In This Issue
- Facebook's Community Pages: A Lesser Evil?, by Fritz McDonald
- Will Authenticity Survive?, by Fritz McDonald
- The Post Monitor & Mouse Era, By Matt Arnold
Facebook's Community Pages: A Lesser Evil?
By Fritz McDonald, Vice President, Creative Strategy
Facebook’s new community pages feature has marketers in an uproar. Basically, this new service adds yet another way for colleges and universities (as well as corporations, nonprofits, and other organizations) to have a presence. The problem is that neither institutions nor individuals have any say in the matter. Community pages are built on aggregated public content drawn from user status messages on individual profiles (they also apparently draw from Wikipedia). What this means is that community pages are born and grow without any effort or direction from either individuals (for an excellent and more detailed take please see Jessica Krywosa's 5/11/10 post on eduguru). So far, the community pages we’ve seen have been harmless, even positive, additions to the institutions they represent. And although this loss of control has many worried, this may be good thing. For in truth, we've all become Facebook-centric, as if it were the only solution to our social media needs. The fact is there is a wide range of tools and platforms available that colleges and universities have barely tapped into like Big Tent, Vimeo, Foursquare (though I’ve seen many people on #highered experiment with it), LiveJournal, Reddit, etc.
Ultimately, however, this is less about specific tools and more about a way of thinking—we all have come to believe that Facebook (and more recently perhaps Twitter) are the only platforms worth focusing our attention on. The main argument—that we should go where students are—makes sense. And yet, it seems passive. It enables us to take a "let's run it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes" approach—setting up a page, then waiting for results, then invariably becoming disappointed when nothing happens. This approach has proven to be ineffective as social media marketing. It's hard to integrate with a marketing communications plan that takes a more aggressive approach in recruiting students—employing techniques and tactics from direct marketing for example, which drive action and response. The wait-and-see approach also limits cross-linking possibilities and brand reverberations that happen when multiple social media platforms connect. Except for those schools who have been actively and strategically managing their social media content and interactions, some institutions are living in a Facebook bubble.
Facebook has always posed challenges to marketers—take a look at some of the comments on Jessica's blog post. Frustration is constant and it stems from Facebook's passive-aggressive approach to marketing. From the beacon uproar to limiting brand apps to community pages, Facebook has been all over the map and it's often hard to tell how they (it?) really feels about marketing. Colleges and universities, on the other hand, are no longer debating the issue and haven’t been for some time. We need marketing help because we need students—it's as simple as that. Facebook also has control issues: they control copyright and are ultimate owners of your page and while you can do a few creative things to promote your institutional brand, this too has limitations.
The point I'm trying to make here is that perhaps it's time we got away from thinking of Facebook as the be-all, end-all approach to using social media for recruiting. A number of schools are building proprietary networks: Furman University and Nebraska, Lincoln's Planet Red are good examples. In the political world, the Ning network for the Pickens Plan is worth taking a look at… and though Ning has had some trouble lately, it's still a worthwhile service.
Of course, building your own network is not your only option. Maybe it's time you really started using YouTube as the social network is actually is or explored the community-building features LinkedIn offers. The fact is that you can build a successful, viable community on any number of platforms… all it takes is commitment.
Work of the Week:
As an ongoing feature, I'm going to point you to interesting things happening with social media on various campuses. This week I have two: first, Dan Forbush, executive director of communication for Skidmore College has been pioneering the use of social media for recruiting for a long time. Currently, he's exploring how to get better internal buy-in through an official Social Media Summit group. He's offered to guest post on this blog in the near future about his efforts. Second, my friends at Behavioral and Community Health Sciences (University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health) have just a launched a Facebook page (a "like" page?). Check it out when you get a chance!
Will Authenticity Survive?
By Fritz McDonald, Vice President, Creative Strategy
What I love about social media—the conversation. What I hate about social media—the conversation. There are those moments when social media has a positive impact on the world—Twitter in Iran—and those moments make me proud. Then there are those moments when social media has a negative impact—obscene blog comments, conference speakers getting slammed on Twitter, high school kids bullying each other on Facebook—and those moments make me cringe. Defenders of these moments, however, make an important point—if you believe that "authenticity" is one of the foundations of social media, then you have to live with uncomfortable incidents. This is part and parcel of the argument that the web should remain largely unregulated (and you can thank departing Judge Stevens for that). And while I also cringe at the possibility of regulating the social web, we are quickly reaching a new tipping point that may in fact do that automatically.
Quickly, social media is growing into two distinct spheres—the personal, a space where free and honest expression is valued above all else, and the professional, a space where communication serves a functional purpose, as in marketing, recruiting, journalism, fundraising, etc. The first sphere ruled the early growth of social media and it was this sphere that worried and still worries institutional leaders. Just this past week I had a long and involved discussion with staff and administrators at a client college about when and where colleges and universities will become liable for things students say on institutional social media platforms. When people get nasty on a blog or on Twitter it makes it that much harder to convince nonparticipants that hey, this social media thing is a good thing… really. And unfortunately, for those of us in higher ed, many of those folks are running our institutions. We need them—and believe it or not, many of them are excited about social media and its positive implications for their respective institutions. I spend a lot of time giving presentations on the subject to senior-level administrators and to a person they are among the most enthusiastic audiences I talk with all year.
But this issue is bigger than just making our employers happy. Of the two spheres, the professional is gaining power. The social web is quickly losing its Wild West quality and civilization is creeping in. Some see this like the Roddy McDowell character in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean—the shark who brings oil wells to the frontier, and by so doing, destroys it. Others see this as necessary progress—civilization brings many good things with it, like constitutions and free-speech protection. Professionalization—that phenomenon whereby the amateur gets replaced by the trained—has already taken over the blogosphere. The most successful blogs are written by pros. Now that businesses and colleges are flocking to Facebook and Twitter, can the same alteration be far behind? And what will these platforms look like when they do? Twitter is already dominated by the brand-conscious—in fact, it's proving to be a better tool for professional communicators and personal brand-builders than for ordinary citizens. And some colleges are beginning to replicate Facebook features on their own home-built networks—networks they control, like Nebraska's Planet Red.
In this environment, what happens to the notion of transparency, a fundamental building block of the social web, and how will it survive? The harshtag incident at last year's HighEdWeb may have been uncomfortable, but it was real… precisely what we mean by authentic content. The reaction to it and the attention it got in the press signifies the other side of the equation—civilization asserting its ultimate control.
I don't have the answer to this dilemma—there are good arguments to be made on both sides. I’m more interested in starting a conversation about what I see as the next phase of social media growth—the beginnings of maturity. Is this a good phase or a bad phase? Will we lose transparency in it? Or use transparency to transform how we work and communicate? What do you think?
The Post Monitor & Mouse Era
By Matt Arnold, Director of Interactive Media Strategy
The post monitor and mouse era is upon us. By this I mean we are moving beyond the need or dependency of a monitor, mouse, keyboard, and desktop (or laptop) to define the user experience (UX). For the past few years we have seen hints of these changes with the rapid adoption of smart phones and the beginning of the mobile web. A key breakthrough in smart phones was the iPhone, which incorporates gesture technology (through its accelerometer) and hyper locality through its GPS and compass technology. The Fluid team at MIT has been looking at the impacts of "mouseless" ( and how the computer-human interface will continue to change for some time. We are seeing more of this technology move from the lab into mass production and application. This spring, with the launch of the iPad and GoogleTV, we've seen two other technology releases that continue to propel us into the post monitor & mouse era. The iPad and GoogleTV may not be disruptive in their own rights, in that they are not changing the game by themselves, but they represent the disruptive possibilities of a post monitor & mouse UX. The iPad has already sold over a million units since its launch in April and is now outselling Macs. GoogleTV is currently being integrated as a feature by some television manufactures. This means that these technologies are moving towards "early majority" adoption with enough momentum to cross the chasm and will not simply be relegated to innovation seekers and geeks on the adoption curve.
The iPad, which extends the technology and experience of the iPhone, further demonstrates that the web will not be experienced solely by laptops and desktops as most of us have known them. Instead, it begins to demonstrate the possibility of more participatory and immersive experiences. One is no longer simply reading or scrolling. Now one can easily adjust their views as content shifts based on the position or actions they take, and their physical location can now impact the context in which content is delivered.
Google TV demonstrates another change that is related in our move beyond monitor and mouse. Adding internet-enabled search to television may not sound like that big of deal in a world where we can stream television and movie content through services like Hulu and Netflix, or where we have internet-enabled Blu-ray players. However, I think it is a big deal because it further represents how channels continue to blur and are becoming less device specific. We are seeing the idea of "appointment television" fading away. Who knows, maybe Google Analytics will replace Nielsen ratings when it comes to measuring the impact of television content and help deliver more engaging and appropriate ads to the viewer. There's a blur in experience as well. It wasn’t that long ago that most of us went online via the annoying audio cue of our modems bleating like a digital goat. Now, our phones and our TVs are integrating with the internet in such a way that we are always on, so to speak. We don’t need to be at our desks to find key information. We could be participating in a live event on campus and receive, or have access to, additional content that augments our experience.
While these may seem abstract at the moment, what does this mean for us marketing in higher education? It reinforces the need to stay focused on goals before tools. Determine what experiences are important for your constituents and how you would like constituents to experience your brand, then use technology to enable that experience in a manner that is contextually appropriate.
As more tools and technology are introduced, it becomes increasingly important to understand our goals and desired outcomes. What are we trying to accomplish? What experiences do we want people to have? It is dangerous to lead with the tool or technology solution. Technology should be an enabler of process or experience. It seems we were just beginning to understand how to design UX and develop content for the web within the constraints or bounds of a monitor and mouse. Now we have myriad devices and ways in which our constituents are going online. While it is easy to get distracted by all that is new, I believe it reinforces the need to stay focused on the what before the how.
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