Month: February 2009

Top edu marketing challenges: survey says…

[E]ven in hard economic times, the challenges for marketing communications people on campuses of all kinds are not that different than they are in flush times.

That’s the conclusion Michael Stoner draws from his recent survey of higher ed marketers. Michael worked with Slover Linett Strategies on the survey (which I posted about back in December). On Tuesday, Michael posted a summary of the survey results and a link to the full report (PDF).

So, in these tough economic times, what are the biggest challenges? Tell ’em, Richard!

The survey says:

  1. Branding and messaging
  2. Rethinking and expanding communication outreach approaches and formats
  3. Incoporating new media and/or technology strategies.

“What’s different now, of course,” Michael adds, “is that tactics and solutions are very much dependent on the economy (this was the fourth challenge marketers identified).”

More detail in the full report.

The edublogger economic stimulus package

Online College Edu Blogger Scholarship ContestNote: this is NOT my official entry into the College Edu Blogger Scholarship Contest, but I stuck the badge on this post merely to help direct people to the information. If you click, on the badge, you should know that it might give me an unfair advantage in the contest. I’m not sure, because I didn’t read the rules that closely. Anyway, click if you want to. Or not. I’ll compose my entry later.

If any of my fellow higher ed bloggers got into blogging because they thought it would be a lucrative gig, it didn’t take long for them to find out otherwise.

Even the A-list are discovering that the financial payoff for the hours they spend blogging just isn’t there. (Daniel Lyons, who attained blogfame as the Fake Steve Jobs, admitted that “while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.”)

So it warms my jaded heart to see Karine Joly‘s announcement today that she, working with Online College and a couple of other higher ed bloggers, will give away a total of $2,500 in scholarships to some three lucky higher ed bloggers.

So while the rest of the world awaits U.S. President Barack Obama’s signature on the gargantuous stimulus package today, Karine Joly and Online College acted swiftly to bring the edublogger economic stimulus package to us.

OK, it really isn’t as easy as that. no trickle-down, everybody-gets-a-slice social engineering here. It’s all about competition and creativity, social Darwinism at its finest. There are rules and requirements. This is a scholarship, after all. Rather than try to explain all the rules in this space, I’ll just direct you to the OC site, where you can get the scoop. The contest is open until March 17 — St. Patrick’s Day — so get cracking and maybe you’ll find that mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Good luck.