’s “Best in Social Media” Category, it seemed that the entries were either very good or pretty bad, with not much in between. This is one indication of how institutions are struggling to make sense of social media and to use it effectively. In general, we observed that when institutions clearly defined the problems they wanted social media to solve, they were able to develop innovative solutions.

As judges, we were looking for the following attributes from award winners:

• Strategy: What’s the overall goal? How will social media be used to achieve it? What channels are appropriate? How are they used?


• Integration of tools/channels
  
• Clear objectives across channels and a clear strategy in place to measure results

One positive development this year was that there were more entries from institutions that had clearly thought about integrating their social media across channels into a type of “campaign,” taking advantage of different social media platforms. Consider, for example, the University of Nottingham’s award-winning effort to cover the 2010 election in the UK, which combined traditional media relations with a 24/7 blogging/Twitter effort.

This integration of communications channels is a positive movement away from what we observed last year, when many institutions indicated that having a Facebook page or a Twitter feed in and of itself was a social media strategy worthy of an award. And it’s also a clear indication of growing sophistication about social media as a key channel that must be managed appropriately. Institutions are learning that Twitter is different from Facebook and the rules of engagement are different. Pumping tweets onto a Facebook wall is a fan-losing proposition. So is a one-way communications model that emulates broadcast.

And, as one judge pointed out, “While we can appreciate that at your institution the fact that you have a pretty well-run Facebook community is impressive and it took a lot to get there internally, it’s not innovative.” We want to know what institutions are doing with Facebook and other social media channels, and how they are leveraging their social media community to accomplish their communications goals.

We were hoping to see more collaboration across communications, web, alumni, and admissions teams than we did, with more integration. And we’re still not seeing clear goals behind institutions’ adoption of various social media channels, much less metrics that would let them know if their social media efforts had been successful. And we’re not seeing great examples of engagement, especially on Twitter (which happens to be the preferred social network of many of the judges).

Awards
category 12c: best uses of social media in student recruitment & marketing
gold: The College of William and Mary: William and Mary Blogs: Bloggers; Admissions Blogs; Law School Admissions Blog

category 12d: other uses of social media
gold: University of Nottingham: Election 2010: Social Media Impact for Politics at the University of Nottingham: Election Blog; Politics in 60 Seconds YouTube Channel; Ballots & Bullets Politics Blog

bronze: Columbia College Chicago: Manifest Urban Arts Festival Schedule Builder; St. Edwards’ University: Give it a Whrrl: St. Edward’s Graduation gets Socially Connected; Whrrl Blog: St’ Andrews University Makes History

There’s more detail in the complete Judges’ Report, which contains further comments about process and comments about each of the award winners.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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