Yesterday, Bob Johnson gave the keynote speech at the EduWeb Conference in Baltimore: “Marketing and the Web: Trends and Tribulations in Communication.â€
Christian Burk, Manager of Creighton University undergraduate admissions website, is one of the six very nice people who agreed to share their notes with all of us who couldn’t attend the EduWeb conference this year. This is Christian’s first scheduled post.
I’ve reorganized Bob Johnson’s points into the following order. While this is not how an attendee would have experienced the presentation, this perhaps shows the general flow of the argument, however it may have been presented.
The big points:
- There is no controlling the message (you can’t stop signal [for you Serenity fans])
- We need to use Web 2.0 to add to the message (content) that’s already out there (the good, the bad and the ugly)
- All skate – Everyone at the university or college can add content and add to the message
1. There is no controlling the message
The reason there’s no controlling: Web 2.0
Examples . . .
Wikipedia – when people want to find out about your institution and type in the name, Wikipedia’s entry will likely be in the top 5 results. Moreover, those searching are more likely to check out the Wikipedia page because
it’s a third party
they recognize the source (Wikipedia is in the top 10 sites in the country, after all)
they’ll get the real story, though it might not be pretty. For instance, the Michigan State University Student Riot,
there is a lot of content, all of it written without that familiar ring of marketing copy. The content is what Gerry McGovern has called “useful but ugly.”
YouTube
YouTube usage is growing much faster than any other social networking site. The videos posted are mostly not authorized, or vetted by public relations, for instance, the 2007 tuition protest at the University of Toronto: http://youtube.com/watch?v=f_SoosE0pjc. Any search for your university will bring up the videos that people have posted about you on YouTube. You’ll be surprised not only by what’s there but by what is popular based on views, favorites and ratings (little market research there on what people like to see about your institution]).
2. We need to use Web 2.0 to add to the message that’s already out there
Examples . . .
Blogs
Universities should have students blogging in an unmoderated environment. The challenge is in finding the right students. Once you have them, trust them and let them go. MIT’s Admissions site prominently features its bloggers.
About 15 college presidents blog, too, which means they’re saying things PR doesn’t really want. But many more people would read the president’s blog compared to a “message from the president.”
Blogs, in fact, could replace some websites. The Santa Clara Law School has 18 blogs running.
Texas A & M System is using blogs to post press releases.
The University of Chicago has a blog that accompanies their online alumni magazine.
The University of Toronto Faculty of Law also keep up a blog of controversial topics in the news or before the court.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia proves that people care more about the information than the design of the pages, which are all busy with links, crowded and full of information. (Because of the importance of good content, Ball State has half their web team working on design and the other half working on content, as opposed to the one person it usually is.) Because Wikipedia is open to anyone for editing, we can also edit our own university’s entries in it.
Wikis
Wikis in general can be useful for creating content.
Check out Duke’s Wiki that “anyone can edit” or Case Western Reserve’s Wiki.
Wikis generally have discussions (debates, really) about the articles posted, which gives them a reality missing from traditional marketing materials.
YouTube
Virginia Tech created a contest on YouTube to have students create videos that Virginia Tech could then use on their site. They offered prizes and used YouTube as the forum for the contest. This kind of activity can build content for the site.
University of Toronto posted videos building cars for a contest they have won three times in the past.
Cost Calculators [are these Web 2.0?]
This is one of the most asked for features on college websites. Here are a couple:
The University of New Jersey and the University of Toledo.
Social Networking
University of Manitoba’s Virtual Learning Commons allows you to seek out information ranging from dating to accounting, .
Drury University in Missouri has created its own MySpace page. It already has lots of friends.
3. All skate – Everyone at the university or college can add content and add to the message
Web 2.0 is based on interaction. This means that anyone and everyone at the institution can participate, as represented in many of the above examples. In order to do so, though, it may take some training, some guidelines, like those that Duke created for Duiki.com. Right now, not enough people at institutions have in their job description the adding to the content to the Web, whether the university’s page or those many pages that refer to the university.
Karlyn Morissette, interactive recruitment manager at Norwich University, also provides her take about Bob Johnson’s keynote at Interactive Recruiting.