Posted by Brad, CEO
I once heard someone say “There are only two reasons that people go online. To get information, and to be entertained.” That might have been the case in the earlier days of the Internet, but in recent years I believe a third has joined these two: connect with others.
When you’re thinking about that new project this summer, new video, new site, new Facebook Page, whatever it is…. reach the trifecta.
- Give Information
- Entertain
- Allow Connections/Conversation
When you think about what you’re currently doing, which of these do you hit? (Or is it like the old adage “Cheap, Good and Fast… choose two”?). When you create something that accomplishes all three, the trifecta, watch what happens. It’s not easy, but it’s worth the extra effort. Doing great things always takes more work.
Posted by Howard Kang, Ignition Officer
Want to know how to consistently engage well online? Want to know how you should respond to comments, craft great e-mails, know great, valuable and relevant content to post, etc.? The solution isn’t as hard as you imagine. In fact I can fit it into three words (technically, two): face to face.
What do I mean by face to face? Imagine every scenario as if you’re standing with whoever you’re talking to face to face. How would you talk to them? What would you share with them? What would your tone be? What would you try to express? Getting into that mindset helps us understand how to write to our audience. I think sometimes we get caught up in the thought that we’re communicating with technologies instead of people. Well, I’ll just break that myth right now – we’re talking with people not computers.I think Robert W. Bly, a great copywriter puts it well here:
“The Internet has not changed human nature, nor does people’s buying psychology change simply because they are reading your message online instead of offline.”
I agree and disagree with what he said. The message definitely needs to match the medium (as the social web has shifted the way we communicate), but his argument stands where he contends that at the end of the day, we’re talking with people and human are still humans whether “they read your message online instead of offline.”
The way we would treat people face to face while representing our institution must translate into what we do on the web. When taking time to empathize, understand who we’re talking with, and remembering that we’re talking with people, we will be able to provide better value and authenticity in our communications.
Here are a few examples:
Scenario 1: E-Mail Subject Lines + Body
You’re trying to craft a great e-mail and you want it to really grab attention and provide great information in the body. You consider having a subject line IN ALL CAPS. It grabs attention, looks different and also signifies importance and urgency. The face to face rule translates to a different scenario. I am standing in front of you and I’m shouting, “I HAVE AN IMPORTANT THING TO TELL YOU!” In real life when somebody you don’t know well shouts at you it’s rarely positive. In fact, most strangers that have yelled at me have been one of two things: crazy or having a really bad day.
Now, onto the body. You’re traditionally told that the body of the e-mail has to be really short because nobody wants to pay attention and they just want short spurts of information in one bite. Face to face speaks a bit to the contrary. If somebody is telling you something truly valuable and interesting, would you not pay attention? Would you not want the whole story and seek more information? Also, consider how face to face interaction works. You understand the person and what would be interesting and tangible for them.
Thinking face to face dictates that our e-mail subject line is personal, engaging and draws people in through sparking curiosity. Within the body of the e-mail face to face says that the content depends on who we’re talking with. When a story or conversation provides value, is interesting, or entertaining we pay attention. Being strictly sold to in person usually isn’t acceptable. We need to build relationships first, correct? Then it isn’t appropriate just because it’s an e-mail.
Scenario 2: Responding to Facebook Comments
Somebody post to your Facebook Fan Pages wall, “I just got my acceptance!!! I’m really excited to come here this fall!!!” Many administrators of fan pages don’t respond. From the face to face perspective, that’s like somebody coming into your office, exclaiming their excitement, and being ignored. That isn’t acceptable.
What about questions that come in? If somebody asked you about clubs on your campus, would you point them to a brochure or would you acknowledge them, talk to them, and provide them some resources to turn to?
Scenario 3: Negative Feedback
Imagine how you would respond if somebody was fuming and angry in your office. How would you respond? Likely you would be authentic, acknowledge the situation, and do what you could to make it better. The same applies for online communication.
Face to face will not always guarantee success, but I think it puts us in the best mindset possible when engaging online. What are your thoughts and experiences? Do you agree?
Posted by Brad, CEO
Well, Facebook is at it again. Their latest change (as usual) has ruffled some feathers, most notably page administrators in higher education. Facebook previously allowed Pages to open to a specific tab if you weren’t a Fan (or hadn’t ‘Liked’ it) already. Once you Liked the page, you then landed on the Wall. This allowed institutions to create custom landing tabs, which we’ve previously used with clients to successfully promote events and deadlines, as well as custom FBML tabs that embed content and request information forms.
But that’s changed. Now, unless you have 10,000 Likes or work with an ad representative at Facebook (a.k.a. spend the big bucks), you’ve lost that option. Joe at BlueFuego tapped into the most comprehensive Facebook Pages research in higher ed to see who will be affected by this change. He took out the 500 largest pages of our research sample and put together this nice visual to show you who’s losing their custom landing tab, and what they’ll be missing out on now.
Note: We’re not giving up on Pages in lieu of applications or other features yet. The value (and cost!) of Pages compared to other options still wins, in our opinion.
What are your thoughts on this? Leave a comment below!
To see this embedded Slideshare, you’ll need to be on our blog. Click here to view.
Posted by Howard Kang, Ignition Officer
Back in March I decided to go on foursquare and Gowalla tours of Harvard’s campus while I was in Boston visiting clients. I’ve never been to Harvard’s campus, so I thought it’d be the perfect opportunity to understand the perspective of a prospective student.
I’ll share my experience with you and what I learned from it all.
I’ll go ahead and say it. Location-based network tours by themselves are not effective or practical. If that’s your plan for innovative marketing, you’re more concerned with new trends vs. reaching students. Here’s why.
The image above shows where the spots for the Harvard Yard tour on Gowalla are laid out. (Foursquare doesn’t provide trips, but has a badge you can earn. Foursquare isn’t really designed for trips as it’s only location based to a certain extent, whereas Gowalla uses a precise location.)
So tell me honestly, do you think a high school student, completely unfamiliar with the campus would be able to easily navigate through these spots they’ve never seen or been to on campus with just this information? Me neither.
First issue. Gowalla does not layout a logical path for the tour. It merely provides you with the location, spots included in the tour, and approximately how many directional meters the spot is from you. If a student is completely unfamiliar with the campus (as I was), the only way to navigate from path to path is to pull up the spot, map myself there on my iPhone through maps, follow the direction to the spot (and hope the GPS locates me accurately), open Gowalla, check-in, navigate to the trip again, and start the process over again. Not exactly an easy or intuitive process. I also didn’t really know what the buildings looked like unless it was a featured spot and had a special icon (Gowalla has since added a photos feature in April which changes this) so I really didn’t know exactly where things were. (Oh, and perhaps we should have started with the fact that both tools have an extremely limited user base at this point, so the odds that your audience is using the tool to begin with is very slim.)
Additionally, GPS in mobile devices can often be unreliable when pinpointing exact locations. Gowalla users often complain about being unable to check-in to places due to their location being read as slightly off. In-fact I faced that problem while on my “tour.” I literally was touching the John Harvard statue and my phone could not locate me. I could check-in with foursquare because foursquare is quite lenient with the radius one can check-in from, but I had to recalibrate my GPS several times before I was located.
Beyond the technical glitches that hindered me, I ultimately gained little from the “tour.” The campus tour can be the deciding factor in many cases for prospective students. It’s their opportunity to get a feel for the people on campus, the culture, the lifestyle, the steps they’ll be walking, even the smell. Using a mobile device to take your tour ultimately serves as a distraction. I spent my time looking down at my phone figuring out if I was in the correct placement to even notice what was going on around me. Also, without a knowledgeable voice to look to, I was left to learn about the campus from the short sentences the descriptions told me. Essentially, what makes the campus tour special revolves around the human connection. Students want to be able to experience the campus enough to be able to say, “Hey, I can really see myself here.” If your tour guides are telling prospective students a collection of statistics that you can find on your website, that doesn’t cut it. If that’s the case, your prospective students probably will benefit more from NOT paying attention and watching the current students. A mobile phone tour by itself can’t provide that, it actually detracts from the experience (vs. walking around alone). The less technological version of a location-based network tour is a checklist of locations on a piece of paper and going through campus with that by yourself. Before mobile phones, would you trust that to represent your campus?
Harvard partnered with foursquare to encourage current students and faculty to go explore and do more on and around campus. Prospective students can’t compete for mayorships on campus (a large driving point for foursquare) as they will not be on campus everyday like current students.
Now, am I saying there’s no place for location-based networks in Higher Ed? Absolutely not. I’m simply saying, as always, “Chase the goals, not the tools.” Don’t use foursquare and Gowalla just because it’s “trendy” and “hip” if you don’t have goals or strategy to back up the time you’re expending to create these tours. Gowalla and foursquare can be used creatively to augment the traditional tour as well as help create memories (which have huge power), but again, does not work by itself.
I encourage you to go and try a location based campus tour from the eyes of an unfamiliar prospective students yourself and share your thoughts. Feel free to share your thoughts below!
Posted by Howard Kang, Ignition Officer
KISS – The usability mantra, the creed of the web designer, the secret of marketing…we’ve already heard it all before.
It’s one of those messages that gets drilled home so much to the point that it becomes noise and we forget about it; …not so fast.
These tools available on the social web…have you remembered to K-I-S-S? Have you gotten lost in the buzz and forgotten the simple things? I know I have.
We do get lost in the “coolness” of it all don’t we? Looking around at what others have accomplished, what we think is possible, and though we don’t admit it…we really do care more about the numbers when we lead on.
When’s the last time we heard somebody say something like, “Oh, the web is great for amplifying a message via word of mouth.” Probably last year because that’s when there were a bunch of buzzwords about word of mouth floating around. Now that message has been stripped down to, “Oh, the web is great for amplifying a message.”
On the most basic level, we love the social web because it helps us connect with other humans (people behind brands/universities/etc. included). That human connection helps us build relationships, along with buzz, and connects us in a community. It doesn’t exist solely to help amplify your message, just to make your brand more popular, or anything along those lines. Having a Facebook Fan Page, does not give you the “license to spam” as Joe puts it.
When we remember our roots, remember what enchanted us so much about communicating on the web, we have the greatest success. People miss the simple things. So here’s your friendly reminder…
Keep it simple, stupid. 
