Big Ideas?

My second UB column for 2009 is now available in the February issue as well as online (featured on the homepage of University Business today): “More with Less: 7 Ways to Survive the Budget Crunch”

Here are the 7 ways/tips in a condensed form:

1. Look more closely at your print publication budget
2. Embrace (free) social media to reach your target audiences
3. Try new performance-based advertising channels
4. Fine-tune email marketing initiatives to supercharge their ROI
5. Say “good bye” to new web servers and “hello” to on-demand cloud computing
6. Don’t discard the DIY approach
7. Watch out for team morale by focusing on budget-friendly professional development alternatives including next week’s 2-webinar series “Saving Big” for which you can still register until this Friday

By the way, if you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.

I’ll be hosting a 2-webinar series for Higher Ed Experts about this topic early next month presented by Joe Hice, AVP at the University of Florida and Rachel Reuben, Director of Web Communications at SUNY – New Paltz:

Saving Big: Winning strategies to get better results even with a crunched budget: February 4 & 5, 2009

“Saving Big” is a 2-webinar series that will show you how embracing the right digital approach can help you dramatically cut costs while still meeting the needs of your target audiences. It will show you why and how social media can become a very budget-friendly asset in the battle to attract, engage and win over the brightest, but also why and how to save on any publication budgets without alienating readers and compromising editorial quality.

February 4, 2009 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: February 11, 2009 1PM-2PM ET
Recruiting on a budget 101: Master plan to win the social media jackpot with prospective students
Rachel Reuben, Director of Web Communication and Strategic Projects at SUNY New Paltz, will explain how to make the most of social media to upgrade your recruitment strategy and differentiate your institution. She will also share a road map to help your admissions office catch up with the latest recruiting techniques at a fraction of the more traditional approach’s cost.

February 5, 2009 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: February 12, 2009 1PM-2PM ET
Taming the print beast: How to stretch the publication dollars of your institution
Joe Hice, AVP for Marketing and Public Relations at the University of Florida, will help you understand why you should give a closer look at your publication budget in these tough economic times. He will also share the winning strategy (as well as some practical tips) that led UF to save more than a million dollars on its publication budget.

I’m looking for some extra practical examples to flesh out the planned Q&A of both webinars.

Please share – by posting a comment – something you’ve implemented in the past few months to save money while making the most of your marketing and communications initiatives.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now:

How can we manage to keep up with all the amazing content and interesting conversations taking place in so many higher ed websites and blogs?

I tried the catch-up-date post a few weeks ago on this blog, but realized quickly they were also drawn in the sea of published content.

So, then I thought about email (maybe because I was promoting the Email Marketing 360 webinar series starting tomorrow)

Why not try to compile the best of the content published on all the sites we wish we could visit more often in a short right-to-the-point email newsletter sent every week or so?

The results of the survey we ran a month or so ago showed me it was worth trying (80% of the 540 respondents indicated they would be interested in receiving updates every other week), so I did and sent this morning – to the registered HEE members only – the first issue of this new email newsletter compiling:

• the latest higher ed jobs from www.higheredexperts.com/work,
• upcoming events and conferences pulled from the higher ed calendar I maintained on this blog,
• the 5 most engaging discussions on the uwebd Ning website,
• the 5 must-read posts from the higher ed blogosphere,
• the latest video website reviews from educheckup.com
• the 5 most popular websites at the edustyle gallery for the past 7 days

Want to check out the first issue sent this morning?
Here it is:

[higheredexperts.com] All the higher ed content that matters

If you’re a registered HEE members, you should have received it. If you’re not, but want to give this newsletter a try, you can just subscribe to it by filling out the form below:

Mark Greenfield, the driving force of the Uwebd social networking website, Stewart Foss, the owner of eduStyle and myself (I’m the Higher Ed Experts/Collegewebeditor.com person) have been working on a very special community initiative.

Instead of polling our respective members in our own little corners of the Web, we agreed to launch a grouped survey to find out what makes the higher ed web and communication community ticks and how our respective websites can better serve this group.

This survey has about 25 questions (but depending on your situation, it might even be shorter). If you fill it out and provide us with your email address, you’ll get a chance to win one of the 6 cool prizes that will be drawn on October 16, 2008:

1. a free pass (a $300 value) to the 3-webinar series scheduled on October 21-23: “PR School 2.0: How to survive and thrive in the new online world of Public Relations and Communications”
2. a free pass (a $300 value) to the 3-webinar series scheduled on November 11-13: “Social Networks MBA: How to develop and nurture a thriving community online”
3. a free pass (a $240 value) to the 2-webinar series scheduled on December 2-3: “Email Marketing 360″
4. a 1GB (Product) RED iPod Shuffle courtesy of eduStyle (a $49 value)
5. 2 Amazon $50 gift certificates courtesy of Collegewebeditor.com.

This survey will be open until October 16, but you never know what can happen, so go take it now at tinyurl.com/higheredsurvey!

No, it’s not another episode of the famous kid show Blue’s Clues, but it could be.

Butler Blue 2 is the official and furry mascot of Butler University (as all you sports fans probably know)

According to Blue’s blog (yeah, I know, dog blogs aren’t that common, but this puppy even got a greater-than-life statue on campus and his own YouTube channel), the mascot costumes used during games have been missing (or should I say stolen?)

With the help of his personal videographer/videoeditor, Brad Ward, this smart bulldog has decided to use the power of social media to find the costumes with this 5-minute video (already viewed 203 times as I’m writing this post).

I found the video a bit too long, but it could be because I’m not a bulldog-person.

However, I really like the whole idea behind this video. It’s funny, engaging and based on a true story.

There could be a whole series behind this whodunnit story. Since Blue will be replacing his missing sidekicks at the games until the costumes are back one way or another, some folks might wonder who’s benefiting from this crime.

Any idea, Blue?

UPDATE: Phlash, UWGB’s own Mascot has decided to help Blue as shown in this video:

I’ve taken some time this afternoon to set up something that is going to simplify your life if you’re actively looking for a new position in higher ed or just want to make sure you won’t miss your dream job one day.

As you might know, I launched in early July a free job board, www.higheredexperts.com/work, just for you (well, thousands of you, my dear readers, but still for you ;-)

This is a free service I wanted to provide to the higher ed community as it has given me so much over the past few years.

Since things have started to pick up with a few ads posted every week or so, I think it’s time to promote it more widely to job seekers, which is why I’ve been doing some tinkering this afternoon to offer several ways for you to receive the new job postings depending on your style and needs:

• Want to know about the latest postings within the hour they are posted on the job board?
  Follow @higheredexperts on Twitter. Thanks to twitterfeed (and Brad Ward’s tip), this is totally automated.
• Want to browse all the job listings in your favorite RSS reader?
  Subscribe to the RSS feed powered by Feedburner and you won’t miss a bit.
• You’re more an email-kind of person?
  No problem. You can subscribe to daily (that is only if something has been posted) updates thanks to Feedburner. The email message is usually sent before 9AM ET.
• You just want to be able to see the latest job ads by checking out your favorite blog?
  Well, in this case, there are 2 possibilities, right?
  • THIS blog is your favorite blog.
    Just check out the sidebar on the blog and you’ll see the 5 latest postings
  

  • You are a blogger yourself (which is the only reason why this one wouldn’t be your favorite, right ;-) and you want to check the latest jobs on YOUR blog.
    Just email me at karine@collegewebeditor.com and I’ll share the HTML/Javascript code of the widget powered by Feedburner (did I mention I love Feedburner?) I used on my sidebar.

I hope you’ll find in all these options something that works for you.

Now, can I ask you a favor to help me make the Higher Ed Experts’ job board a success?

Take 2 minutes today to tell your institution’s hiring managers or HR department about it, share its web address: www.higheredexperts.com/work on your favorite email listservs (well, check first that nobody has already done it) or even blog about it.

It’s free to post jobs, and – as you know now – easy to subscribe to receive updates.

Thanks for your help!

That’s a pretty innovative way to deal with the put-me-on-the-homepage syndrome all higher ed web designers have to face when it’s time to redesign a university/college website.

No fighting to find out which links to put there? Just go with what the web users want!
Beautiful, don’t you think so?

The new redesign is available as a preview and will go live on September 15.
OSU web team has invited comments on its redesign blog (as it did back in 2005 – geez, do I sound like the higher ed blogger grand’ma when I say that) from the campus community and some of them are pretty harsh.

The new design requires a lot of scrolling down, which is a different take from what’s out there.

Not sure, if it was the right design decision though, as I didn’t even think about scrolling down and discovered the page was longer only once I took the screen shot.

It’s definitely a big change compared to the current design:

Happy Independence Day to my readers in the US!

If you’re looking for independence, a new job (or a new skilled team member) might be the way to go (I know that’s kind of a lame transition).

It’s been a few months since I decided to work on a better solution than the Higher Ed Experts forum to help the community on the job front.

Well, today I’ve just had the time necessary to complete this project (weird what I would do when I procrastinate on my presentation and webinar scheduling duties ;-) and I need your help to get things started by posting your job ads or by pointing hiring managers in your institution to this new free resource available at www.higheredexperts.com/work.

Post a new job / higheredexperts.com/work

I hope you find this new FREE service helpful.

I’ll be sending an email to the +1,400 members of Higher Ed Experts next week to announce it, so your job postings will be seen by many qualified professionals working in higher education.

What I really love about this application is that you can actually subscribe to the new job postings via RSS.

As regular readers know, I design and schedule several webinar series per year for Higher Ed Experts.

Since it doesn’t make sense to have a series at the same time of a big conference, I keep track of some of the main events held throughout the year by different organizations and associations. And, I do that in a nifty Google Calendar.

This weekend, while I was updating this calendar of higher ed conferences and events, I realized that it would be a great tool for the community at large.

That’s why you can now find the new “Event Calendar” tab on this blog.

You can also access the calendar page directly (let’s say if you’re reading this in your RSS reader).

Last, if you’d like me to add relevant events or conferences to this calendar, just send me a quick note at karine@collegewebeditor.com I’m sure we can make it a useful resource for everybody.

Today, Inside Higher Ed has a great well-researched and well-written piece about a trend that will change the face of IT departments on most campuses in a few years: “When emailed is outsourced.” (Don’t forget to share it with your IT folks!)

In his article, Andy Guess, Mr. Technology at IHE, gives a very good overview of this trend and hints what’s to come with the help of Adrian Sannier, CTO at ASU:

Once colleges get used to the idea of allowing an outside technology firm to handle their e-mail services, there’s no telling what else they’ll be receptive to. Already, “software as a service” has been catching on in the business world and in higher education, as institutions realize that they can more easily (and more cheaply) manage basic functions by using Web-based software that’s hosted externally.

[...]

“I believe that this move by universities toward outsourcing, if you will, their e-mail, that represents the beginning of a sea change, a change in university information technology from … direct provision of services to becoming agents of value-added applications, emerging technologies to the core business of the universities, which they haven’t really been in for a long time,” said Adrian Sannier, the university technology officer at Arizona State University.

Later in the piece, Sannier gives an example of future possible developments in higher ed applications:

One example Sannier cites as a possible future capability is the application of Amazon.com-like profiles to university Web sites. Using students’ stored preferences and previous coursework, for example, a custom-made engine might suggest classes to take and allow users to share their recommendations with others. That idea represents a way to potentially streamline the hassles of the course registration ritual, he suggested.

Interesting.

What about using some of this data to build a delicious-like web based catalog/search of courses, where students could tag and evaluate the courses they take and share this information with their peers? You know, some kind of social course cataloging.

What do you think?