Mark Greenfield

I have been blogging for several years and the post that received the most attention by far was
Will Higher Ed Websites Become Irrelevant?. I’ve talked about this at recent conferences by sharing the following observation:  In 2005, 100% of my time was spent working on sites within the buffalo.edu domain. Here in the summer of 2008, I spend about 70% of my time working on sites in the buffalo.edu domain.  The remaining time is spent developing our presence on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Ning, etc., time that is well spent.

Jeremiah Owyang’s recent post The Future of the Corporate Website involves People continues to explore the future of corporate web sites. I particularly like the idea of “fluidity”:

“Corporate websites of the future will be less about canned content and more about fluidity. Meaning, the consumer will demand websites that are connected to the ‘users’ and ‘consumers’ personal networks which will promote and instill word of mouth as a best practice for business development and ultimately sales. The infrastructure will be designed in a way that company developed case studies, webinars and such will be replaced by real consumers leaving messages and user created video’s. …”

To stay relevant, higher ed websites will need to focus on authenticity, transparency, and a willingness to cede control to fully leverage the power of social media. And the time has come to think outside the proverbial box. It is no longer about your web site. Instead, it is about your web presence. Information and commentary on your school is no longer confined to your site, but instead lives in numerous places including Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube and countless individual blogs.

Jeremiah Owyang is one of my favorite commentators on Social Media. I have been thinking about his post Web Strategy: How to evolve your irrelevant corporate website for quite some time and if this is applicable to higher ed sites.

The basic premise is that the corporate website (yourcompany.com) is becoming less relevant and marketing is no longer about your domain and Google search results. In the spirit of Cluetrain:

People are tired of the corporate website and all its happy marketing speak, stock photos of smart looking dudes or minority women crowded around the computer raving about your product, the positive press release, the happy customer testimonials, the row of executive portraits, the donations your corporate made to disaster relief, the one-sided view never ends.

The growing trend, especially with the millennial generation, is that decisions are made before people visit the corporate website. This is certainly the case for me. Whether it’s the purchase of a new car, a tennis racket or a bike, I’m making product decisions based on feedback from my peers on consumer rating sites, social networks, discussion forums, etc., not on information from a corporate website.

Owyang goes on to say that in order to stay relevant, future corporate websites will have to have customers building them along with employees. He goes on to say:

The corporate website of the future will be a credible source of opinion and fact, authored by both the corporation and community. The result? A true first-stop community resource where information flows for better products and services.

So my question for you is will this concept apply to higher education websites? Will yourschool.edu become irrelevant? I think it will. Not totally irrelevant, since marketing is just one aspect of a university website (online services and academic support being others.) But as far as marketing the school, we will continue to see more emphasis outside the .edu domain. Think about the numbers of colleges and universities that have created a web presence on Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Ning and Second Life. Progressive higher ed sites have been following Owyang’s advise by providing an open, authentic and transparent view with tools like blogs and wikis.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Will .edu sites become less relevant with the continued growth of Web 2.0 and Social Media? What strategies should we employ to stay relevant? And if prospective students are making their choice on what college to attend using non .edu sites, what sites are they using?

I’ve had several discussions this week about the unique challenges of managing a college or university web site. Sometimes it is easy to get totally consumed with campus politics. One of my favorite quotes is from Henry Kissinger “University politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small”. I’ve made this quote into a poster which I pull out and put on my wall when I need a friendly reminder to rise above the politics.

So my advise is to understand the culture of higher education. Universities are devolved organizations, with individual schools and departments operating with a great deal of autonomy. Don’t waste energy fighting this culture, but learn how to work within it.

The 2008 Horizon report was recently released and as always contains valuable information on the latest technology trends impacting college campuses. The Horizon Report is a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative and identifies emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching and learning. As in previous years, the report identifies six emerging technologies that will likely enter the mainstream within three adoption horizons:

One Year or Less

• Grassroots Video
• Collaborative Webs

Two to Three Years

• Mobile Broadband
• Data Mashups

Four to Five Years

• Collective Intelligence
• Social Operating Systems

Among the critical challenges outlined in the report, one really struck a chord with me:

“It is critical that the academic community as a whole embrace the potential of technologies and practices like those described in this report. Experimentation must be encouraged and supported by policy.” (emphasis mine).

And finally, the report lists seven metatrends that extend out beyond the five year horizon:

1. Evolving approaches to communication between man and machine
2. The collective sharing and generation of knowledge
3. Computing in three dimensions
4. Connecting people via the network
5. Games as pedagogical platforms
6. The shifting of content production to users
7. The evolution of a ubiquitous platform

I was happy to see that this report maps well to my ideas about the top web trends. And be sure to check out the report’s extensive use of del.icio.us tags for additional information.

The game has fundamentally changed. A seismic shift is underway. The social web is here. Dialogue has replaced monologue. The conversation is the message. Communities dominate brands. It’s time to join the conversation.

So how should colleges and universities leverage the full potential of this new paradigm? It’s time to think about creating a new position - the CMO. No, not a Chief Marketing Officer, but a Community Management Officer.

Nathan Gilliatt, the principal at Social Target LLC created an excellent overview of the responsibilities for what he calls social media relations (SMR). He sees SMR “as an interdisciplinary specialty that spans marketing, technology, and Internet culture—three components of any successful strategy for engaging social media.” Here are his summary of the responsibilities:

1. Coordinate the development and implementation of social media engagement strategy and policies, including blogging policy, formal blogger relations programs and social media monitoring programs.
   1. Maintain domain knowledge in social media. Be a resource for others who need to understand new services and their potential impact on the business.
   2. Maintain awareness of company’s activities in social media and contacts for the various activities.
   3. Be an advocate for the understanding of social media and how they affect the company’s marketing and communications activities.
   4. Engage the company’s IT organization to coordinate IT resources and policies with social media strategy.
2. Train functional groups (such as marketing, communications, and HR) on the technology and culture of social media as it relates to their roles.
3. Coordinate company’s tactical response to social media issues.
   1. Consult with internal groups on appropriate responses to social media issues. Advise on the likely response of online communities to the company’s plan.
   2. Coordinate company response to social media crises; track engagement by appropriate groups (internal and external).
4. Serve as the primary contact for external service providers and vendors who support the monitoring of, and engagement with social media.

So I ask - does anyone know of a college or university who has created the position of CMO, Online Community Organizer, or Director of Social Media Relations? Does the above job description need to be altered for higher ed? How would this position relate to the web team?

I predict these positions will be hitting higher ed shortly. I think this would be an exciting job and I can see this as a logical next step in my career.

Recommended Books

• Cluetrain Manefesto
• Communities Dominate Brands
• Join the Conversation
• Meatball Sundae
• Naked Conversations
• Now is Gone

Additional Resources

• Jobs of the future, #1: Online Community Organizer (Seth Godin)
• Defining social media relations (Nathan Gilliatt)
• Understanding the Community/Evangelist Role (Jeremiah Owyang)
• Community Manager Catagory (from Jeremiah Owyang’s Blog)
• Who Can Be a Community Evangelist (Christopher Salazar)
• The emerging role: Community Manager

As I sat watching the results of Super Tuesday last night, I was reminded of one of my favorite books on the Internet and the power of Web 2.0. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Democracy, The Interent, and the Overthrow of Everything) was written by Joe Trippi, the campaign manager for Howard Dean’s presidential run in 2004. My favorite part of the book are his Seven Inviolable, Irrefutable, Ingenious Things Your Business or Institution or Candidate Can Do in the Age of the Internet That Might Keep You from Getting Your A** Kicked But Then Again Might Not:

1. Be First - There is very little about the Internet that is proprietary. I could start a bookstore tomorrow and do everything Amazon does. And you know what? Amazon would still beat me like a dirty rug. … The first everything has a head start in building community. (Rule 1.a: If you’re not going to be the first mover, you’d better be a hell of a lot better.)
2. Keep it moving - Do not be static. The Internet is a liquid medium. It’s amazing how many companies spend $100 million on TV advertising while their $64,000-a-year “web division” consists of the CEO’s twenty-two-year-old Nintendo geek nephew updating the site with a new press release once a month. Don’t let your site be wall paper. Your Internet presence should be an organic, flowing, daily dialogue with your customers.
3. Use an Authentic Voice - The Internet is not a place for safe, vetted corporate communications. We’re not morons. When we get an e-mail from the president of the company, we know it wasn’t really written by him. People would rather get a real e-mail from a real guy in the real mailroom than a phony one from the CEO. Have real people write real stuff.
4. Tell the Truth - The Internet has an inherent transparency. A strong Internet presence is a way to open the doors of the company. But if you invite people in, you’d better be prepared to have them look in the medicine cabinet.
5. Build a community - Create a commons, a town square, a place where people can come together and talk… Get people involved! This is not top-down, one-to-many anymore. The Internet is side-to-side, up-and-down, many-to-many. Use it that way. It’s the dialog, stupid.
6. Cede Control - Once you invite people in, they’re going to want to do more. I know this violates everything you were taught in school, but you have to let go of the old command and control style of business. Let the edges blur between customer and company.
7. Believe Again - The days of condescension toward customers and citizens are over. Democracy is based on the principle that if we give citizens control over their common future, they will choose the best path. The same is true for consumers.

All of this is very applicable to higher ed. I recommend reading the book. Depending on your politics, you will immediately love it or hate it. I suggest putting politics aside and focus on the use of technology.

As we prepare for higher ed web development to get flattened, what is the one thing that can not be outsourced? The answer comes from my colleague Diane Kubarek from Cornell. When I posed this questioned to her during lunch at HighEdWebDev 2007, her immediate answer was institutional knowledge. Knowing the culture of the institution, how things get done, who to go to to solve specific problems, and building relationships around campus are the value that a web professional working on campus brings.

The Boston Globe just published an interesting article called Colleges turn to Web tools in hunt for ‘08 freshmen. While most of the information is not news to higher education web professionals, it is another arrow in the quiver when convincing administrators that Web 2.0 tools are important in student recruitment. I particularly like the emphasis on being authentic:

Students say they are most drawn to features that give them a genuine glimpse of what the college is like and whether they’ll like it.

“This generation is very savvy to media,” said Karen Giannino, of Colgate University admissions. “They see right through the posed photograph.”

Everyone is starting to realize that we have reached the point where the web is more important than the traditional viewbook for prospective students.

The time has come to think outside the proverbial box. It is no longer about your web site. Instead, it is about your web presence. Information and commentary on your school is no longer confined to your site, but instead lives in numerous places including Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube and countless individual blogs.

So free your content. Syndicate it across multiple sites both inside and outside your institution. Monitor your web identity and participate where appropriate.

I just finished reading A University for the 21st Century. The author is James Duderstadt, President Emeritus at the University of Michigan. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the challenges and opportunities for higher education in the new millennium.

I was particularly interested in the last two chapters which addressed many of the issues we discussed at my presentation at HighEdWedDev 2007. Here are some quotes from the book:

• The system of higher education that emerges in the century ahead will almost certainly be far different from today’s. Higher Education will either transform itself or be transformed as financial imperatives, changing societal demands, emerging technologies, and new competitors reshape the knowledge enterprise.
• Most colleges and universities are now looking for ways to control costs and increase productivity.
• In recent years, we have seen an explosion in the number of new competitors in the higher education marketplace. It is estimated that in 1998 the revenues of for-profit and proprietary educational providers were in excess of $3.5 billion and growing rapidly.
• Higher education is an industry ripe for the unbundling of activities. Universities will have to come to terms with what their true strengths are and how those strengths support their strategies - and then be willing to outsource needed capabilities in areas where they do not have a unique advantage.
• Universities are under increasing pressure to spin off or sell or close down parts of their traditional operations in the face of new competition. They may well find it necessary to unbundle their many functions, ranging from admissions to counseling to instruction and certification.

I would add web development to that last list.

Many people who hear my presentation on “Higher Ed Web Development Gets Flattened” leave thinking that none of us will have jobs five years from now. That is not my intention and I don’t believe that will be the case. In fact, I think the opposite is true. The role the web plays on college campuses is undervalued. When the time comes to disaggregate the functions of the university, the forensic accountants will quickly see that the web provides true value and should get more resources, not less. That being said, I do think our jobs will change dramatically. The best approach is to think about this proactively not reactively. To quote Will Rogers - “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”