Something big is happening.
In several higher ed institutions across the country, some PR and News professionals have started to embrace the conversational age by launching real news blog inviting feedback from readers by publishing – moderated – comments
In the past couple of weeks only, 3 new initiatives were launched in different institutions:
- News & Events Blog at Colgate University.
- Live Wire Blog at the University of Missouri-Columbia (via Andrew’s blog)
- UMassOnline Blog from the distance learning division of the University of Massachusetts
While these blogs aren’t the first ones launched by institutions to invite comments (Visions: UMR Research & Name Change Conversations at UMR/STM or The Tiger Beat at RIT among others have been open for comments for a while now), they indicate that more and more institutions understand the end of the controlled message introduced by Web 2.0.
Last week, I asked Tim O’Keeffe, director of web content at Colgate University, a few questions about the blog his institution launched earlier this month.
1) Colgate has decided to do something bold by opening comments on this institutional news blog. Why did you decide to go this way? How did you manage to convince people to take the risk?
We think this is a powerful way to engage anyone and everyone with an interest in Colgate. The comment feature is yet another tool for building relationships that we hope leads to a sense of community around our stories and, ultimately, around the university. We talk about social networking all the time in higher ed, and I think this is a type of networking that can create valuable connections for us. Our vice president for communications and public relations, Charlie Melichar, discussed the blog with other members of the campus leadership and was able to address any concerns.
2) After reading your disclaimer above the comment online form, it looks like you moderate comments before they are published on the blog. Can you please tell us how you would make the decision to publish or not a comment while nurturing conversations and respecting freedom of speech?
We are moderating the comments. I felt the guidelines we included are general enough as to not discourage anyone who is looking to further a discussion, while hopefully dissuading anyone from thinking this is a private forum. The e-mail notification tool that Movable Type provides will help us publish comments quickly, but also provide us a chance to at least be aware of what’s being said before making it live. We’ll see how it goes, and we’ll consider adjustments down the road.
3) A blogging platform is a great tool to automate search engine optimization work. Will you change the way you write the titles of your news stories – i.e. trying to include important keyword – as a result?
I’m really excited about the tagging and keyword functionality of the blog. There are dedicated fields for tags and for keywords, and we think about which words will work best for each story we post. There is great potential there to expand the reach of our stories and better publicize the great work our faculty members and students are doing here. Combining the tagging feature of the blog with the tagging feature of flickr, where we post our photos, will give us a strong presence in the blogosphere and elsewhere.
4) Do you plan to promote your blog to the blogosphere at large?
We posted a story about the blog on our homepage and we’re looking at other ways to promote this. There are very few schools, a handful at best, that are allowing comments on their stories. It’s something Charlie and I have discussed for a while and a topic we’ve raised at various conferences. I’m excited to see where this will go. We’ve been big proponents of blogs here at Colgate for a number of years, through our ‘gatelife student blog and student-athlete blogs, so now it’s our turn.