Archive for May, 2009

UPDATE: Tony Dunn has just announced that he decided to put his blog, TFRL, to sleep after 2 people had complained about it to his CIO. That’s a very sad day for the higher ed blogosphere and the higher ed web community. The blog is still nominated for the award, so feel free to vote for it.

Tales from Redesignland: RIP TFRL

As you’ve probably heard (or read in my previous post), the eduStyle awards include a people’s choice award for the best higher ed blog this year.

As a partner for this category and a fervent supporter of higher ed blogging, I’ve decided to publish a series of interviews with the 5 nominees for this award. My goal for these interviews was to provide a good and fair introduction to all these blogs — and help you cast your vote. So, don’t forget to vote by June 1st and let the most popular blog win!

Blog title: Tales from Redesignland
First blog post: Welcome to Redesignland
Number of posts since you started: 57
Total number of RSS/email subscribers: Unknown
Number of unique visitors in last 12 months: Unknown

Authored by Tony Dunn, Tales From Redesignland is a very different higher ed blog – a cartoon chronicling the road to web redesign happiness in the land of committees.

1) Why did you start your blog?

I originally started my blog in December 2007 as a way to explain and document the redesign process at our university in a humorous format, but it quickly became a place for me to express some of the strange and occasionally frustrating things I’ve experienced as a higher ed web worker.

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

Well, it’s a cartoon, so there’s that. Also, I think that it expresses – in a humorous way – some of the frustrations and craziness that all higher ed web workers experience during the course of their jobs. It isn’t a blog about how to do your job better, or about best practices or trends in the industry; it’s about what the lives of web workers in higher ed are like and the stranger-than-fiction realities of our jobs.

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

The most popular posts comment-wise are “The Home Page Redesign Committee Meeting” and “You Think I’m Kidding”, which I think express people’s frustrations with committees. As to a favorite post, it’s hard to pick since I’ve lived them all, but as far as recent posts, I particularly like “If Star Trek Was Like Us.”

As you’ve probably heard (or read in my previous post), the eduStyle awards include a people’s choice award for the best higher ed blog this year.

As a partner for this category and a fervent supporter of higher ed blogging, I’ve decided to publish a series of interviews with the 5 nominees for this award. My goal for these interviews was to provide a good and fair introduction to all these blogs — and help you cast your vote. So, don’t forget to vote by June 1st and let the most popular blog win!

Blog title: SquaredPeg.com
First blog post: “Welcome to SquaredPeg”
Number of posts since you started: 210
Total number of RSS/email subscribers: 835
Number of unique visitors in last 12 months: 73,627 absolute unique visitors

Authored by Brad Ward, SquaredPeg is the blog that uncovered the so-called Facebook Gate in December 2008.

1) Why did you start your blog?

SquaredPeg.com was started in September 2007. It was originally intended to be a team blog between myself and three co-workers at Butler University in the Office of Admission. I eventually took over the blog on a personal level and continued to grow it from there. We wanted to have a platform to share our thoughts and connect with others, as well as showcase the cool things we were doing with technology and new media in admissions marketing and recruitment. I have been blogging in some form for about 7 years now, so it was natural to start a new blog dedicated to my work and professional career.

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

Practical advice from someone who doesn’t just talk about the tools or possibilities, but has actually done it in higher ed. I’ve tried to focus posts on projects where these tools have been implemented and the successes or failures of that implementation. I hope that my blog provides practical advice, insight and encouragement to others who are trying to figure out or implement new media and the social web into their strategy. There are a ton of blogs out there that talk about the social web and new media, but they often don’t even use the tools themselves or have any experience with the practical application or strategy of it. I hope my experience and knowledge helps SquaredPeg stand out from others in the blogosphere.

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

‘FacebookGate’ is definitely the most popular. There were about 55,000 views in the 5 days after that was posted. It had about 275 comments. Other than that, there are several posts with more than 20 comments and other posts with 1,000+ views. My favorite post is from when I celebrated 200 posts a few months back. It was a lot of fun to go back and see how far SquaredPeg has come!

As you’ve probably heard (or read in my previous post), the eduStyle awards include a people’s choice award for the best higher ed blog this year.

As a partner for this category and a fervent supporter of higher ed blogging, I’ve decided to publish a series of interviews with the 5 nominees for this award. My goal for these interviews was to provide a good and fair introduction to all these blogs — and help you cast your vote. So, don’t forget to vote by June 1st and let the most popular blog win!

Blog title: .eduGuru
First blog post: “Look, Ma. I’m a Blogger”
Number of posts since you started: 267
Total number of RSS/email subscribers: 960
Number of unique visitors in last 12 months: 65K

Launched by Kyle James – who left higher education to work for the inbound marketing agency HubSpot last January, .eduGuru is authored by a group of six bloggers: Kyle James, Karlyn Morissette, Rachel Reuben, Nick DeNardis, Nikki Massaro Kauffman and Michael Fienen.

The interview was done by Kyle James. Karlyn Morissette – also nominated for her personal blog – chose to answer my questions for both blogs. Her interview follows Kyle’s.

1) Why did you start your blog?

I started the blog as a way to network and share my experience working in an institution. There were some key areas in Higher Education web that I felt like nobody was talking about and were very important. Mostly Web Analytics, SEO, and Social Media (although Social Media has become the hot subject lately).

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

What makes .eduGuru so special is the community of writers. We have six strong writers and absolute experts in the industry writing on this one platform. It’s a respected group and we are all each a little different and have different expertise. It is a great collection of bright individuals who are all passionate about what they do and in the community and I think that comes through extremely well in each individuals posts.

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

It is hard to really label a favorite post. Not all the posts were written by myself and each of the over 250 posts has had a special reason for being written. I put together a top ten posts of 2008 the beginning of the which highlighted a lot of the most visited and best performing posts over the first year. If you really had to single out a single post though i think it would have to be Rachel’s The Use of Social Media in Higher Education for Marketing and Communications, a post that has been passed around the web and even received a link on Mashable.

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Blog titles: KarlynMorissette.com and .eduGuru
First blog posts: “Re-introducing myself” and “New Standards for Email Subject Lines”
Number of posts since you started: 234 posts on KarlynMorissette.com – I’ve done 20 posts individually on .eduGuru
Total number of RSS/email subscribers and Number of unique visitors in last 12 months:
None of anyone’s effing business :-) (Seriously though, I don’t give out traffic stats for my blog. Those shouldn’t matter to people as long as the ideas are valuable)

Karlyn Morissette blogs at .eduGuru, but also on her personal blog, KarlynMorisette.com. Both blogs were nominated for this award.

1) Why did you start your blog?

Well, I’m nominated as a part of two blogs in this category so I hope you’ll excuse the longness of my answers, so I can address both :-)

I started (or I should say re-started) KarlynMorissette.com in January 2008. I had previously blogged about using the web to recruit students in 2006-2007. To my utter shock, people actually started reading it! Fast forward about several months later and I was presenting a conferences and getting more attention outside of the institution I was working at and I ended up experiencing what many higher ed bloggers who work for institutions experience – backlash from the people I work with. To make a long story short, I was given the ultimatum that I had to clear every post on the blog with my higher ups to continue it. Those of you who know me or have read me for a while probably realize that just didn’t sit well with me, so I had a few cocktails one night and deleted the blog altogether. A few weeks later, I quit the job entirely and moved on to another school.

The original experience with professional blogging scared me away from the medium for a bit. I moved on to a different job and laid low for a few months, but, since I’ve been a blogger in one form or another for about ten years, my return to blogging was probably inevitable. I originally viewed the blog as a continuation of what I had previously started, and kicked myself for deleting the previous blog before saving the posts from it! I keep coming back to blogging because I genuinely love what I do, and I love writing about it and sharing my passion for it with others.

I got involved with .eduGuru this past summer. Kyle and I had been talking a lot and he was looking to expand .eduGuru to make it a multi-author site. I loved the idea and immediately wanted to become involved with it because I felt that it could be a great resource for higher ed web people. I looked at it as a different sort of publication than KarlynMorissette.com, particularly because it was going to include multiple people from different backgrounds. I loved the idea of working either others, because ultimately I think that delivers a better final product. Plus being involved with two blogs just took my obsession and belief in the medium to another level :-)

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

For KarlynMorissette.com, the biggest differentiator definitely is the fact that I address a lot of things that I think are problems with higher education. I love this industry, but there are just a lot of things that do not make sense and I feel like addressing the problems in a forthright manner is the only way they are ever going to be solved.

For .eduGuru, the biggest differentiator is the format – six different authors who come from very different points-of-view and experiences. It’s not just marketing, or just social media, or just development, or just SEO and analytics – there truly is something for everyone on it.

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

Tough question. On KarlynMorissette.com, definitely the most popular post was the Higher Ed Twitter List, which I swear one of these days I’m going to go back and update! The live-blogging posts from conferences are always popular too (especially my posts from An Event Apart, since Jeffrey Zeldman posted them on his website). I don’t have a favorite post, but I’ll give you my top 3 of the moment:
-A Twitter Discussion on Higher Ed Consultants
-Organizations Don’t Like Experts
-Back to Basics: An Email Marketing Framework

On .eduGuru, my most popular post was one I did comparing the Obama and McCain emails. My favorite post on there of the moment is the one I called Making A Case for Twitter, since I’m on a Twitter-kick :-)

As you’ve probably heard (or read in my previous post), the eduStyle awards include a people’s choice award for the best higher ed blog this year.

As a partner for this category and a fervent supporter of higher ed blogging, I’ve decided to publish a series of interviews with the 5 nominees for this award. My goal for these interviews was to provide a good and fair introduction to all these blogs — and help you cast your vote. So, don’t forget to vote by June 1st and let the most popular blog win!

Blog title: mStonerblog
First blog post: “Academic blogs” – June 13, 2003
Number of posts since you started: 569
Total number of RSS/email subscribers: >1,000 (we don’t track this systematically)
Number of unique visitors in last 12 months: not available due to a recent change in platform

Authored by Michael Stoner and his team from his firm mStoner, mStonerblog has been around for a long, long time – that is in blogging time. Actually, this is the only nominated blog that was started before collegewebeditor.com.

1) Why did you start your blog?

We launched on 13 June 2003. We were one of the first, if not the first, blogs focusing on education marketing, communications, PR, technology, admissions and advancement, and related issues–and I believe we were the first communications consulting firm for .edu that was blogging.

We launched initially because it was a powerful and distinctive way of furthering our mission of sharing knowledge and building awareness, which has always been important to me. While the blog was very much intended to be a collective statement from all the members of mStoner’s staff, I’ve written most of the posts over the years. My wonderful, opinionated colleagues are generally more engaged in client work than I am and have less time to write up their thoughts and observations for the blog. This has begun to change lately–we’re all focusing on the value of sharing our knowlege and insights with others and the blog is the best place to do it. When we launched, blogging was less about building a community around your blog and more about sharing your viewpoint; now we’re trying to do more to invite comments and broader engagement.

We haven’t made a concerted effort to build an audience for our blog or to track accesses. But I know that it’s effective: every time I visit a prospective client, I hear people talking about it and I can see accesses via Google Analytics.

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

It’s hard to pick a single differentiator, though I would say that mStonerblog is more authoritative, longer-lived, credible, and has more breadth than most other blogs. Not that there aren’t other great blogs out there (I follow all the nominees and think they’re terrific!), but we do have a first-mover advantage. Here are more thoughts about this:

Authoritative: What we share on our blog is grounded in our experience working on many different aspects of strategy, design, and implementation with many different clients in education (schools, colleges, universities, graduate and professional schools). We have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t; where the sticking points are; what organizations are capable of and what they’re not capable of.

Longevity: We’ve been doing this for a long time, so we have a unique sense of perspective. We’ve seen technology come and go, which leads us to further emphasize strategy over specific technology or solution.

Credibility: Our experience plus the longevity of our practice means that we’re highly credible. People at all different levels in institutions can get something from our blog. I’ve had presidents, VPs, and deans engage with me about posts I’ve written. More junior staff members use our posts to help build a case with their bosses for something they want to do.

Breadth: We’ve worked on many different kinds of problems (admissions, fundraising, advancement, alumni, etc.)

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

Most popular posts this year were a post I did about how reporter Shay Totten used Twitter to report on the Vermont Legislature’s debates about civil marriage and “Lessons for Advancement from Obama for America”.

My single favorite post was “Just Call them visitors”.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released, in March 2009, a typology of tech users incorporating attitudes towards the mobile web (which was an addition compared to their previous typology I wrote about in May 2007) in a report titled “The Mobile Difference.”

Two days ago was released an online quiz composed of 14 questions to help you place yourself in one of these categories in the Pew Internet Project’s Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users

I filled out the survey and got the verdict the Pew’s verdict: I’m a Digital Collaborator – and part of a minority group – only 8% of the population.

If you are a Digital Collaborator, you use information technology to work with and share your creations with others. You are enthusiastic about how ICTs help you connect with others and confident in how to manage digital devices and information. For you, the digital commons can be a camp, a lab, or a theater group – places to gather with others to develop something new.

I bet many readers of this blog are probably digital collaborators as well.

Let’s try to find out!
Please take the quiz and post YOUR resulting type in a comment.

The 2009 eduWeb Conference will take place from July 20 to July 22 in Chicago, IL. Shelley Wetzel, the eduWeb conference founder and director, accepted to answer a few questions about this year’s conference (as she did in 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005 – it’s a tradition.

1) Last year was the third edition of EduWeb, so how did it go?

Atlantic City provided a new venue for our largest conference yet. Attendees from around the US and the world brought a unique prospective to the growing conference. We have worked really hard this year to incorporate feedback from our attendees to make the 2009 conference even better in Chicago!

2) What would you tell people who haven’t registered yet to convince them to come?

Every day the web landscape changes for colleges and universities. In 2009, education was drastically impacted by the recession, a shift in demographics and the changing nature of constituents with regards to the web. As institutions look to trim budgets while still implementing new and dynamic web presences, they will turn to the web/marketing teams for solutions. The 09 conference is focused on these topics and will provide attendees a chance to “compare notes” among their peers and colleagues in the industry about their struggles, strategies and successes to solve this complex problem. The combined knowledge of schools and vendors from around the world will culminate in a unique and productive discussion this year!

eduWEB Conference

3) Once again, the conference program is packed with lots of presentations. If somebody can only attend 3 of these events, what should they be and why? In other words, what are your favorites?

Of course our keynote speakers are tops on our list but beyond that we would recommend:

• Matt Herzberger of Florida International University session titled “Social media – your asset management toolbox.” We feel social media is dominant conversation on college campuses today. How institutions manage and utilize these will be critical in their success.
• Dana Edwards of Simpson Scarborough session titled “Measuring the ROI of Integrated Marketing and Branding Initiatives.” As institutions are faced with dwindling budgets, EVERY department will be faced with growing accountability. Examining ROI is a challenge for most institutions and this session will provide helpful information.
• Katherine Lynch of Drexel University session titled “For All: Accessibility Standards for the New Web.” Schools often adopt and update their web pages with little regard to accessibility. While the legal challenges have been small, web 2.0 is pushing the envelope with regards to this topic.

If you plan to go, don’t forget to register by June 1st June 8 to get the early bird rate of $550.
You can register online.

Even though I’m hosting “Writing Right for the Web” webinars this week, I’m working behind the scenes on the research for an upcoming University Business column about the mobile Web and other cell phone based initiatives.

Thanks to a Twitter tip from @gilzow, I stumbled yesterday on the announcement of the MU iPhone Student Competition Winners, a contest organized by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri.

Launched in September 2008, this contest prompted journalism and engineering majors to create iPhone applications with a real-life purpose.

There were 2 winners for this competition: one picked by judges including ATT and Apple representatives and one picked by the people.

Both winning applications have a geolocation-based component, taping into one of the neat features of the iPhone: its GPS.

• Near Buy - the pick of the judges – is targeted to the real estate market (I’m not sure though what’s the journalism connection here). It allows iPhone owners to find home/apartment listings close to their current location – using Google’s big database. Real Estate agents can enhance their listings by including photos and get an idea of the performance of these listings by using the professional edition of the iPhone app.
• News Flash – the People’s choice – offers a local newspaper experience that can be entirely customized to the interest, needs and current location of the iPhone owner. It includes news from local sources, but also national and international news outlets.

What I found interesting in these applications is the fact they are trying to solve real problems and fill customer needs – which is always better ;-)

Apple recently celebrated its first billion of downloaded apps (a lot of apps are free, the others usually cost a buck or two), which shows there’s definitely something behind these little applications.

While many college students have developed very successful applications (including iStanford and the Duke iPhone Suite for example – both developed by the same team), most higher ed institutions seem to ignore these type of projects despite the marketing possibilities offered by these applications and other initiatives using the ubiquitous cell phones.

Is it too early?
Is it too complex?
Are the higher ed web and marketing professionals too busy getting social on Facebook, Twitter and the likes?

Why don’t we talk more about the mobile Web and its possibilities for our field? Please tell us what you think (or prove me wrong by sharing great initiatives) by posting a comment.

You’ve probably heard about the eduStyle awards. There has been a lot of buzz around these awards organized by eduStyle.

Well, now is the time for you to vote and choose the people’s choice awards in different categories including the two in partnership with this blog and yours truly.

So, without further ado, here are the nominees in these 2 blog categories:

For the Collegewebeditor.com Best School Sponsored Blog Award (including blogs submitted in the student and institutional blog categories – Cast your vote!):

Biola University – Biola Blogs

Cornell University – Lab of Ornithology – Round Robin Redesign Blog

Imperial College London – Student blogs

For the Collegewebeditor.com Best Higher Ed Blog Award (Cast your vote!):

.eduGuru

Karlyn Morissette

mStonerblog

SquaredPeg.com

Tales From Redesignland