Even the Big Boys Can Be Clueless About Social

I came across this interview of two leaders from Nissan’s about their social efforts. I’m left with the impression that they don’t really know what they’re doing. Not yet, anyway. They say that ROI is being figured out, that they think they’re making a solid business case for the investment and that they’re optimistic about …

Social Media Starts With Your Own Place

I couldn’t have said it any better. John Battelle talks about social media in a McKinsey interview: “A lot of companies are saying, ‘If we’re going to do social, then we’re going to build in Facebook.’ They think they can just check the box and cover the majority of their social program by investing in …

How Organizational Structure Impacts Brand

A university’s ability to communicate with students is contingent on its internal systems working efficiently and effectively. Otherwise, the institution risks communicating a disorganized message, misinformation and a confused brand. In this presentation, I walk through some organizational structure ideas as they apply to higher ed and how they affect institutional branding. From there, I …

Social Media Fragmentation vs. Segmentation

Susan Talbert Evans wrote a great post about the difference between fragmentation and segmentation when it comes to social media. My university (11-12,000 students) is about to enter into this discussion so this is a timely, well thought out piece. I work in a centralized comm department and my recent census of school related social …

Achieve Your Strategy Through Influence

One step you can take to help achieve your communication strategies is to leverage influencers on the web. You can use tools like the ones below to help determine and judge who are good targets. Once identified, take the time to get to know each influencer and the world that swirls around them: how often …

Where Higher Ed Sites Need To Go

The single most important thing higher ed websites can do is change the fundamental organizing principle away from the org chart (content organized via department) and toward people. This means organizing content via degree programs which represents the fundamental connection point between student and school. User tests show that students have consistent informational needs when …

Calculating Social Media ROI? Is it Possible?

There’s a lot of talk about how to measure the ROI of social media. For marketing campaigns, it can be captured easily enough: track people from exposure to sign-up or purchase or whatever the final goal is and then compare that against what the campaign cost. However, for social media interactions without any predefined parameters of …

Higher Ed: Marry Social & Technology For A Win

Universities are social organizations, but there’s little proof of it in how their technology is thought of, planned or deployed. Sure, everyone now has a set of icons that will whisk people to Facebook, Twitter and beyond, but precious few are really embracing what social really is and how to bake it into their core …

Review of Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications

My Goodreads.com rating: 3 of 5 stars If you’re at all connected to the social media world within a work setting, much of this book will be basic to you. That said, it’s easy for lots of small opportunities and ideas to fall through the cracks on a day-to-day basis and this book will bring …