Social Media Marketing for Colleges and Universities

(See http://www.william-garrity.com/blog/2013/1/3/social-media-trends.html for previous post concerning http://www.jeffbullas.com/.) 

Allison Rice writes in http://www.jeffbullas.com/ about how colleges and universities should use social media for marketing. Her lessons -- share your good-news stories promptly, share a variety of things, involve your readers (through commenting, tagging, etc.) -- ring true. 

4 Social Media Marketing Lessons From the Top Colleges 

Harvard University’s official Facebook page currently boasts over 2,437,000 ‘Likes.’ Lest that sound like just another big number, consider that the university has only 22,800 students. Still, of course, Harvard is a widely recognized name.

But so are Reebok, Miller Lite and The Avett Brothers (all of whom are quite popular with college-aged Americans and trail Harvard in Facebook followers).

Not surprisingly, Harvard sits atop a list of the ‘Top 100 Social Media Colleges,’ compiled and maintained by StudentAdvisor.com. After all, Facebook got its start there. They’re joined at the top by other schools like Columbia and Stanford, the University of Kentucky, Louisiana State, and John Hopkins University.

When you consider that most students applying for college today have grown up with a smartphone in their hands, at least throughout their high school years, it makes sense why colleges would be putting such an emphasis upon online social networks. The most recent stats show that two-thirds of prospective students check out their potential schools on their YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook channels during their decision-making process.

But if you’re not a college, and you’re not planning on going back to school, what does that mean for you? As colleges step to the forefront of the social media marketing movement, there are more than a few lessons any blogger, marketer, or small business can draw from their example: 

Story continues at link. 

Marketing in 2013, Part 2

[Continues that posted about at http://www.william-garrity.com/blog/2013/1/11/marketing-in-2013.html --"CREATIVE FORECAST: HOW MARKETING WILL CHANGE IN 2013" ] 

Fast Company's Co.Create -- covering ". . . the converging worlds of branding, entertainment, and tech" -- captures marketers' visions for how marketing will change in 2013. 

HOW MARKETING WILL CHANGE IN 2013: THE STRATEGIC FORECAST 

BY: CO.CREATE STAFF 

www.bing.com, April 2Part two of a two-part series: Brand strategists weigh in on the social, cultural, and media factors that will change marketing this year and beyond. 

In Part One of our 2013 marketing forecast, we asked a number of high-level creative types for their educated predictions on how their jobs and the marketing landscape would change in 2013.
Now, we’re passing the mic to the strategists. These are the people who are said to represent the consumer in the marketing process--they’re the masters of research, the experts in media and culturethat are responsible for generating brand insights and opportunities. As they’re steeped in knowledge of consumer behavior, we wanted to add their big-picture perspective to our look at what the near future of advertising may hold. 

We asked them what were the big shifts in consumer and media trends that would impact marketing and the wider cultural trends feeding these changes. They’ve got a lot on their minds, apparently, so settle in for a long and enlightening read.

Folks interviewed include --

• Lee Maicon, 369i -- we're all data nerds, big data will rule marketing, collective intelligence (search and recommendation algorithms) 
• Jim Stengel, P&G -- people/consumers will want "coherence, impact, joy" 
• Zach Foster, Droga5 -- people want "social validation," to be liked, to share recommendations, to be rewarded for improving themselves and the world around them 
• Tom Naughton, Droga 5 -- consumers will punish companies that don't respect people's privacy 
• Jonah Bloom, Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners -- brands have the opportunity to be the major force for progress in improving our society and environment 
• Lindsey Allison, CP+B -- it's a user-centered world, not a media-centered world; users are in control, not the media 
• John Roberts, Partners + Napier -- we are "sprinting to a paralysis of too much choice" 
• Flora Proverbio/Regina Campanin, Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi Buenos Aires -- mobility! 

-- and a dozen more. 

Open Access: Costs of Publishing

In Nature, as part of a special issue on The Future of Publishing, Richard Van Noorden writes a balanced, nonpolemical piece about open access in general and the costs of science journal publishing in particular. ("Open access" is the notion that people should have unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarship, often as it reports the results of subsidized scientific research. See http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm) 

Open access: The true cost of science publishing

Cheap open-access journals raise questions about the value publishers add for their money. 

Michael Eisen doesn't hold back when invited to vent. "It's still ludicrous how much it costs to publish research — let alone what we pay," he declares. The biggest travesty, he says, is that the scientific community carries out peer review — a major part of scholarly publishing — for free, yet subscription-journal publishers charge billions of dollars per year, all told, for scientists to read the final product. "It's a ridiculous transaction," he says.

Eisen, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that scientists can get much better value by publishing in open-access journals, which make articles free for everyone to read and which recoup their costs by charging authors or funders. Among the best-known examples are journals published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), which Eisen co-founded in 2000. "The costs of research publishing can be much lower than people think," agrees Peter Binfield, co-founder of one of the newest open-access journals, PeerJ, and formerly a publisher at PLoS.

But publishers of subscription journals insist that such views are misguided — born of a failure to appreciate the value they add to the papers they publish, and to the research community as a whole. They say that their commercial operations are in fact quite efficient, so that if a switch to open-access publishing led scientists to drive down fees by choosing cheaper journals, it would undermine important values such as editorial quality.

These charges and counter-charges have been volleyed back and forth since the open-access idea emerged in the 1990s, but because the industry's finances are largely mysterious, evidence to back up either side has been lacking. Although journal list prices have been rising faster than inflation, the prices that campus libraries actually pay to buy journals are generally hidden by the non-disclosure agreements that they sign. And the true costs that publishers incur to produce their journals are not widely known. 

Article continues at link. 

J. WEST, C.BERGSTROM, T. BERGSTROM, T. ANDREW/JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS, THOMSON REUTERS

Collaborative Organizations

By Jacob Morgan, of the management consulting firm Chess Media Group, in ZDNet's TechRepublic, an article about core characteristics of collaborative organizations. 

The 12 habits of highly collaborative organizations 

March 18, 2013, 6:12 AM PDT

Takeaway: Here are twelve collaboration patterns or “principles” that successful organizations follow. 

Did you know that there are more possible moves in a game of chess then there are atoms in the entire universe and seconds that have elapsed since the big bang?  In fact, chess can be a virtually endless game.  If that’s the case then how do chess masters emerge?  What’s the point of trying to study something if the moves are endless?  Any good chess player will tell you that one of the keys to success is the ability to recognize patterns and situations to help you identify what the best next move is. 

When looking at collaboration and the future of work, the same logic applies.  Every company is unique and no two collaboration initiatives are the same.  However, after working with, speaking with and researching hundreds of companies (such as Wells Fargo, Unisys, Lowe’s, IBM, EA, The U.S. Government, TELUS, Intuit, Shell, and many others) my team at Chess Media Group and I have identified twelve collaboration patterns or “principles” that the successful organizations follow.  Below you will find a visual highlighting these principles followed by a more in-depth description of each one. 

See the link for the full list. It includes 

2) Strategy before technology -- it is unfortunately too common to implement or embrace the latest technology without a realistic idea of the intended goal. (See this Wikipedia entry for an overview of collaborative technologies.) 

3) Listen to the employee -- especially to the front-line employee. 

4) [Managers should] Learn to get out of the way. 

5) Lead by example -- that is, an organization's leaders should use and support collaborative tools and strategies, too. 

6) Fit the collaborative tools and strategies into the real workflow. 

7) Create a supportive environment -- it's important to recognize team and collaborative work, as well as individual accomplishment. 

9) Persist! Inculcating collaborative practices takes time and continued attention. 

Mission

Warren Burger in Fast Company's Co.DESIGN writes about how organizations should answer five "mission questions" rather than start by crafting the typical mission statement. (See also http://www.william-garrity.com/blog/tag/strategy for a discussion of the difference between "strategy" and "tactics.")

Forget The Mission Statement. What’s Your Mission Question?

WRITTEN BY: Warren Berger

WARREN BERGER TAPS SOME OF THE MOST POWERFUL CEOS IN THE COUNTRY TO REVEAL THE QUESTIONS THAT WILL KEEP ANY COMPANY ON TRACK.

In a previous article, I shared five questions that today’s forward-thinking companies should be asking, based on input from top business consultants. This second installment, on the same theme, presents five more questions--but with a specific focus this time. These are questions that zero in on the mission and higher purpose of a company. Think of them as "mission questions." 

Most companies, of course, articulate their missions by way of formal "statements." But often they’re banal pronouncements (We save people money so they can live better. --WalMart) or debatable assertions (Yahoo! is the premier digital media company) that don’t offer much help in trying to gauge whether a company is actually living up to a larger goal or purpose. 

Questions, on the other hand, can provide a reality check on whether or not a business is staying true to what it stands for and aims to achieve. So herewith, derived from interviews for my forthcoming book, A More Beautiful Question, are thoughts from a couple of top CEOs (Panera Bread’s Ron Shaich and Patagonia’s Casey Sheahan) and a trio of leading business thinkers/consultants (the Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen, Peer Insight’s Tim Ogilvie, and SY Partners’ Keith Yamashita). The following five “mission questions” are designed to keep a business focused on what matters most.

1. Why are we here in the first place? 
2. What does the world need most that we are uniquely able to provide? 
3. What are we willing to sacrifice? 
4. What matters more than money? [Not-for-profits might put it, What are we trying to achieve and how will we get there in the long run?] 
5. Are we all on this mission together? 

See the link for explanations and, most helpful, examples.