Mark Greenfield

I am a huge fan of the socialnomics videos and finally found the time this week to read the book.  socialnomics – how social media transforms the way we live and do business, written by Erik Qualman, is an excellent read and provides many great takeaways on why social media matters, and many of these takeaways are applicable to higher ed.  (More information is available at http://socialnomics.net/)

One of the key maxims in the book is that spending time on social media sites will actually increase your productivity.  While this may seem counter-intuitive to most, I agree with this assessment.  As I have said many times, Twitter is my most important professional development tool, and I depend heavily on my social graph to filter the signal from the noise.

Another key maxim of the book is that the winners in the world of social media are organizations that provide a great product or service (or in the case of higher ed, a great educational experience). In many ways social media is the proverbial canary in the coal mine.  At the end of the day, it’s not about the quality of the latest marketing campaign, it’s about the quality of the institution.  I would like to see more colleges and universities focus on improving the experience for their students, and less time worrying about the “brand”.

Qualman also talks about the importance of “One Message” which is also applicable to higher ed.  Every institution needs to understand what it stands for, be able to explain it in a few short words free of marketing hype, and understand how this differentiates the institution from competitors.  I’m not talking tag lines here, I’m talking about straight forward language that prospective students and their parents can understand.

Other key takeaways include:

• What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube. There are no secrets.  We are living in a world of glass houses.
• Speed wins – you need to be nimble and not afraid to make mistakes (a tough challenge for most higher ed institutions where we form committees to decide what committees we need).
• Customers now have the ability to respond right at the point of frustration.
• To effectively leverage the social graph, you need to make your content easily transferable. Any hurdle, no matter how small, can kill potential distribution (the end of walled gardens).
• You need to do more than listen, you need to act.
• Ineffective organizations view negative posts as a nuisance. Effective organizations relish critical online feedback.
• The popular belief that people only take the time to post something bad is simply not true.

You can follow Erik Qualman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/equalman.  I am also moving forward with creating a higher ed version of his Social Media ROI video.  Details will be posted here in the next couple of days.  Stay tuned.

I came across this great video on Seth Godin’s blog. To get the full effect, take a look at the video before reading the remainder of this post. The video lasts 1:09.

One of my favorite ideas from the book Don’t Make me Think is tunnel vision. From Chapter Two, the first Fact of Life is that we don’t read web pages, we scan them. We are in a hurry. Web users are like sharks who need to keep moving or they will die. We don’t look at an entire web page, we focus on the task at hand or our personal interests. Everything else is white noise. For those of you who haven’t read the book, here is a link to Don’t Make Me Think – Chapter Two, including an illustration of what designers build and what users see.

So think twice about all the extra bells and whistles you add to your designs. IMHO, the simpler the better.

As I travel giving presentations, I consistently hear positive feedback about my book recommendations. People are always anxious to see what I’ve been reading and how it relates to higher education web development. So I’ve decided to open a bookstore utilizing Amazon’s astore affiliate program.

Here are some things you should know about the store:

• The URL for the bookstore is http://astore.amazon.com/markagreenfie-20
• I will only list books that I have read and recommend.  Most of what I read these days takes the “50,000 foot view” of the impact and future of the web.  You won’t find books on the day-to-day creation of web sites.  There are plenty of other resources out there for these.
• For sending customers to Amazon, I will recieve a modest referral fee (approximately 4%). Any revenue I generate from the bookstore will be reinvested into my web site and presentations.
• Purchasing a book from my bookstore replicates the experience from buying directly from Amazon. The books are the same price, the security is the same,  the process is the same, etc.
• If you purchase anything it is completely anonymous. I will have no details of who you are or anything about your amazon account
• If you end up purchasing other items from Amazon after starting out at my bookstore, I may get a referral fee for those as well.

For future reference, I have created a link at the top margin in the left column of my site. There is a link to the bookstore along with an image of my latest featured book. I also plan on making book reviews a regular feature of my site.