• Three of Harvard’s successive presidents- Charles Eliot, Lawrence Lowell and James Conant- each contributed to what we now stereotype as a typical university. That model is pursued by many (most?) “traditional” universities and it comes at a high cost.
• The highly decentralized organizational structure is caused by a desire to provide the best education possible. Its outcome is the creation of specialized graduate schools that sit atop undergraduate programs. Those schools tend to isolate subject matter in order for faculty and students to interact and collaborate to a greater degree. The downside- isolation- squeezes a general purpose, liberal arts type of education as undergrads are more likely to be trained to enter graduate school than to be productive in the working world.
• The grueling “publish or perish” approach that all would be professors must traverse in order to gain tenure takes away a portion of their time to teach. With research focused faculty incentivized to pursue discovery of the next big idea, they shun teaching low level courses in preference of working with graduate students who can help them advance their scholarly inquiry. Undergraduates suffer from a relative dearth of highly accomplished instructors.
• Universities do not utilize their infrastructure well which causes overhead expenditures to unnecessarily be large compared with their revenue generation potential. Adding summer terms and using classrooms throughout the day and night would maximize the value of buildings.
• A “bigger and better” mentality produces many high cost services including athletic programs and new buildings, a desire to hire the best faculty at higher financial and student learning cost, and ever stringent admission selectivity in an attempt to raise the institution’s rankings. All of these practices come at great cost, usually outstripping revenue even as tuition rises considerably faster than inflation. The entire system is unsustainable and requires state and federal largesse along with aggressive fundraising.

The authors spell out many innovative ways to get out of the snowball effect that these issues cause. They use BYU-Idaho as a model institution that has bucked many of the pitfalls that engulfs higher ed today.

If you work at a higher ed institution, this book wont alleviate the frustrations you most likely feel, but it will give you some context to understand the nature of those frustrations. They’re systemic and not easily solved without major effort from senior management and buy in from employees.

“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 a really good Facebook page. I agree that all brands probably should be on Facebook, but what you really need is an integrated strategy that has – at its root – the brand’s own domain, independent from any platform other than the Internet itself. The best companies create communities of interest that are independent: they are rooted in the independent Web, with expressions on Facebook, or as an iPhone or Android app – those all become instances of their brand. And then companies should create a circulatory system through which they can promote different aspects of their messaging and interactions with their community.

“Declare your own place. Our tagline at Federated Media Publishing is ‘We power the Independent Web,’ and there is clear bias in that statement: independent matters more than dependent. If you build your house just in Facebook, you are dependent upon Facebook. And I think that strategy, if taken alone, is dangerous. I don’t mean that Facebook is dangerous – I think it’s great. But if you’re going to be a brand with a publishing approach to marketing, you must have an independent taproot that isn’t controlled by anyone but you. Then put out your branches and feelers everywhere. Integrate that experience and let your content and messaging flow through it.”

Don’t conflate audience segments with use cases

I see this all the time in higher ed. A mobile site offers links to content aimed at prospects and also throws in “mobile” functionality like maps and directions. Who are the mobile tools intended for? Prospects are not in need of maps or directions- they’re not on campus. Yes, they are on campus during a visit, but with decision making processes lasting months if not  years, it amounts to a rare occurrence (and you shouldn’t design interfaces for the exception to the rule- offer access to the functionality, but don’t make it a focus). Like any other project, you need to settle on who you’re building your project for OR for what purpose (i.e. use case), but not both. It doesn’t make sense to offer tools that are really meant to fulfill particular use cases alongside content meant to fulfill audience segment needs (unless they’re the same thing in which case we’re only talking semantics). Divide an conquer. Create a single .edu experience with focus and intent. Don’t get mesmerized by “mobile” functionality unless it supports the bigger plan.

Use cases might point you towards an app

If research suggests that maps or other kinds of functionality are needed, don’t be so quick to throw them in alongside the content intended for an audience segment. Instead, be ruthless in your curation and editing of the interface and user flow. Let the focus of your strategy be your guide and allow it to simplify your decisions. If your intent is to primarily reach prospects via mobile, then do so. Take the research finding that don’t fit well (like maps) and set them aside. Once you have the segment’s experience honed, then take all the leftover stuff and ask why it was left out. I think in the case of maps, it will be left out because it’s not directed toward prospects. It’s really intended for an on-campus use case which might mean it’s relevant to a prospect when visiting, but more apt for the people who are always on campus- students, employees. The use case cuts across traditional audiences and presents an opportunity to create a second experience, this time centered around the I’m-on-campus use case.

That use case might best be addressed through a dedicated app. Why? Because mobile doesn’t necessarily mean walking on campus. You can just as easily be sitting at home surfing on your phone. This fact suggests that the mobile site should actually be the same as the desktop site, or, in other words, there should only be one universal .edu experience whether it is seen on a phone, an iPad, a desktop or anything else. This is the responsive web design idea that’s gaining so much attention (and deservedly so). So, if all devices point to the same experience and that experience is determined to primarily be centered around prospects, then where should this use case approach apply? I say an app. It can include links to the intranet, Blackboard (or whichever LMS your institution uses), shuttle service, dining hall push notifications, etc.- anything that matches the use case.

Quick examples

Harvard has done an excellent job of providing focus to their mobile experience. You can tell by the content offered that it’s squarely directed to on-campus use. There is nothing extraneous to that purpose which brings it focus, clarity and cohesiveness. Their website, on the other hand, is squarely directed at prospects. There are ways to get to content that isn’t specifically geared to prospects, but those access points are secondary to the main show which is for prospects. Roanoke’s mobile site, in contrast, has less focus. You might think they follow an on-campus use case strategy too, but then you see that they include links for admissions and majors- content meant for prospects. They also have a link labelled alumni which is yet another audience segment, this time literally called out. In contrast to Harvard, Roanoke’s palette of content is much less coherent burdening the user to figure out whether or not the site is of use to them or not. Placement of the links is also a problem. Josh Clark teaches us that the audience specific links are located at the most accessible link target areas of the screen. That further adds usability confusion to the site.

In higher ed, we ask the latter question based on the segments we all know well: prospects, students, alumni, donors, parents, faculty, etc. The problem with this approach is that it’s too far removed from what our audiences need to get done. We segment this way based on what we want them to do, not necessarily by what they need to do. The gap that exists between the two is where you’ll find ineffective marketing.

In alumni relations, for example, we work hard to get people to engage with the institution through events, social media, etc. What that approach misses, however, is the fact that many of our alums don’t want to engage with us. It’s nothing personal, they just don’t. Yet, we shower them with as much marketing and programming as we can only to find that the efforts end poorly. Additionally, some who do participate will only do so because there is a temporary alignment of goals: we offer free food at a sporting event and an alum, who planned to attend anyway, decides to “participate” in order to get the free food. We mark that down as engagement, but it isn’t- at least not in the way we intended.

Let’s now take a Christensen approach and ask ”What job is a member of the university community trying to get done?” Search for a job is sure to be top of mind, but what else? How about work/life balance, support for entrepreneurial start-ups and better time management skill? Seen this way, we find that these jobs aren’t limited to what we label “alumni.” Alumni may indeed list finding a job a top priority, but so would many other traditional audience segments. We see this with any set of jobs needing to be done. Parents grapple with work/life balance, students start businesses and everyone could probably benefit from better time management. We find that our traditional methods of segmentation are too one dimensional and place people in buckets that may not reflect who those people really are. In turn, they won’t provide a good foundation for programming and marketing success. If we simplify a group like alumni that are, in reality, exceptionally diverse, we end up creating and promoting programming and marketing that are one size fits none. Everybody loses.

So why does higher ed lump people in marginally meaningful ways? It’s likely because that’s how our internal systems, organization and data are aligned. As students graduate, they are deleted from the student bucket and placed into the alumni bucket and, hopefully, handed off to the alumni relations group for further engagement. Unless your institution has a sophisticated CRM tool that actively tracks the right sorts of data, then you can’t segment based on anything more meaningful. Unless fundamental change occurs, higher ed will be unable to think about it’s audiences based on their needs rather than their superficial characteristics.

This is very similar to the user experience field which wants to be “customer focused” by addressing people’s needs and wants. Needs and wants are uncovered through research and then tested against as the experience being built is created. This same approach is analogous to what Christensen advocates. To be truly successful requires us to uncover our audiences’ needs and create programming and marketing that specifically addresses them. That will require us to avoid grouping people in our traditional ways.

If you’re interested in learning more about Christensen, here’s a great starter video that gives an overview of his theories. Highly recommended, of course.

“…I asked readers over 70 to write autobiographical essays evaluating their own lives.”

I love that idea.

Higher ed could do take Brooks’ basic idea and fill some of the gaps that exist with prospects’ and students’ relative lack of life experience compared to alumni. Imagine if we offered the accumulated life experiences, lessons learned, career exposure and general worldliness of alums to the rest of our university’s community. It would create bonds of affinity (not to mention a deep well of outcome oriented stories) by tossing aside the artificial audience segmentations we’ve created as an industry- prospects, students, donors, faculty, alumni, parents, etc.

I see all audiences sitting on a continuum where boundaries only exist if you purposely create them. I’m an alum of the university I work for but I still feel I’m a student at heart. I know I’m not technically a student, but I identify myself as a life long learner which shares the same state of mind as a student who may be 20 years younger. So why put up a barrier between us and treat us separately? Our needs certainly differ in important ways and those needs to be accounted for, but at what expense and to what degree? I think any higher ed’s community shares more similarities than differences.

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 media accounts turned up what I consider a whopping 240 Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr accounts (I haven’t canvassed for blogs yet). Our school largely operates under an anything goes policy when it comes to social media which has enabled this kind of growth.

Susan’s belief is that social media works better when accounts are allowed to grow organically. They’re apt to be more authentic and focused compared to more general and centrally controlled accounts. She lists four reasons why and I agree with her rationale. Her central point is that more accounts doesn’t necessarily equate to fragmentation to message and brand, but instead can be thought of as beneficial segmentation.

I’m all for segmentation as Susan describes it, but surely when there’s a ratio of 50 students for every social account as is the case for my institution, we’re seeing less segmentation and more fragmentation, right? Hard to tell given that I don’t have the time to do a systematic audit of what each account is saying and doing. However, I’m willing to accept that the overall number of accounts isn’t as important as whether each account is a vibrant community that provides value to the participants that exceeds the costs that go into making and maintaining the community. Again, that’s hard to measure though I’m willing to grade leniently on the value vs. cost comparison.

That leaves me in a position of experimentation. Our school has hundreds of outposts across third party networks which is great (go where the people are, right?). But with so many options, how does one know where to find the right community- or communities- to join? How do we ensure people aren’t being sent the same messages over and over again across different accounts (and is that even perceived as a problem by our audiences?)? These sorts of questions beg for centralized coordination which, in turn, may suggest centralized systems, processes and management. Too bureaucratic for internal staff? Maybe, probably. No one likes change nor big brother looking over their shoulder no matter how benevolent that oversight might be. But its a discussion worth having and will be one of the core concepts that our school discusses as we dive into the topic.

Research will surely bring light and objectivity to the discussion and it will take place, but for now, my belief (as always to anyone who reads this blog) is that operations should be centralized while content creation should be decentralized. To me, that strikes a balance between being too bogged down in red tape and the brand being too easily diluted. More to come on this topic…

Is centralization mandated? Can it add 10 percent to a corporation’s value? Can it be implemented without negative side effects? A proposal to centralize only needs a yes to one of these three questions. Yet they provide a high hurdle that helps managers avoid too much centralization. Moreover, they stimulate open and rational debate in this highly politicized area. By giving those in favor of centralization and those opposed to it a level playing field for building a case, these questions help companies strike the right balance between centralization and decentralization today and to evolve their organizations successfully as conditions change over time.

So many people on the web and social media channels simply listen in on the chatter and leave lots of opportunities on the table. Your next step is to join the conversation and participate. You have thoughts, opinions and expertise to share (really!) so share them. As long as you provide good, relevant content, you’ll find that all the people who were merely listeners like yourself shift. Awareness of you grows and if your contributions are good, they begin to take notice of what you say, what you link to and who you’re with. In short, people begin to take you and your ideas seriously. This raises your credibility and standing within the circles you participate in and a snowball effect takes shape. You slowly accrue enough people and attention to become a nexus of conversation, people push your content out and seek your thoughts and ideas out. You’ve become an influencer yourself and the more you participate and the better the value you bring to the table, the more virtuous the cycle becomes.

Of course, this takes time and effort. You have to research, dig deep and stay focused. This isn’t fly by night work. Stick to your strategy. Leverage the influencers you find to help determine how to differentiate your contributions for your own benefit as well as those of the other participants. Shape your offerings to meet your strategic goals AND fit the needs, wants and context of the wider audience and market.

• Klout
• Wefollow
• Crowdbooster
• mBlast
• Traackr
• Peer Index

College campuses are inherently social environments. Classmates are friends, roommates, drinking buddies, dates, teammates, maybe all of the above. At a minimum, a typical undergraduate’s social world is inextricably interwoven with the college experience- they’re one and the same. And yet, so many edu websites are socially barren landscapes. Publishing a Twitter RSS feed or showing a Facebook widget is not what I’m talking about here. Those are a step in the right direction, but we can do better.

Higher ed could take a cue from a fantastic service put forth by Vail Resorts, a ski industry company. Their EpicMix service marries skiing/snowboarding’s social nature with technology (check out the video for an overview). It embraces, supports and extends what people already do in the social context of a ski resort without trying to take it over or mandate use. Instead, it uses a set of tools and services to evolve and augment what’s already being done and does so in an easy, unobtrusive way. Either use it or don’t, it doesn’t force anything behavior on people who don’t want to participate, but for those who do, they get additional benefits. And if you’re not a participant, you still get some benefits too (scanning your pass makes the lift line experience quicker and easier).

The same concepts from EpicMix can effectively be applied to higher ed to gain the same basic benefits- augmenting what students are already doing on campus like communicating, sharing advice and information, planning meetings on the fly, etc. Students are a captive audience for a university so deploying the service is an easy matter and students have an inherent incentive to join and participate- everyone else would be using it.

This sort of service runs parallel to the creation of a university centric social network, another great idea university’s should pursue (but one that’s best left to its own post to discuss). EpicMix is itself a niche social network that works with the Facebooks and Twitters of the world to extend and leverage those services for a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

There’s a lot of hard work underlying EpicMix and what it represents to higher ed, but social networks aren’t going away so the time is now to get on board and take the first steps.