Crosstown Digital Communications

Wrap-up from the PRSA Counselors to Higher Education Senior Summit

A couple weeks ago, I had the honor of attending and presenting at the PRSA Counselors to Higher Education Senior Summit in Washington D.C. The annual event brings together some of the top PR minds in higher ed to discuss best practices, strategy and emerging tactics. I shared an updated version of my award-winning presentation from HighEdWeb 2011, “Reinventing News on Your University Website.” The slide deck is below.

Reinventing News on your University Website

I was blown away by how much great information the speakers at the Summit shared. Here are a few of my favorite tidbits:

  • Michael Smart, formerly of Brigham Young University but now out on his own as a PR coach and consultant, said that most reporters don’t want a press release; a customized three-sentence email with a link asking them if they want more information will do the trick. Reporters are busy, stressed and pressed for time nowadays. Don’t make their job harder with your wordy, self-serving pitch. Show real attentiveness to their beats, prove you’ve really read their work. In short, be relevant! EDIT: Check out the informative slides from his great presentation.
  • Multiple speakers noted the value of a university strategic plan in guiding communications strategy. Seems obvious, but so many institutions are missing this piece, or not putting the two together. Tethering communications to strategy to institutional strategy, said Emory’s Ron Sauder and Georgia Tech’s Michael Warden, forces you tothink and act strategically. Do your actions match up against institutional values? What more, it also gives you the power to say no and look smart while doing so.
  • More great nuggets from Sauder and Warden:
    • I love their comparison to Kinko’s. So many higher ed communications office end up being Kinko’s, just providing on-demand services to whomever walks through the door or calls on the phone. Kinko’s is not strategic. Don’t be Kinko’s.
    • If you haven’t seen The Soundbite University – a large-scale study of how higher education has been covered in the national press over the last 60 years – now’s your chance. Definitely worth a look.
    • Another great reference: the 12th annual The Edelman Trust Barometer, which “examines trust in four key institutions — government, business, media, and NGOs — as well as communications channels and sources.” Traditional media still have a high trust value, but interestingly, trust in corporate media (think brand journalism) is increasing.
    • Breaking news: bloggers don’t want to celebrate institutional accomplishments, but rather share consumer-oriented stories. Keep this in mind when pitching.
    • Georgia Tech’s Amplifier is a great example of owned content, featuring quick turnaround commentary by faculty experts on current, relevant issues. This positions Georgia Tech as a thought leader on issues of the moment. It’s similar to BU’s Professor Voices blog.
    • Blogs are great for “telling your story”, but don’t underestimate their power for SEO purposes, too. Better than an “experts guide.”
    • Students are still your best brand ambassadors! Check out the Emory 360 video series for a great example of this in action.
  • readMedia’s Amy Mengel delivered a great presentation on “Developing a Social Content Strategy: Finding the right mix of paid, owned and earned Media.” She discussed:
  • Excelsior College’s Mike Lesczinski also published a great wrap-up from the conference, as well as a short video with Mengel sharing her three takeaways from the pre-conference tour of NPR (which I was sad to miss!). Mengel herself also published a short wrapup.

Thanks to the folks at the PRSA for including me in this great event!

Twitter 101: Rules of the Road

On May 9, 2012, I kicked off a day of learning about Twitter in higher ed at NERCOMP’s “Tweet this SIG!” event. My session laid out the basic components of Twitter and principles behind effective usage.

Twitter 101 – Rules of the Road
View more presentations from Georgiana Cohen

Storytelling Tips for Digital Marketing Teams

On April 18, I had the pleasure of co-presenting a webinar with Erick Mott and Fred Bals of Ektron. In the webinar, titled “Storytelling Tips for Digital Marketing Teams,” we gave an overview of the principles of storytelling, explained how storytelling supports business goals, discussed how to effectively execute cross-channel storytelling and provided examples of how this has been successfully done in the marketplace.

You can view the slides here:

Creative Community Building With Social Media

A webinar I delivered for swissnex San Francisco on “Creative Community Building with Social Media” is now available online. Watch the playback and download the slides here.

Swissnex is working to boost the use of social media by Swiss academic institutions. You can follow them on Twitter and Facebook, or learn more on their website. They also have a bunch of additional webinars available via their website, covering topics including social media for crisis communication, Twitter 101, building relationships with the press through Twitter and LinkedIn 101.

In Defense of QR Codes and Infographics

A few bad apples spoil the barrel, and the same is true of infographics and QR codes. These tools have become the laughing stocks of web marketing, considered to be superfluous, shiny, ineffective communications tools.

This reputation is almost deserved. There are a lot of crappy infographics out there, loaded with gaudy graphics and context-less statistics. Likewise, there are lots of silly uses of QR codes, like this one.

But I don’t think either tool is getting a fair shake, and there are smart ways to use them in our communications efforts. I wrote about the value of well-crafted infographics for Meet Content last year. And Seth Odell blogged last summer about his change of heart on QR codes, which when done well can make our lives easier — or, as Tim Nekritz says, they should achieve goals and solve problems.

A couple of weeks ago, when I was taking the Capitol Metro bus to the Austin airport (because I’d rather pay $2 for buses than $30+ for cabs), this is what my bus stop looked like:

This is a great use of a QR code. I have multiple options for getting my desired info (the time of the next bus). In truth, scanning the QR code was the quickest way for me to get this info, which loaded on a mobile-optimized web page.

This is what I love about QR codes — they function as a bridge between physical world needs and digital world information. However, they are a transitional technology. They are our first stab at building that bridge. The methods of creating access points to online information in the physical space will evolve and become more intuitive and sophisticated, to be sure. In the meantime, QR codes are the easiest way to do this.

The same is true for infographics. I love this example by UNC’s Patric Lane, who used an infographic (designed in the same vein as pro football commentary on team advantages) to communicate a research news story succinctly, creatively and not weighed down by jargon. A potentially dry topic about collaboration (groan) and innovation (oy) is instead fresh and engaging (yay).

There are many cases where a QR code or an infographic would be a valuable marketing tool. We just need to think through our needs before throwing tools at them. But in addition, we can’t discount tools like QR codes and infographics just because they get bad press due to others’ sloppy marketing efforts. Don’t let popular opinion (on either side of the fence) drive your decisions. Let your needs and your goals take the wheel.

And just to conclude this post by making your head explode, here’s an infographic about QR codes :-)