TheNewPR/Wiki offers a nice list of 33 things companies (or colleges and universities) should monitor in the new social mediasphere. The list includes everything from company (university) name and URL to employee blogs, citations on Technorati, relevant Wikipedia entries and more. Can you think of anything else to add to the list? If so, get in touch with Shel Holtz, who started the wiki thread.
Category: media relations
Blogging from CASE District VI: ‘bloggers as journalists, journalists as bloggers’
I tried this idea out at the CASE Conference in Philadelphia I co-chaired back in September: get some journalists who blog in a room with bloggers and let them talk about how the two disciplines — old-school reporting and new-media blogging — are merging and blurring the lines of distinction between news, opinion, and other aspects of journalism. It worked so well then (with a mere two journalist-bloggers) that we decided to try it again here at the CASE District VI Conference in Kansas City. And just for fun, we added another kind of blogger into the mix: someone who writes a blog for a non-profit organization. Our panelists were:
- Tony Bodello, a freelance writer in Kansas City who also authors the popular KC blog Tony’s Kansas City.
- Joe Mannies, political reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who also oversees and frequently posts on the P-D’s Political Fix blog.
- Desiree Vargas, a specialist with Kansas City-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and a blogger for the foundation’s Kauffman Perspectives blog.
The three had a lot of good information to share about the nature of their blogging, the future of social networking and new media, the challenges facing traditional media such as newspapers, and the benefits of blogging for institutions such as Kauffman. Check out their three very different blogs to get a sense of how blogs are being used to address various issues — whether it’s to promote programs, entertain readers or help political junkies get their fix.
While you’re at it, check out UMR’s research blog, Visions. While I was in a panel discussion at 8:30 this morning, three of our staffers were presenting to a packed room about their experience with converting Visions from a quarterly research webzine to a more frequently updated blog. They even had buttons and magnets to give away.
Ideas, anyone?
Looks like I’m going to be a panelist at next week’s CASE District VI Conference in sunny Kansas City, Mo. The subject: “Horizon Issues Being Explored by CASE.” I and two of my district VI colleagues — John Amato of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Michael Johnson of the University of Northern Colorado Alumni Association — will discuss big issues alongside CASE President John Lippincott. Lippincott is as astute as anyone when it comes to assessing where higher education is going, but Amato, Johnson and I need to come up with some ideas of our own — Amato for trends in fundraising, Johnson for the same in alumni relations, and I for trends in communications and marketing.
And that’s where you come in. I’m exercising blogger’s prerogative here and seeing the wisdom of crowds.
What do you see as the big issues facing higher ed marketing and communications? Help me out here, readers. Throw me a bone. The session is Monday. I’m not panicked or anything. But I’d love to hear your thoughts about trends in marketing, branding, PR, communications, new media, old media, graphic design — any and all of it.
A journalist’s complaint: PR people who don’t return email requests
Karine Joly of collegewebeditor.com has a bone to pick with higher ed PR types who ignore her requests. For an upcoming article in University Business magazine, she emailed a few PR folks to ask them how they use the web for media relations. She didn’t get a very good response, and blogged her complaint for the world to see. (Don’t worry, she didn’t name names, so all you PR folks out there — you’re safe.)
I didn’t have any problems getting answers from a few reporters and editors I interviewed about this topic. But, it has proven to be very difficult to get my higher ed PR contacts to cooperate.
Wait a minute.Isn’t it supposed to be tough to get a few minutes of an editor or a reporter’s time?
And, aren’t PR practitioners supposed to answer questions from media folks… for a living?
I won’t name the names of the 3 institutions, but I can tell they include a state university, an institution highly-ranked by the US News Report and a technology institute.
I know that I’m no NYT columnist. But, in this age of the Long Tail, this column or even this blog post might be read by reporters working for the NYT. That’s why I fail to understand why PR people wouldn’t take a few minutes to reply to a short email.
Several of the responses have offered insight as to why they might not have responded. Among the possibilities:
- PR people are short-staffed and too busy to respond to every request they receive
- PR people are more accustomed to phone calls than emails, and perhaps don’t take such queries as seriously as phone calls
- PR people aren’t really doing all that much with the web to enhance their media relations, and are probably too embarrassed to admit it
- PR people are former journalists who like to pick and choose what they respond to and what they write about
That’s a very much boiled-down assessment. I’d say point No. 3 rings true for many of us. We’re struggling to deal with this new world of new media, even when writers from old media (like printed publications, such as University Business) are using the new media to communicate, conduct interviews and gather information.
Karine received some thoughtful comments from her readers. Some of those comments paint a less-than-flattering portrait of our ilk. But maybe some of that criticism is deserved.
Karine states that our web folks are better at responding to such queries than those of us with a PR background. Maybe it’s just that they’re more comfortable with the medium. As a former webmaster, I know how inundated they can be with online requests, and how they take the time to respond to as many as possible. So maybe it’s the nature of their work versus the nature of our work.
Or maybe it’s something else.
Power outage on campus
It’s crisis communications time at UMR, where most of the campus is without power. I work in one of the few buildings on campus that still have electricity and web access.
The outage occurred last night — ironically, during a campus celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. I got the call from our facilities director around 1 a.m.
Classes are cancelled this morning, and likely will be this afternoon.