I met Jeff Kraus, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Public Relations at the Virginia Community College System, last June at the conference his organization held for Web and PR folks working in VA community colleges. I was invited to present at this conference by Susan Hayden, a regular reader. At that time, I spoke about Web 2.0, blogs and social networking websites (Check out the presentation slides in PDF). Two months ago, Jeff and his team launched a blog of their own, VA Higher Ed (while I did some minor consulting work on another VCCS internal blog, I haven’t had any part in VA Higher Ed). Today, they are still blogging and this blog is getting better and better.
1) You and your team started to blog at “VA Higher Ed” a couple of months ago. Why did you start this blog? What are its goals and its audience(s)?
We are breaking new ground with this blog, especially from the perspective of the Virginia Community College System. The blog is big piece of a larger effort we have made to update and improve our website.
We serve 240,000 students and our workforce services train an additional 190,000 people each year. Those record-setting figures are driven by students between the ages of 17 and 21. Knowing that, we have to respond to it and find ways to get on the radar screens of people in that age bracket. They don’t necessarily read the newspaper. They don’t necessarily listen to local radio stations. They don’t necessarily watch local network television. But, study after study shows they are on-line. They are participating in social networking opportunities and they are posting and/or reading on blogs.
From becoming a race car driver to a video game designer to having a guaranteed way to transfer to the four-year college or university of their choice – the VCCS has a lot to offer these folks. And, the blog is one way to reach them.
The blog is also meeting some of our communication needs within our system. As the focal point of legislative relation efforts, our system needed a way to more rapidly relay information during the legislative session and receive feedback on it. The VCCS had previously done that through a weekly email.
Our efforts face some internal skepticism. Some question the value of a blog as part of a larger communications effort. So we have to show them that it can be more than a partisan politics food fight or a virtual dark alley where people anonymously throw daggers at each other – a perception that some non-bloggers have about the blogosphere as a whole.
2) This blog is written by a team. Why did you choose to do it this way?
As a blog reader, I know that it’s rare to have a team of people driving a blog. But I am a fan of two team-written blogs, unrelated to higher education, and I’ve really enjoyed the dynamic they create as a group. We are lucky to have interesting people who each have a unique set of experiences, focus and voice. We are still new and learning – and probably always will be with this – and I hope to offer readers something special through the synergy of these folks.
3) You worked as a journalist before joining VCCS. In your opinion, what’s the main difference between a news report and a blog post?
The biggest difference between reporting and blogging is that I now pursue an agenda. That’s something I purposefully didn’t do as a reporter. I believe in the transformative power of higher education and I believe our community colleges are an essential part of the success we seek for our communities and the individuals who live there. This blog gives us a way to promote that – to really illustrate to people how we see the dots connecting between our colleges and their future success.
