Author: andrewcareaga

Former higher ed PR and marketing guy at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) now focused on freelance writing and editing and creative writing, fiction and non-fiction.

Giving voice to student bloggers

Furman University has been receiving many kudos in higher ed marketing circles for their innovative use of the web. See this summary of Furman’s work, presented at EduWeb 2006, to bring you up to speed.

But what I really love about Furman is their hands-off approach to student bloggers who keep online journals for the school’s Engage Furman admissions site. Consider this post from a former Furman student, who decided to transfer. In an entry sure to make most admissions officers and college presidents squirm, he explains his reasons for posting this news on his journal:

Why did Furman put these freshman journals online? Surely not as another method pro-Furman propaganda, encouraging you to jump on the first flight over here because there is no other college worth going to. That’s for the rest of the site to tell you. No, it’s our job to give you a firsthand experience, to cut through the gleam and glamor you see on the admissions website and give you both the diamonds and the muck hidden underneath. In other words, we have to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly.

How many other schools would have the guts to allow this post to go live? How many would dare to give voice to a student who was leaving? Hats off to Furman for setting the bar high, for keeping it real, and for valuing the authenticity of voice.

Blogging tips for business (and higher ed, too)

No one, to my knowledge, has written a manifesto about blogging for higher education, so until they do, Debbie Weil’s Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging will have to do. Here’s an excerpt:

Why Blog? Isn’t My e-Newsletter Enough?

Unless your e-newsletter or ezine has your customer’s mortgage statement attached to it, you’ll be lucky if your subscribers open it. Between the new federal CAN-Spam legislation, spam filters and actual spam, inbox noise has reached an all-time high. Don’t get me wrong — email is still a viable marketing tool. In fact, email is now in its mature phase as a killer app of online marketing.
But a blog may be the perfect complement to an e-newsletter. Here’s why:
» Since blogs aren’t email, inbox clutter and spam filters are a non-issue. But readers can still subscribe to blogs using an RSS newsreader.
» Blogs, through an easy interface, publish instantly. No formatting, no templates, no fancy coding.
» Search engines love blogs. Each entry on your blog is its own Web page (even if it’s a one-liner). And search engines are drawn to fresh, updated pages. So by virtue of blogging, you can drive traffic to your company or business site — without hiring an expensive SEO (search engine optimization) service.

There’s a lot more good advice for beginning bloggers — and handy reminders for those of us who’ve been doing this for awhile. Link via ChangeThis.