SimpsonScarborough: Intelligent Marketing for Higher Education

I couldn’t help but read with amusement the recent article in the New York Times on professor’s responding to the web-site RateMyProfessors.com.

For those that may not be aware of this site, students (or anyone who says they are a student) can go online and provide feedback on an array of ratings to college professors’ performance in the classroom along with open ended comments. A key component of this web-site is that all postings are completely anonymous. There is no way to determine who has posted the comments or why. Some are great, some not so great. My ratings for example can vary by such extremes from “you can only get an A if you are male” to “you can only get an A if you are female” Both are posted (I was thinking the only logical explanation is no one can get an A but they haven’t realized it yet).

As a result of the frustration/anger/hurt feelings/the need to get the truth out/whatever, on behalf of some teachers, an avenue for them to respond was created. This comes in the form of “professors strike back.” This outlet allows teachers to create short videos that respond to their ratings and comments and post them on both RateMyProfessor.com as well as on mtvU, “a 24 hour network broadcast to more than 7.5 million students on American college campuses” (NYT). These videos have become very popular with students and I must admit amusing to watch.

The question I ask is “Why?” Does making a rebuttal video change student perceptions? Does it make the professor creating the video more “accessible” to students of demonstrate their ability to “relate?” I don’t know but it seems as if you are arguing with the wind. I personally feel that the videos can make a “boring” professor seem like a “boring and overly sensitive” one. I watched one video made by a professor accused of being “arrogant.” His video went through all the reasons the anonymous rater was wrong and a loser. I thought the video made the students case. Who responds to negative criticism by calling someone a loser without looking like one themselves?

Do I go to RateMyProfessor to see what people have said about me? Sure do. However, I see it as one basis of feedback among many. I try to reflect on why someone would write what they have. If I feel there is a chance of a negative rating being valid, I try to figure out a way to change future perceptions and/or change my teaching style. If I get good reviews I try not to let it go to my head. You are only as good as what you do today. (I am still hoping to get a chili pepper some day for being “hot”…..note to wife, you are my only chance).

-- Tom Hayes

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can remember my first (and only) college fair experience clearly…I won’t bore you with all of the gory details, but the sweaty kid to campus rep ratio was about 30 to 1 and it was hard to find what you were looking for and nearly impossible to actually talk to someone. I left with a Clemson pencil and that’s about all.

Well, the times they are a changin’ folks…

CollegeWeekLive is a two-day virtual college fair, and my new favorite topic this week. While this is a new concept for higher education, it uses the technology that high school students use in their daily lives and reaches them on a level in which they are comfortable. Not only is it easier to access (you don’t even have to leave your house) but there is even more interaction possible on this virtual platform than at any normal college fair. If you want to read more about it, check out this great Newsweek article.

In the article, there is a great quote from the Robert Rosenbloom, the CEO of the company that created the event that really sums up the advantages of the virtual fair. He says,

"This isn't just creating 3-D booths in an exhibition hall so you can chat with an admissions person, get information about student life and apply online. In addition to all of that, there's the digital media piece. We're bringing all of this content together, streaming live video interactions with young professionals, experts, admissions officers all in one place—and allowing students and parents to ask questions of these experts, which you would never be able to do in a physical environment"

While using interactive technology that students can appreciate is definitely a plus, there are a number of other issues related to a traditional college fair that you don’t have to worry about. You don’t have to worry about transportation or location, and there is no fear of running out of materials. It is cost effective and much more accessible for all parties. Not to mention it is just really, really cool. Watch the video below to see what I mean.

-- Meredith Simpson

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, I did a presentation this morning at the Spring meeting of an organization called CUPRAP, the College and University Public Relations Association of Pennsylvania. The first snap! snap! to CUPRAP is for holding the meeting at the old Hotel Hershey where a chocolate bar accompanies your room key and “kisses” are on your pillow at night. (Note to self….take kids for weekend this summer.) The second snap! snap! to CUPRAP is for effectively filling a gap somewhere between CASE and AMA. The organization now has almost 400 members and has expanded well beyond Pennsylvania and PR. They have members from the surrounding state and in areas including media relations, the Web, marketing, etc. Board Member, Ray Betzner, from Temple University, described how CUPRAP is testing new names which more appropriately describe the current and future scope of the organization. If you work at an institution basically anywhere in the northeast or Mid-Atlantic, look into becoming a member.

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Inside Higher Ed ran an article on Monday that differentiated the coverage of Northern Illinois University and other campus shootings, trying to find the differentiator between NIU’s coverage and the reportings of Louisiana Technical College’s Baton Rouge and Virginia Tech’s campus tragedies. For me, the difference was NIU’s ability to influence the message and flow of information after the shooting. Their response time was commendable and the resultant media coverage of the incident illustrated their ability to spread facts and dispel rumors quickly.

I continue to recommend that the keys to a blind crisis website include: its ability to activate instantly; the site addresses the institution’s key audiences; it include facts, statements, press releases, updates that are archived – hourly in some cases, daily in others; the website provides links to contact proper authorities for more information; and the text and links provide information as deemed advantageous. NIU hit each of these elements with its crisis site.

I encourage you to visit their site and take a screen shot of their layout, resources and hyperlinks. I think the layout and content should be the gold standard for information provided online during a crisis. Their site has been able to walk the line between sharing information and allowing for grieving. That’s not easily done, and especially not easily done well.

-- Teresa Valerio Parrot

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you haven’t signed up to get Karen Kang’s newsletter, take two secs and do it right now. It’s called “Positioning Pays” and includes great little snippets on branding and positioning that are easy to read but will remind you of important fundamentals. I just got a new one today and she tackles an issue people are always asking me about, “Can one position fit all?” She also talks about positioning professional services which is sort of akin to positioning an educational experience. Karen hasn’t sent out a newsletter for a couple of weeks, but that’s only because she’s been so busy with clients. No surprise there. She is obviously super sharp. That’s why I’m gonna start calling her King Kang.

-- Elizabeth Scarborough

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am so excited to have two WOM specialists speaking at the AMA Symposium next month. We all already know that word-of-mouth is the #1 marketing tool we have. Shoot, it probably drives about 99.9% of my business. But most of us spend an inverse proportion of our marketing budget to harness and stimulate WOM. Nielsen just released a study that shows that “consumers around the world still place their highest levels of trust in other consumers;” “recommendations from consumers” are the #1 form of advertising that customers trust. 78% of the study’s respondents said they trust WOM compared to 56% who say they trust TV ads, 38% who trust move theatre ads, and 26% who trust online banner ads. Some of the comparisons by country are really interesting and might influence how you recruit international students. Recommendations from current customers make the biggest difference in Asia. “Relying on someone else’s recommendation” makes less difference in Denmark, Italy, and Lithuania. Consumer generated media (such as blogs) were considered a reliable source of information for the largest percentage of respondents in North America; though the magnitude of the different from the average was small. Still, it’s fair to say that WOM is the best thing we got going. I can’t wait to hear from Lois Kelly and Andy Sernovitz at the AMA so they can teach us more about it.

-- Elizabeth Scarborough

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

NRCCUA released its annual study of admission Web sites today. They used 34 different criteria to determine “grades” for over 3,000 schools. Among the “best” were LeTourneau University, Wayne State, Newberry College, Saint Vincent College and Seminary, and others. I looked at all of the ones in the top 10 and I’m wondering if it’s just me or if the grading didn’t place enough emphasis on design. I mean, some of these sites are seriously unappealing visually. There are exceptions, of course. Gonzaga’s is a cool site. The design is edgy and youth-focused. And, yet the traditional Jesuit brand still comes through with “Develop Your Total Self” splashed across the home page. Pennsylvania College of Technology’s home page is totally disruptive (in a good way) with that over-sized photo of the student engineering a huge crane. It would be even better if that photographic style was carried throughout the site. Cal Baptist uses a similarly effective approach on their home page. If I were going to pick my top ten favorite college sites, the list would look completely different. Check out the sites for Virginia Tech, Ball State, and Boston University. These are great sites in my opinion. Not that my opinion matters `cause I am not the target audience!

-- Elizabeth Scarborough

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rob Moore, from Lipman Hearne, and I are presenting together at an Academic Impressions conference on branding in January. On a planning conference call today, the conference head, Betsy McNair noted that Rob and I use similar, yet slightly different, definitions of branding. We both agreed this is absolutely fine because we each emphasize different nuances of the concept which fit our own corporate brands. How’s that for differentiation? But, the point lingered with me a bit today so eventually I googled “definition of branding” and found some interesting stuff.

I found a blog on “defining branding” that included definitions like “it’s a story that we tell ourselves and eachother,” (which I like) “it’s a promise” (which is tired), “it’s whatever we can do to be like Nike/Starbucks/Coke” (which is hollow and completely misses the point), and “the brand is what you tell your friends about afterward” (which I am stealing).

I found another interesting blog that will be fun to visit every once in a while. It has a “bookshelf” with recommending reading on branding and a bunch of good stories on corporate branding. If you peruse the entries you will quickly notice it’s written with a research bent; that’s probably why I like it.

Finally, I found an interesting take on branding compiled into a periodic table of brand evolution terms. There are also some worthy downloadables including a paper on “drip marketing,” a term I admit I haven’t heard yet.

I also found a couple links to my own Web site. Thank goodness!

-- Elizabeth Scarborough

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I recently came across this article about a new business offering personalized tours of California colleges to prospective students, and I wanted to share it with you. University Passport is the brainchild of two UC Davis students who wanted to create a college tour company that provides college-bound individuals with a personal experience. After a serious “why didn’t I think of that?” moment, I went to the University Passport website to get a little more info. Not only do these guys have a great idea, but it is also very well executed. You should definitely check it out if you get a chance.

University Passport describes their service as “A dynamic twist on college touring, University Passport (UP) is a premier service that helps college-bound students make their academic dreams come true by providing individually tailored, no-hassle visits to college campuses.”

Campus tours generally leave much to be desired, because schools don’t have the time or money to invest into tours like the ones offered by University Passport. Their tours last all day rather than only a couple of hours (or less) and go into much more detail, depending on the interests of the student. They even include off-campus spots that you wouldn’t see on a generic campus tour. While they are only in California at this point, the partners hope to have the company go national within three to five years. I personally hope they succeed!

-- Meredith Simpson

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You have to go to Elevator Speech.com and check out the short video of 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon interviewing a guy named Jeff Dachis, who then owned an e-business consultancy called Razorfish. Bob Simon asks a simply question, “What does your company do?” Even after repeating the question three times, Mr. Dachis still can’t provide Bob with a clear answer to the question. It’s embarrassing. And, it pretty effectively highlights how difficult it can sometimes be to describe your organization.

For colleges, I think a slightly different question is more appropriate for a marketing context. “What makes your college different and better than others your prospects commonly consider?” Imagine videotaping all members of a college’s cabinet providing a 30-second answer to this question. How similar or different would they be? How true would they be? If you changed the name of the school, could the answers still apply? I think this would be a great exercise. I’m going to try to talk one of my clients into letting me do it. Will write back about the results.

-- Elizabeth Scarborough

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Please visit our newest resource- an online repository of community college, college and university crisis and emergency plans. We encourage you to submit the url for your institution’s plan through the comment link below if your plan isn’t on the list. Through this resource we hope to provide the Goldilocks of crisis plans… those that are too simplistic, those that are too complex and those that are just right as a model for your college or university. Happy hunting!

-- Teresa Valerio Parrot

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those of you who haven’t Googled him yet, Andrew Careaga is the University of Missouri-Rolla’s director of communications and moonlights as blogger extraordinaire for his site Higher Ed Marketing. In addition, Andrew contributes to three university blogs as part of the UMR communications blogging team, which means if anyone reads all four sites they have a pretty good idea of his wealth of knowledge and sense of humor.

Andrew was gracious enough to provide his thoughts on blogs and higher education-specific blogs. Below are his responses to my questions.

• What are your thoughts on the future of blogs in higher education?

I see a bright future for blogs and bloggers in higher education – as long as we (in the PR, marketing, communications side of higher ed) get our act together and make a strong case for using blogs for marketing and branding purposes. But we haven’t done a very good job so far. That’s probably because we’re used to working with traditional “customers,” such as the mainstream news media, and haven’t quite figured out how to write for audiences that don’t get all of their information from those traditional sources.

Blogs can be a great tool for telling a university’s story more directly to different audiences. But blogs can also complement – and amplify – any good news your university is getting from the mainstream media. On our Visions blog, which was created to promote campus research, we often link to news stories about research in order to show readers that what we’re talking about has value beyond the university walls. It’s a way of reinforcing our message by leveraging a third party.

We recently converted our internal email newsletter into a blog and are slowly shifting the campus community away from the old way of accessing information. It’s a slow process.

• How do you suggest gaining an audience for a blog? How best to drive traffic your way initially?

Here’s the short version, followed by a longer, more detailed explanation:

Define your audience and your mission first. Then find out who else is blogging on similar topics and get to know these blogs. That means doing your homework – reading the blogs, commenting when you have something worth sharing, and participating in the online conversations. And don’t forget to link to these blogs. Many will return the favor.

Now for the longer version:

Start by identifying your audience and determining your purpose for the blog. To accomplish that, I suggest a prospective blogger first answer these three questions:

1. Who is my audience? If it’s a blog by students at your university, the primary audience is probably prospective students and their parents. If the PR shop is creating the blog, the audience could be as broad as “all visitors to our university website” or as specialized as “alumni interested in our university’s research” or “alumni of the English department.”

2. What do I want to tell them? You’ve got to have something to say. Make a list of the key topics. It helps to ask members of your audience what they’re interested in hearing about from your university. If your audience consists mainly of alumni from the English department, find out what they want to know about the department, and then use the blog to tell them and talk about those issues.

3. How do I want them to react? What do you want the end result to be from your blogging? Do you want to give prospective students a glimpse into everyday life at your college? Do you want to impress alumni with the breadth of your research projects or academic offerings? Do you want to encourage alumni to donate more money – perhaps for a campaign or for a specific project?

Once you answer those questions, start looking around the blogosphere to find out what other bloggers are doing. A good place to start is Technorati, where you can search some 70 million blogs by keywords and rank them based on their authority.

• What top tips can you provide for building a successful blog?

1. Don’t blog in a vacuum. If you have something to say about a topic, find out what other bloggers are saying, find out whether you agree with them or not, link to them, comment on their views, and build rapport. Be engaged and informed about the topic.

2. Let your own voice shine. One of the beautiful things about blogging is that individual voices – the voices of real people – can cut through the clutter of institutional speak or “press release speak.”

3. Post frequently.

4. Be visible in other venues. Write articles for relevant websites, present at conferences, etc., and plug your blog anywhere and everywhere you can.

• How were you able to get people to participate on your blog and truly start a conversation?

It’s tough to get people to comment sometimes – especially now that so many of us read blogs via RSS feeds. That makes it easier to aggregate content but more of a hassle to leave comments and participate. I’m sometimes surprised at what topics spur conversation or blog comments. (Of course, on our name change blog at UMR, we had a controversial topic – changing the name of the institution – and that attracted plenty of conversation.) Unless you’re going to write about politics, professional sports or other pursuits that get people riled up, you’re probably not going to get a lot of comments. But if you provide intelligent, thoughtful and interesting posts to the blogosphere, you’re contributing something and participating in a greater conversation. Sometimes the conversation is linking to others talking about the same topic, or related topics. Sometimes we as bloggers tend to obsess on our unique visitor counts or comments and forget that we should be visiting other sites and commenting – not just expecting everyone to come to us. We need to spread it around.

• With your experiences as director of communications at UMR, what suggestions do you have for dealing with adverse blogs?

So far, we’ve been fortunate in that we haven’t had to deal with much adversity from the blogosphere. After we announced our plans to change the university’s name to Missouri University of Science and Technology, we saw a few bloggers (mostly on MySpace) complaining about the move. I did engage a couple of those bloggers in comments just to clarify a couple of items, but most of those blogs were not what I would call influential. They aren’t highly ranked in terms of traffic or links, so it wasn’t worth the effort. We simply monitor such sites through Technorati and stay aware of what people are saying about us in the blogosphere.

Remember to visit Andrew’s blog for his thoughts on everything higher ed marketing and PR, and check out his laundry list of higher education blog links. Tell him Teresa sent you ;).

-- Teresa Valerio Parrot

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friends over at Stein Communications did me a big favor today. I am working with IPFW to help them shift their University Relations and Communications department from being totally focused on print to being focused on communications in the much broader sense…and specifically, on embracing digital media more fully. It struck me that Stein and a lot of other creative firms inside and outside of higher education, have gone through a massive paradigm shift in the last 5-8 years.

Stein was 100% a print-focused firm 5 years ago. But, then they hired Terry Hamrick, who I have dubbed Stein’s “electronic communication evangelist.” Terry spurred massive change at Stein. The organization that was once totally focused on providing print solutions to colleges is now a leader in the interactive world. How did they go about supporting this change? Who did they have to hire? Who did they have to retrain? How did they bring together the wild-haired designers from the “print side” with the geeks from the “Web side?” They explained how they managed this transition to the folks at IPFW today and one of the attendees at IPFW told me he “took four pages of notes.” It strikes me that most colleges are trying to manage a similar transition and organizations like Stein that have already been through it can provide some good advice on how to organize your print organization for a Web world. Hey guys, how about doing a session on this at the AMA. Well, in the meantime, everyone can settle for reading your newsletter.

-- Elizabeth Scarborough

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Does everyone know what WOMMA is? It’s the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and we should all be members. They define word of mouth as “the act of consumers providing information to other consumers,” and they define word of mouth marketing as “giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to take place.”

Most college and university marketers would probably admit that word of mouth is critical to their image and reputation building efforts. Yet, I don’t know of any who have coordinated strategies for stimulating or harnessing word of mouth. That’s why I recruited Andy Sernovitz to speak at the 2007 AMA Symposium in San Diego this November.

Andy is the author of "Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking", former CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and Lecturer at Northwestern University. He’s going to talk about finding the right people to talk about your school (influencers and evangelists), giving them something to talk about (viral email, samples, buzz, and more), creating tools to make it easier for them to talk to each other (blogs, discussions, tell-a-friend forms), participating in the conversation, and tracking and measuring results. Buy his book ahead of time and check out his blog to learn more.

-- Elizabeth Scarborough

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Click here to hear Jeff Young’s podcast interview of Stanford University’s Daniel Colman. Mr. Colman blogs on podcasting efforts and specifically podcasting applications for academia. Although the podcasting applications discussed in the interview are predominantly academic in nature, you might want to hear Mr. Colman’s thoughts on sharing lectures that are community-based and event-based and whether or not podcasting lectures “gives away the store.” The discussion also covers the potential uses of podcasting and the rising prominence of academic podcasts on iTunes.

On Mr. Colman’s blog, be sure to check out his “Podcast Primer” and his listings of academic podcast samples.

-- Teresa Valerio Parrot

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have heard lot of buzz about Second Life and its applications in higher education recently. I have to admit, I was skeptical at first.

Second Life is a virtual world called a metaverse that takes social networking to the next level. Even as a twenty-something young woman who had a front row seat during the meteoric rise of Facebook and MySpace, it was difficult for me to think about Second Life as anything more than entertainment. It was even harder for me to imagine that this platform would ever be embraced by higher education. Nonetheless, I wanted to know more.

In my research, I found that there are endless possibilities for using Second Life in higher education, and there are many colleges and universities who have already taken that step. I spent time on the Second Life site investigating what some schools have done already – and I was impressed. But I remained skeptical that it would have any long term application in higher education. Bottom line - I was intrigued, but not sold on the idea.

Then I had an epiphany in the form of Webkinz. For all of you who, like me, are not currently tackling the role of parenthood, Webkinz are high demand, fancy stuffed animals that come with a code that your child can use to create a virtual version of their pet online. Once logged in, they can dress their pet, decorate their room, and monitor the general health and well being of their new friend.

Why am I telling you about this? How does it apply to Second Life and its future in academia? The answer is simple.

Webkinz is far more than just a computer game, it is a social networking site for very young kids. Once I logged on as Pink the Pig (a loan from Teresa Valerio Parrot’s six-year-old daughter), I was able to interact with other children in a virtual world. As Pink, I was able to talk to other kids and make friends, play games, chat, go to parties, go shopping, and even get a job. I realized that Webkinz, and other sites like it, are the reason why Second Life may well become an important communications tool.

Kids are introduced to technology at an increasingly young age, and it will have a profound impact on their lives and their expectations for both entertainment and information. This trend will only continue to grow and become more influential, and the higher education community needs to take notice. In less than a decade, Pink’s owner and other Webkinz veterans will be the target demographic for our institutions—what format and message will they expect from us? We need to start thinking about this now.

Virtual worlds for kids and teens are exploding. Here are some examples to look at, keeping their marketing potential in mind:
• www.millsberry.com
• www.zwinky.com
• www.clubpenguin.com
• www.gaiaonline.com
• www.teen.secondlife.com
• www.habbo.com

Examples of metaverse applications in higher education:
• Virtual classrooms – EDTECH article about virtual classrooms
• Vassar College – Karine Joly writes about a tour of Vassar’s virtual campus
• Australian Universities in Second Life - Sardionerak reports on three Australian virtual campuses (definitely read about University of Southern Queensland)

Other links for information on Second Life in higher education:
• Second Life Education Wiki
• Second Life Educators Forum
• Campus: Second Life Wiki
• Second Life in Higher Education (Wiki maintained by Beth Ritter-Guth at Lehigh Carbon Community College)

-- Meredith Simpson

Posted by Meredith Simpson at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)