public relations – Page 47

I’m honored to be presenting at Academic Impressions‘ 2007 Advanced PR Institute, “Developing a Technology-Savvy Communications Approach.” The institute will be held Dec. 3-4 in Austin, Texas. I hope you’ll join me. I’ll be alongside three excellent co-presenters:

Joe Hice, associate VP of marketing and public relations for the University of Florida. I had the pleasure of working with Joe in 2006 at the CASE Annual Conference or Senior Communications and Marketing Professionals, where he talked about the importance of passion in marketing and PR.
Charlie Melichar, VP for public relations and communications at Colgate University and a fellow blogger at Intermedia.
Mary Stagaman, associate VP for external relations at the University of Cincinnati.

Here’s a bit about what to expect, straight from the conference website:

This discussion- and planning-intensive program will help you and your team:

Identify current technology-based communication tools and determine how each may align with your communication needs
Develop a decision-making framework to assess the usefulness of various technologies for your institution by identifying resources and establishing a timeline for implementation
Draft a basic plan for incorporating relevant technologies into your current and future communications initiatives

The institute should be informative, instructional and fun. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be seeking input on what you think should be addressed in the program.

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Now playing: Manu Chao – Besoin de la Lune
via FoxyTunes

Colgate University recently switched its news site over to a blog format, using Movable Type. The university’s news release claims the move will help raise the profile of Colgate news stories (via tagging, etc.) while encouraging more interaction and making the site more usable. Charlie Melichar, Colgate’s vice president for public relations and communications (and a fellow blogger), expounds on those ideas in a recent email:

All Colgate news, from the headlines to our feeds are now being populated by the blog’s content. We’re excited about all the benefits of tagging, categories, flickr photos, feeds, etc. but I think much of the proof will be in the pudding of the comments. I know of plenty of college news sites using blog platforms, but I haven’t yet seen many (any?) fully opened as blogs to this point. So, I think we’re either at the front of the curve or just plain crazy. We shall see.

I applaud Melichar and the entire Colgate PR/comm team for taking this step. It’s something we’ve been talking about on our campus, but we haven’t yet made that leap. It would make sense, though, as we’ve been using Movable Type for our blogs since we launched the first one, Visions, in February 2006. We’ve found MT to be a solid blogging platform. We’ve even been toying with the idea of also moving our news site into Movable Type, as we recently did with our alumni magazine. I’ll be keeping a close watch on Colgate’s news site to see how the new format works.

Regarding comments: What we’ve found is that our posts with the heaviest comment traffic occur when something is either controversial — such as when we announced a proposed new name for our university (44 comments, many of them bordering on hostile) — or something the campus community can rally around, such as when one of our students tried to break a collegiate land-speed record and we asked the campus to post notes of support for the effort (15 comments ensued). I hope the folks at Colgate receive plenty of comments, but remember that even some of the most influential blogs only receive a handful on some posts.