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”.
