By way of introduction, this blog has been created in the wake of attending the EduWeb Conference in Baltimore. It was the first conference I have attended where I met my professional peers, and I came away with this amazing, empowering since of community. “Oh my,” I thought “there are others afloat in the strange sea of higher-ed web.” Staying up until 2:00am critiquing college websites, discussing the efficacy of student blogs for recruitment, and ordering decadent chocolate via roomservice, I was struck with this amazing and re-orienting sense of excitement. Part conversion experience, part lack of sleep, and more than a little influenced by the nightcap Guinness—I was a marketer! Now to figure out what that means…

Some take-away bites from the conference:

You have to take your media to your market—when and where they want it.
Students will not receive your message unless they do it on their time. Broadcast media used to set the schedule and the market had to adhere to the media. In the age of Tivos and Podcasts, the opposite is true. Now it is the media that must adhere to the market.

Today’s youth value word of mouth and peer opinion highest, and their circle of peers has expanded to include social networks and websites that rely on user-generated content. Whether or not you’ve thought of making use of these resources, your institution is likely already represented there.

Content is king.
The media is not the message. Just because video is up-and-coming doesn’t mean you should throw just any video on your site. Teenagers still value content (relevance, authenticity, and quality) above the form of presentation. In fact, with so much exposure to the best media available, today’s teens are likely to be much more critical and difficult to wow.

People go online for two reasons: to ask a question or complete a task.
How does your website help your customers answer their questions? How does your website allow them to complete a task? How can you make these opportunities for educating the customer about your brand?

Brand awareness occurs on an emotional, sensual, visceral level.
Use emotion and the five senses to convey your brand most effectively. Make sure images contain people. Brick facades, columns, and bell towers are empty vehicles for a brand.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Higher Education, Marketing. It has been viewed 964 times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

From ‘A Softer World’

There is an argument made against privacy that says someone who isn’t engaged in criminal behavior has nothing to hide. This method of thinking allowed the US government to slowly sap away our civil liberties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks–many have just accepted that trading privacy for security is acceptable and used the “nothing to hide” argument to rationalize what was, essentially, a decision based on fear. However, limiting the government’s ability to intrude in our private lives is easy compared with attempting to control how personal information spreads on the internet via gossip. Rather than spies or wiretaps, gossip is often gathered by those we trust and spread online by people who don’t understand or appreciate the potential for the damage it can do. In reality, privacy is about much more than concealing wrongdoing.

Internet-based abuse (‘cyberbullying’) and privacy / relationship issues are still massively misunderstood. The complexities of online sociality are probably the biggest ‘generational divide’ between modern teens and adults. To help put it in perspective a bit, here are some numbers…

I HAVE A MYSPACE ACCOUNT!!1!