Every year we go “up north” (its a Michigan thing) for new years with a few friends and last year we decided to write down our new years resolutions and toss them in the bond fire. One of mine was to write more, I wanted to write a book. Well I did write more but I did not get to finish a book, ended up with five different directions and half starting all of them.
This year I wanted to have a clear direction for my writing and some goals that are actually obtainable. Now that I blog here, the Web Communcations Blog, .eduGuru and host the EDU Checkup video blog I would say from starting from nothing in the past year I have wrote a great deal.
This next year is all about consistency, I am hoping to write on at least this schedule.
One post every Two weeks at nickdenardis.com
One post every Week (or so) at .eduGuru
One post every Two weeks at the Web Communications blog
Continue to do the [Friday Links] on the Web Communications blog
In addition to this I would like to start sharing a photo from the week with a few of my close followers (@nickdenardis me if you want in). I would also like to determine a clear direction on a book and actually start hashing it out.
Being in the marketing office at Wayne State University I work with a lot of talented people, one being the Editorial Director who just launched a word driven web site. He has inspired me to write better, clearer and more concise. My goal is not only to write on more sites but be more concise in less words.
Words are beautiful, they take expression and inject it right into the mind of the reader. I wanted to publish my goals for 2009 not only to keep track of them but to inspire everyone else if they were thinking of writing more to get to it and make some goals and strive to keep them.
Did you meet your 2008 writing goals? Do you have any 2009 goals?
An amazing tool came to my attention today, the WordPress Notifier. Similar to the Google Notifier it sits in your OS X status bar and alerts you when you get new comments to your blog. This is great because it allows you to react and respond quicker without having to keep your wp-admin page up all day or constantly get emails when you have other work to do. It even uses growl for the notifications.
It works with WordPress 2.7+ or wordpress.com but does not yet support WordPress MU. I encourage everyone who has a wordpress blog and uses a mac to take this for a spin.
The controversy came from how to start using social media, whether you should get approval first, what kind of strategy to use, do you even need a strategy?
What it comes down to in my opinion is support. No matter the size or your position at the university you must be able to justify spending your time in a medium that is right now is a mystery to most administrators.
Step 1: Become an observer
The first step to get this support and justify using your time in the social space is to listen to everything you can. Become a “Social Media Observer”, listen to all the positive and negative. One tool to do this is the Social Media Firehose, it finds almost too many references to your university by name/url. Seriously the “Wayne State” pipe finds on average 320 references per day. Seems like a lot but not everything is someone commenting positively/negatively about your university.
Step 2: Pass that information along
You will come across prospective/current students with comments or question about your university. If you cannot answer the question directly send an email to someone you know who can and ask them to help. Cross your fingers you will get an appropriate response, often if the student is not asking the question directly to the institution it is not looked at as important.
Once you get a response sign up for that web site with either your name or your university’s name and post the response. Be completely truthful and transparent, if you are signed up as yourself explain who you are or if signed up as the university let them know you are here to help.
Step 3: Social media is about customer service
In addition to the response always give the user a way to reply back or reference existing web pages, phone numbers/email. Let them know you are here to help and they can contact you any time. I am big about being that single point of contact, taking in the request doing all the research and running around then getting back to the student.
Being consistently present and helpful builds on the relationship. It shows your university cares and a great place to come and study.
Putting together justification
After a few successful or unsuccessful questions/answers write it up, put something together that doesn’t have to be huge just a one page summary of how you did it, what you found, who you sent it to, their responses and if the student replied back. Shoot it off to your boss or who ever you think will find this information helpful and explain to them how much time it actually took out of your day (hopefullly not a lot), and how much it helped not only the student but also the university to recieve feedback.
At the very least it will get social media on the radar of the administration.
The past two weeks have been interesting. If you have not heard already the site .eduGuru, a higher education web marketing blog was looking for a few new staff bloggers. They held a contest for prospects to submit a guest blog post and the community would vote.
I submitted the article Tracking Flash Interaction with Google Analytics and after the week of voting I was one of the three chosen to becoming .eduGuru staff. Entering the contest I didn’t expect to win, just being part of the awesome higher ed web community was worth it in itself.
Now that I am in the pressure is on. Working with the bigger names and great thinkers I have to step up my game. I have a few post ideas already in the queue and broke the ice with my first staff post that expanded on my guest post. I explained Tracking outgoing clicks with Google Analytics, giving an insight to where your visitors are going when they leave your site.
So far everything has been great and the bloggers are super supportive. This is the first blogging “job” I have had, so it is a little different. I am use to working on my own schedule and ideas, but this structure will give me great foundation for consistent posts that will benefit the high ed community.
I want to thank everyone who follows me and has given me feedback, I truly appreciate all of you.
