Category: Internet and web

Saturday Six: because I took Friday off

I blew off my Friday Five this week, but now I’m racked with guilt, so today I’m giving you an extra click for your weekend blog-reading pleasure.

  1. The good, bad and ugly of campus visits, by Tom Hayes of SimpsonScarborough. Hayes is accompanying his daughter on her quest for a college home, and so far they’ve visited 10 campuses, with two more to go. Hayes offers perceptions on the good, bad and ugly of the campus tours.
  2. This blog has been tagged in the thinking bloggers meme that’s been going around. I first read about it on Robert French’s blog. I was shocked — shocked! — that French didn’t mention me as one of the five bloggers who make him think, but he did mention Karine Joly (who would certainly make my list, along with French), and she picked up on the meme theme and mentioned this one. I’m truly honored and humbled by this selection, and must get to work on my acceptance speech post haste.
  3. Diva Marketing celebrates three years of blogging with a look how blogging has changed her business. Happy blogiversary, Diva.
  4. Watch this video or we’ll shoot this puppy! National Lampoon — anyone remember them? — joins the world of viral video by launching an online video network. Global Neighbourhoods provides the scoop, noting that the announcement came in the form of “a very top-down, unfunny business-to-business oriented press release.” That’s pretty sad. Calling P.J. O’Rourke…
  5. While we’re on the subject of viral video, Dennis Miller of Mansfield University posted recently about his second thoughts on posting college-promo video to YouTube (see YouTube: Wrong Channel?). His second thoughts came after a discussion with some female students at Mansfield who told him YouTube was “mainly a guy thing” and used only for catching stupid videos. Karine Joly picks up the topic and ponders whether there might be hope for Miller and Mansfield after all.
  6. After weeks of blogging inactivity, eRelevant‘s Morgan Davis announces a hiatus from blogging so he can “finish some hulking, be-fanged programming projects.” He plans to relaunch the blog in the fall and vows: “It will be less personal, less inflammatory and more topical and content-oriented.” I only hope the inflammation doesn’t disappear completely. That’s part of what makes eRelevant so irreverent.

Bonus link: the latest eduflick, Chalk, looks interesting. Link via EduWonk.

Keeping ahead of the learning curve

What resources do you use, what methods do you follow, and what techniques do you employ to keep pace with all the changes in technology, communications and the business of marketing, PR and higher ed? In the latest issue of CASE Currents magazine, Patricia Quigley, Rowan University‘s assistant director of university media and public relations, pulls together some good thoughts about keeping pace with all the changes (CASE login required to access the full article). Quigley, like the rest of us, struggles to find the time to learn the latest about technology’s impact on media relations, the latest consumer marketing studies and how they relate to education, or what legislation coming down the pike is liable to affect her work. She talks to some other PR pros in higher ed to find out how they carve time out of their schedules to catch up on the latest tips and trends.

Quigley also offers some daily learning opportunities, segmented into a monthly calendar. Suggestions include reading the major dailies on Sundays; surfing some must-read higher ed blogs (like Karine Joly’s collegewebeditor.com, insidehighered.com, SimpsonScarborough, etc.); checking up on how major corporations are using technology; visiting Poynter and other journalism think-tank sites (such as AJR); reading Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion on a regular basis; and, at least once a month, taking a break from it all and walking around your campus — “the place any successful media relations effort really begins.”

All brilliant ideas! And most are at your fingertips. In the spirit of sharing information, I offer a few resources that Quigley overlooked. Some of these pertain more to marketing than to media relations, which could be why Quigley excluded them.

  • Join the American Marketing Association and read AMA’s Marketing News. Or save yourself a few dollars and read the Marketing News blog for free. (I think it’s worth the price of admission to get the publication, however.)
  • Subscribe to PR Week and scan it weekly. The op-ed section is the best part.
  • In addition to Poynter, AJR and Romenesko, news junkies should bookmark Journalism.org, the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s website, for more news about the state of the media.
  • For buzz marketers (and aren’t we all?), two words: Seth Godin.
  • Another blog I check on every other week or so, for ideas on innovations in business: Fast Company Now.

Those are a few of my favorite resources. What are some of yours?