Thursday, May 17, 2007
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Easy Mac Death Metal Update
Back when the somewhat scatalogical student production "Easy Mac Death Metal" had 22 hits, I predicted it would do well.
It has. In one month, it has nearly 2,000 views. Now, we can argue over whether that's successful for a YouTube video or not, but it's significantly more views than the high-priced The Undergraduate video by The University of Florida has gotten in over eight months. And this is a video shot in 10 minutes with no marketing or promotion of any kind.
Why does it work? Just look at the title. It taps into broad pop culture themes.
When I found Easy Mac Death Metal, I posted it to a music mailing list I'm on. It's a small list, but it easily reached 40 people. And those 40 people are all different ages, with different social networks: it seeded into a dozen other networks.
I'll say it again: the secret with viral video is your prime audience is not your targets, but your carriers. (And I apologize for that sounding so marketing-like, but it's true). Figure out what people will enjoy receiving, and then work from there. If something is truly viral, what you're selling will be irrelevant to 99% of the people that forward the video. Repect them and keep that out of their way.
It has. In one month, it has nearly 2,000 views. Now, we can argue over whether that's successful for a YouTube video or not, but it's significantly more views than the high-priced The Undergraduate video by The University of Florida has gotten in over eight months. And this is a video shot in 10 minutes with no marketing or promotion of any kind.
Why does it work? Just look at the title. It taps into broad pop culture themes.
When I found Easy Mac Death Metal, I posted it to a music mailing list I'm on. It's a small list, but it easily reached 40 people. And those 40 people are all different ages, with different social networks: it seeded into a dozen other networks.
I'll say it again: the secret with viral video is your prime audience is not your targets, but your carriers. (And I apologize for that sounding so marketing-like, but it's true). Figure out what people will enjoy receiving, and then work from there. If something is truly viral, what you're selling will be irrelevant to 99% of the people that forward the video. Repect them and keep that out of their way.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Friction
As some of you know, political blogging is a hobby of mine. I run a blog called Blue Hampshire, which is kind of odd because I'm not that political a person, really. I was angry about how some stuff was going in Iraq, so I started local blogging with a few others. And no one else was doing it, and people seemed to like it, so we kept doing it.
We get a lot of coverage from multiple places. We get coverage from other websites, and coverage from the traditional media.
Here's the interesting thing to me: when we get covered by something like the Daily Kos blog, which puts a link in their text to us, we get a huge increase in traffic. Thousands of new visitors.
But when we get covered by the AP feed, in something like 176 papers across America, we get barely any people coming to the site. Why? Because the AP does not traditionally provide web links in their stories.
Last night this happened on a massive scale. After the debates, CNN covered our blog. They said the name, they showed the big logo with the name, they apparently talked about a couple of comments on it. It was portrayed as a major progressive blog.
Millions of people were watching that. All these people had been watching the debates, the Democratic debates, so this would be our ideal audience: left-leaning political junkies. Millions of them.
How many hits do you think we got off of that?
About 40 hits.
That's right -- an audience of millions and we got less hits than if we were mentioned in some random person's blog.
This is the concept of friction -- how many steps seperate impulse from action. The Average Viewer of CNN is not in front of their computer while they watch. They see the blog, they are interested; but to check it out they have to turn on their computer, fire up the browser and google "Blue Hampshire".
It seems so small a set of steps. But it's huge. The friction in that process takes millions of viewers and instantly funnels them down to forty visitors.
So, if you think that a newspaper article is going to provide a flood of visitors to your site, think again. A well placed comment on a forum can get more people to your site than a mention in the Boston Globe. A well written blog entry can get you more hits than CNN.
So here's a couple questions: why aren't you out conversing with people that can link to you? Why aren't you blogging? Why are you hoping for that Boston Globe article when you can be just as effective without them?
Find where your audience is surfing. Offer them something they want. Provide a link. And watch what happens.
We get a lot of coverage from multiple places. We get coverage from other websites, and coverage from the traditional media.
Here's the interesting thing to me: when we get covered by something like the Daily Kos blog, which puts a link in their text to us, we get a huge increase in traffic. Thousands of new visitors.
But when we get covered by the AP feed, in something like 176 papers across America, we get barely any people coming to the site. Why? Because the AP does not traditionally provide web links in their stories.
Last night this happened on a massive scale. After the debates, CNN covered our blog. They said the name, they showed the big logo with the name, they apparently talked about a couple of comments on it. It was portrayed as a major progressive blog.
Millions of people were watching that. All these people had been watching the debates, the Democratic debates, so this would be our ideal audience: left-leaning political junkies. Millions of them.
How many hits do you think we got off of that?
About 40 hits.
That's right -- an audience of millions and we got less hits than if we were mentioned in some random person's blog.
This is the concept of friction -- how many steps seperate impulse from action. The Average Viewer of CNN is not in front of their computer while they watch. They see the blog, they are interested; but to check it out they have to turn on their computer, fire up the browser and google "Blue Hampshire".
It seems so small a set of steps. But it's huge. The friction in that process takes millions of viewers and instantly funnels them down to forty visitors.
So, if you think that a newspaper article is going to provide a flood of visitors to your site, think again. A well placed comment on a forum can get more people to your site than a mention in the Boston Globe. A well written blog entry can get you more hits than CNN.
So here's a couple questions: why aren't you out conversing with people that can link to you? Why aren't you blogging? Why are you hoping for that Boston Globe article when you can be just as effective without them?
Find where your audience is surfing. Offer them something they want. Provide a link. And watch what happens.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Blackberry and AlertFind
From ComputerWorld, E-mail alerts may not be best bet in an emergency like Va. Tech shooting:
And by an odd bit of synchronicity, this article appeared in the same electronic issue:
In Keene, it's probably important to note that U.S. Celluar had a massive outage last St. Patrick's Day, as all our students messaged each other they were back from Spring Break. The system also crashed during Pumpkin Fest as everyone mailed each other pictures of pumpkins.
I'm not saying we shouldn't investigate the option mentioned in the first article. Far from it. But we should keep in mind that a silver bullet solution is also a single point of failure.
So while discussions on campus-wide communications systems move forward in other departments, I'm going to be looking at expanding our toolbox of options. Small little initiatives to expand our ability to tap into extant student networks when we need to. Stuff to complement any larger initiatives we may be looking at.
Any suggestions?
Casey Paquet, the Web manager at Eckerd College, a liberal arts school in St. Petersburg, Fla., said Eckerd deployed an emergency notification system from MessageOne Inc. a year ago to better protect students in case of hurricanes and other weather emergencies. The AlertFind system allows the school to send custom on-the-fly alerts instantly to its 2,200 students, faculty and staff members during any emergency, Paquet said.
And by an odd bit of synchronicity, this article appeared in the same electronic issue:
The BlackBerry wireless e-mail service from Research In Motion Ltd. appears to have suffered a widespread outage that started last night in the U.S.
...
New York television news channel NewsChannel4 reported last night that the problem affected "all users in the Western hemisphere."
However, comments from operators in Asia and Europe, as well as postings to the BlackBerry Forums, suggested that the problem may be limited to North America.
"Officials with RIM said they are trying to reset the system and told NewsChannel4 that they are concerned that the backlog of data, which will rush through when it comes back on line, could cause a bigger problem," the news channel reported on its Web site.
RIM officials advised people who use Blackberry as a major way of communications to make back-up plans, the channel reported.
As we go forward with our crisis communication plan, we should keep in mind that a key feature of all successful natural communication systems is redundacy. It's not only about getting the right modes of communication, it's about getting enough modes of communication.
In Keene, it's probably important to note that U.S. Celluar had a massive outage last St. Patrick's Day, as all our students messaged each other they were back from Spring Break. The system also crashed during Pumpkin Fest as everyone mailed each other pictures of pumpkins.
I'm not saying we shouldn't investigate the option mentioned in the first article. Far from it. But we should keep in mind that a silver bullet solution is also a single point of failure.
So while discussions on campus-wide communications systems move forward in other departments, I'm going to be looking at expanding our toolbox of options. Small little initiatives to expand our ability to tap into extant student networks when we need to. Stuff to complement any larger initiatives we may be looking at.
Any suggestions?
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Seth Godin on College Admissions
Applying his notion of "The Dip" to College Journal's recent article Summer Is Time To Polish Resumes, Seth says this:
I wish I could bottle that up and send it to every high school junior.
For right now, the key lesson is this: colleges (the most coveted ones, anyway) are picky. That means they have a choice. And given a choice, they always do the same thing: they pick the best in the world. It's quite a Dip, one that most students ought to reject in my opinion. Instead, egged on by guidance counselors with a vested interest and parents who mean well but don't see the problem, they throw themselves into the system, almost certain to get stuck in the Dip instead of playing a different game altogether.
The opportunity for 95% of the student body is this: reject the idea of being almost good enough to get in to Harvard and embrace the idea of being extraordinarily good at something else.
I wish I could bottle that up and send it to every high school junior.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
The Third Man
I'm fundamentally interested in the psychology of marketing. I've also got a bit of a political bent.
That makes this article one of the most delightful reads of the past several weeks.
Read it, and then think to yourself: We know our competitors, but who is that all important third candidate that sets the frame?
It's probably more important than you think.
That makes this article one of the most delightful reads of the past several weeks.
Read it, and then think to yourself: We know our competitors, but who is that all important third candidate that sets the frame?
It's probably more important than you think.
Friday, March 30, 2007
It's just starting to sink in
If ALL Head Lemur's accounts were hacked, as he claims, then the real celebrity attacked here was Head Lemur, and that was always the point: to discredit and destroy him entirely.
Under this analysis, what confused the issue was the mean, but not over-the-line remarks made on the blog as a matter of course.
But if Head Lemur, and not Kathy Sierra was the target of the attacks, that changes things entirely.
So, that is to say, contrary to what I said below about this settling down, this is just getting started.
My remarks about celebrity stand, though.
Under this analysis, what confused the issue was the mean, but not over-the-line remarks made on the blog as a matter of course.
But if Head Lemur, and not Kathy Sierra was the target of the attacks, that changes things entirely.
So, that is to say, contrary to what I said below about this settling down, this is just getting started.
My remarks about celebrity stand, though.
Celebrity was at the root of the Kathy Sierra incident
So the firestorm around the Kathy Sierra incident seems to be dying down, and a couple things are clear.
First, Chris Locke is a bit of a jerk. He has poor judgment on when to pull a site. His brawling mannerism does not bring out the best in people. And he doesn't get the the misogyny thing. At all.
That's probably about it on Chris Locke. As advertised, he's brilliant, and he's not nice.
And Allen, in case you haven't heard, was hacked and had nothing to do with the comments either.
So the initial question Kathy asked (how could A-list people do such a thing) has been answered. They didn't.
Still, as a person that runs a number of online communities, I'm interested in why this happens, again and again, regardless of whether the perpetrators are A-List or B-list or just plain trolls. People have been saying it's anonymity that's the problem.
Well, true enough. There's a good linky summary of that issue here. And any administrator of a community site knows the disproportiate time they have to spend booting out trolls. The discussion of how to solve that has been going on a long time. It will continue.
What interests me about the incident, though, is not the overdone question of anonymity. The part that interests me is the aspect of celebrity.
Celebrity is a form of dehumanification. And during the height of the Age of Broadcast, we somehow come to believe that enduring vicious personal slurs was part and parcel of that dehumanification. When celebrities were a gang of 1000 millionaires, that was passable. Not right, but passable.
In a Web 2.0 world where everyone is a celebrity, it becomes a problem. Remarks about offing David Hasselhoff may be seen as rebelling agains the idea of Baywatch and bad pop records. Do remarks about offing Kathy Sierra rebel against the idea of Kathy Sierra? And where is the line?
Michelle Malkin is a celebrity, and an unlikeable one at that. Here's her take on the situation. So do we draw the line of shock under Malkin or over her? At what point do you become famous enough that you are expected to take this stuff in stride? At what point were you abrasive enough, or wrong enough you were asking for it?
This problem will only get worse. I'm a celebrity. My wife is a celebrity. Everyone with a MySpace page is a potential celebrity. You're a celebrity.
We got through the Age of Broadcast with one set of rules for celebrities and one set for rules for us. Celebrities were asked to recognize attacks just came with being in the public eye.
As that distinction fades, it's time to reevaluate that model.
First, Chris Locke is a bit of a jerk. He has poor judgment on when to pull a site. His brawling mannerism does not bring out the best in people. And he doesn't get the the misogyny thing. At all.
That's probably about it on Chris Locke. As advertised, he's brilliant, and he's not nice.
And Allen, in case you haven't heard, was hacked and had nothing to do with the comments either.
So the initial question Kathy asked (how could A-list people do such a thing) has been answered. They didn't.
Still, as a person that runs a number of online communities, I'm interested in why this happens, again and again, regardless of whether the perpetrators are A-List or B-list or just plain trolls. People have been saying it's anonymity that's the problem.
Well, true enough. There's a good linky summary of that issue here. And any administrator of a community site knows the disproportiate time they have to spend booting out trolls. The discussion of how to solve that has been going on a long time. It will continue.
What interests me about the incident, though, is not the overdone question of anonymity. The part that interests me is the aspect of celebrity.
Celebrity is a form of dehumanification. And during the height of the Age of Broadcast, we somehow come to believe that enduring vicious personal slurs was part and parcel of that dehumanification. When celebrities were a gang of 1000 millionaires, that was passable. Not right, but passable.
In a Web 2.0 world where everyone is a celebrity, it becomes a problem. Remarks about offing David Hasselhoff may be seen as rebelling agains the idea of Baywatch and bad pop records. Do remarks about offing Kathy Sierra rebel against the idea of Kathy Sierra? And where is the line?
Michelle Malkin is a celebrity, and an unlikeable one at that. Here's her take on the situation. So do we draw the line of shock under Malkin or over her? At what point do you become famous enough that you are expected to take this stuff in stride? At what point were you abrasive enough, or wrong enough you were asking for it?
This problem will only get worse. I'm a celebrity. My wife is a celebrity. Everyone with a MySpace page is a potential celebrity. You're a celebrity.
We got through the Age of Broadcast with one set of rules for celebrities and one set for rules for us. Celebrities were asked to recognize attacks just came with being in the public eye.
As that distinction fades, it's time to reevaluate that model.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Human-ness and All Too Human-ness
This is disturbing. And until they figure out who did it, I've removed Chris Locke links from this site.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Go Daddy, and hiding as a marketing strategy
Go Daddy went down Sunday. For me it was particularly painful since a political blog I am involved with was at that very moment hosting a live-blog session with a State Senator.
And what was Go Daddy's reaction to one of the biggest DNS outages in internet history?
Silence.
It was barely announced on their blog. And partially because Digg-ers duped more than they digged, the story never got traction in real time.
So, for the moment, the silence strategy seems to be working for them. But if your site went down too, you should post about it. Building the whisper to a roar is the only way to show companies hiding as a marketing strategy is so 1994.
And what was Go Daddy's reaction to one of the biggest DNS outages in internet history?
Silence.
It was barely announced on their blog. And partially because Digg-ers duped more than they digged, the story never got traction in real time.
So, for the moment, the silence strategy seems to be working for them. But if your site went down too, you should post about it. Building the whisper to a roar is the only way to show companies hiding as a marketing strategy is so 1994.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Mizzou, Neo-Nazis, and Facebook protests
If you didn't hear about the Neo-Nazi protest at Mizzou, you can read rather mundane accounts of it here, or, for much better coverage, you can see the photos on Facebook, or look at the student reaction.
The most interesting thing to me is that the student group PROTEST NAZI HATE MARCH at Mizzou called for no protest at all.
Apparently the Facebook group was started to organize a protest. However, Mizzou, through traditional channels, let the students know that not attending the event was the best strategy:
This information appears to have been disseminated to the students through multiple channels, including the Facebook group.
As you can see from the photos, it didn't stop a clash between the Neo-Nazis and the police, and there appears to have still been a small counter-protest, but things could have gone much much worse.
I'd be interested to know if the administration coordinated at all with the Facebook group creators, but I'm not that ambitious. If someone reading this has more information, let me know.
The most interesting thing to me is that the student group PROTEST NAZI HATE MARCH at Mizzou called for no protest at all.
Apparently the Facebook group was started to organize a protest. However, Mizzou, through traditional channels, let the students know that not attending the event was the best strategy:
This weekend, Columbia will play host to the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group, that has obtained a permit to hold a march in downtown Columbia. According to Larry Brown, an assistant professor in the University of Missouri-Columbia Department of Geography and an expert in hate groups, the best plan is to ignore the group and spend time engaged in positive activity.
"These groups thrive on people who will respond emotionally," Brown said. "They will come with racial slurs, derogatory comments and the swastika. Their whole attitude will be to get folks to respond to them in a very angry way. Then they go away and let the community disintegrate.
"A good strategy is to not go to the march, because you don't know how you might emotionally respond. The other strategy is to go the alternative events happening in the community. Find some place positive to go, or stay back, and be quiet, peaceful and observant. Do not return violence for violence."
This information appears to have been disseminated to the students through multiple channels, including the Facebook group.
As you can see from the photos, it didn't stop a clash between the Neo-Nazis and the police, and there appears to have still been a small counter-protest, but things could have gone much much worse.
I'd be interested to know if the administration coordinated at all with the Facebook group creators, but I'm not that ambitious. If someone reading this has more information, let me know.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
When YouTube is TheyTube
I have my College RSS pointed to YouTube (thanks Karine!), and I end up watching the first 10 seconds of a lot of student work.
Today this Easy Mac Death Metal piece comes over the feed, produced by a group of students that seem to produce a new video every couple days.
The piece begins with a number of jokes about farting and defecation, and then proceeds to what actually is a pretty amusing interpretation of a Death Metal song as being about someone stealing your Mac & Cheese.
It's nothing I would ever want my institution's stamp on, but my guess is the video will get more hits than anything else Keene State has produced (it's got 22 hits as of this writing, but just watch).
Interesting question -- we all know how to catch the breeze when something we are unabashedly proud of goes viral, and we know how to get a crisis plan ready if something undeniably negative may be floating to the top of YouTube.
But if I know something like this might go viral, does that help me at all? I imagine not. A video that simultaneously says some of our students are enterprising, creative, funny, and overly obsessed with defecatory humor is probably just unusable down to the level of its DNA.
But I'm happy to hear a counter-argument. Could such talent be harnessed for the good of the college? And if so, how?
Today this Easy Mac Death Metal piece comes over the feed, produced by a group of students that seem to produce a new video every couple days.
The piece begins with a number of jokes about farting and defecation, and then proceeds to what actually is a pretty amusing interpretation of a Death Metal song as being about someone stealing your Mac & Cheese.
It's nothing I would ever want my institution's stamp on, but my guess is the video will get more hits than anything else Keene State has produced (it's got 22 hits as of this writing, but just watch).
Interesting question -- we all know how to catch the breeze when something we are unabashedly proud of goes viral, and we know how to get a crisis plan ready if something undeniably negative may be floating to the top of YouTube.
But if I know something like this might go viral, does that help me at all? I imagine not. A video that simultaneously says some of our students are enterprising, creative, funny, and overly obsessed with defecatory humor is probably just unusable down to the level of its DNA.
But I'm happy to hear a counter-argument. Could such talent be harnessed for the good of the college? And if so, how?
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Astroturfing to become illegal in Europe
There's a sleazy side to all business movements, and PR 2.0 is no exception. In the new world of social marketing one such practice is "astroturfing", the process of faking grassroots support through impersonating a consumer.
Now the Europeans have made this practice illegal, starting the end of this year. And it's my hope that America will soon follow.
How strict are the regulations? Well, even an author that reviews his own book on Amazon under a pseudonym would fall afoul of them, and could be taken to court.
I'm more than a little familiar with astroturfing: in the last election I exposed a House Representative's staffer's attempt to astroturf my personal political blog, which did not work out so well for anybody.
The truth is though that it's always tempting to fudge the line: I sympathize with the Congressonal staffer, who thought he was using every means at his disposal, and had lost track of what this new media world is about.
So it's worth remembering the core of PR 2.0:
1) Talk in your own voice
2) Engage with the world
3) Embrace the fishbowl
4) Create compelling content, not compelling cases
The important point re: astroturfing is right there at the top. Talk in your own voice. Always. Primarily, that means to not hide behind the the "voice of the institution": realize that trust in this new world is personal, and that you as Mike Caulfield are far more trustworthy than your institution. Trust sticks to people, not buildings.
If you are Mike Caulfield, then be Mike Caulfield. It's really that simple.
The flip side of that first point is of course to not trade the voice of the anonymous institution for anonymity, or worse, for a charade.
I always think back on that Policy Director coming on my site back before the election and pretending to be a Democratic Activist with "doubts" about whether this guy was beatable. The real problem was it was too clever by half.
Had he come on and said, I'm Charlie Bass' Policy Advisor, and I think you maybe don't understand the compromises we have to make to get things done here...or if he had written a brief argument against minimum wage, as Tad Furtado, Charlie Bass' Policy Director, it would have been striking, and much more effective. Here would have been the Policy Director of my Congressman coming Down-From-The-Mount to discuss this issue with our little blog community. Instead of scandal there would have been engagement. And who knows, maybe they might have won the election.
As we promote our colleges and universities, it is useful to remember the power of the personal and the real over the fabricated.
Talk in your own voice. Always.
It's not just a good idea. It may soon be the law.
Now the Europeans have made this practice illegal, starting the end of this year. And it's my hope that America will soon follow.
How strict are the regulations? Well, even an author that reviews his own book on Amazon under a pseudonym would fall afoul of them, and could be taken to court.
I'm more than a little familiar with astroturfing: in the last election I exposed a House Representative's staffer's attempt to astroturf my personal political blog, which did not work out so well for anybody.
The truth is though that it's always tempting to fudge the line: I sympathize with the Congressonal staffer, who thought he was using every means at his disposal, and had lost track of what this new media world is about.
So it's worth remembering the core of PR 2.0:
1) Talk in your own voice
2) Engage with the world
3) Embrace the fishbowl
4) Create compelling content, not compelling cases
The important point re: astroturfing is right there at the top. Talk in your own voice. Always. Primarily, that means to not hide behind the the "voice of the institution": realize that trust in this new world is personal, and that you as Mike Caulfield are far more trustworthy than your institution. Trust sticks to people, not buildings.
If you are Mike Caulfield, then be Mike Caulfield. It's really that simple.
The flip side of that first point is of course to not trade the voice of the anonymous institution for anonymity, or worse, for a charade.
I always think back on that Policy Director coming on my site back before the election and pretending to be a Democratic Activist with "doubts" about whether this guy was beatable. The real problem was it was too clever by half.
Had he come on and said, I'm Charlie Bass' Policy Advisor, and I think you maybe don't understand the compromises we have to make to get things done here...or if he had written a brief argument against minimum wage, as Tad Furtado, Charlie Bass' Policy Director, it would have been striking, and much more effective. Here would have been the Policy Director of my Congressman coming Down-From-The-Mount to discuss this issue with our little blog community. Instead of scandal there would have been engagement. And who knows, maybe they might have won the election.
As we promote our colleges and universities, it is useful to remember the power of the personal and the real over the fabricated.
Talk in your own voice. Always.
It's not just a good idea. It may soon be the law.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Will Video Save the Newspaper Star?
OK -- now that I've accomplished getting that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day, here's the scoop:
Why? Well, NY Magazine is inclined to blame the broadcast media's 24/7 loops of Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears, which make for a good broadcast strategy, but don't fit well into an on-demand market. In this formulation, producers of print media are more likely to excel in the new world of on-demand video: they understand the nature of the long tail and the attraction of super-local content.
I think the analysis may hold water. Heck, my local newspaper has been running this on-demand news device outside my office for years now...
A study by local media consultant Borrell Associates revealed that newspaper websites that offer online video streaming attract substantial advertising money, much more than their broadcast TV counterparts.
Why? Well, NY Magazine is inclined to blame the broadcast media's 24/7 loops of Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears, which make for a good broadcast strategy, but don't fit well into an on-demand market. In this formulation, producers of print media are more likely to excel in the new world of on-demand video: they understand the nature of the long tail and the attraction of super-local content.
I think the analysis may hold water. Heck, my local newspaper has been running this on-demand news device outside my office for years now...
Friday, February 23, 2007
Tufts on NPR: A triumph of Fax 1.0?
On NPR on the way to work this morning, this story:
Now, I think this is a great idea for applications.
But more than that, this is a great story. NPR essentially just ran a five minute ad for Tufts, saying Tufts cares about how unique you are as an applicant; other schools, not so much.
What's the worth of a story like this, in terms of marketing? How many parents drinking their coffee or stuck in traffic heard this story and thought, you know, my son/daughter should apply there, that sounds more like their sort of place?
Answer: a lot. So that's point one: TradMed still rules the roost.
The second interesting thing to me is this story looks to me like it was offered initially last summer on a standard press release or verbal pitch: both the Boston Globe and Inside HigherEd covered it on the same day, which would be atypical of more PR 2.0 approaches. So that's either a triumph for Fax 1.0 or a triumph for being Tufts.
Probably a bit of both.
So point two: PR 2.0 does not replace the verbal pitch and press release.
Easy lessons. Probably self-obvious. But it's Friday and the week has been long...
If I get a chance I might try to track down the provenance of this story further. I'm particularly interested in whether it's appearance in the summer edition of the Tufts Alumni Magazine resulted in any coverage -- but I'd have to find a mail date for that.
So, Tufts has implemented a new idea: What if instead of writing an essay, students were asked to draw a picture? Or write a short story, about, say, "The Disappearing Professor" or "The End of MTV"?
School officials are now hoping that better questions might result in better answers — and better clues about who students really are.
"Our argument is that the problem has not been lack of creativity in students but lack of creativity in the college admissions process," says Robert Sternberg, dean of arts and sciences at Tufts.
Now, I think this is a great idea for applications.
But more than that, this is a great story. NPR essentially just ran a five minute ad for Tufts, saying Tufts cares about how unique you are as an applicant; other schools, not so much.
What's the worth of a story like this, in terms of marketing? How many parents drinking their coffee or stuck in traffic heard this story and thought, you know, my son/daughter should apply there, that sounds more like their sort of place?
Answer: a lot. So that's point one: TradMed still rules the roost.
The second interesting thing to me is this story looks to me like it was offered initially last summer on a standard press release or verbal pitch: both the Boston Globe and Inside HigherEd covered it on the same day, which would be atypical of more PR 2.0 approaches. So that's either a triumph for Fax 1.0 or a triumph for being Tufts.
Probably a bit of both.
So point two: PR 2.0 does not replace the verbal pitch and press release.
Easy lessons. Probably self-obvious. But it's Friday and the week has been long...
If I get a chance I might try to track down the provenance of this story further. I'm particularly interested in whether it's appearance in the summer edition of the Tufts Alumni Magazine resulted in any coverage -- but I'd have to find a mail date for that.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Wii, Stumbleupon, etc
Had a great time last night pointing my Wii to the new Wii-compatible Stumbleupon Video channel. Saw a ukelele version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and an old recording of that Sesame Street skit where the two monsters improvise jazz ("Bah-da-da-bupp! boo-doop-doo-doo-doo...Oh forget it, either you know it or you don't).
How does this relate to marketing to Millenials? Well, two advantages that traditional TV has had over the internet is that it is
a) A more culturally shared experience, and
b) Semi-ambient and social
And this takes another chunk out of an already dying market.
Is this the same evolution that's been happening all along?
Yep.
What does it mean?
Don't know. But I'm listening to OK Go on Pandora right now, MTV is laying people off, and I spent last night relaxing watching the StumbleUpon Video Music Channel on my Wii while posting at my political blog.
Year of the dynamic playlist, perhaps? Seemed worthy of note...
How does this relate to marketing to Millenials? Well, two advantages that traditional TV has had over the internet is that it is
a) A more culturally shared experience, and
b) Semi-ambient and social
And this takes another chunk out of an already dying market.
Is this the same evolution that's been happening all along?
Yep.
What does it mean?
Don't know. But I'm listening to OK Go on Pandora right now, MTV is laying people off, and I spent last night relaxing watching the StumbleUpon Video Music Channel on my Wii while posting at my political blog.
Year of the dynamic playlist, perhaps? Seemed worthy of note...
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
One Million Common Applications served
The one millionth Common Application has been served.
The big surprise? Use of the Common Application has resulted in no significant increase in the number of colleges students apply to:
This surprises me, and I'd welcome anyone that can explain what keeps the number of apps stable. It seems to me that especially when considering varying amounts of financial awards that it would be in the student's best interest to increase the number of schools to which they apply...
For the record, we do not use the Common Application at my institution.
The big surprise? Use of the Common Application has resulted in no significant increase in the number of colleges students apply to:
While many have feared that the online Common Application would lead to a sharp increase in the number of colleges that students apply to, the average number of colleges of online applicants this year through Common Application is 3.9, a marginal increase from last year’s average of 3.8.
This surprises me, and I'd welcome anyone that can explain what keeps the number of apps stable. It seems to me that especially when considering varying amounts of financial awards that it would be in the student's best interest to increase the number of schools to which they apply...
For the record, we do not use the Common Application at my institution.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)