Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Is It Worth Printing?

Whether to print school publications or not has become an old saw. The financial crisis has made fence sitters consider the question more urgently. Harvard recently announced an end to a print version of its course catalog and other publications. I'm not going to tell you whether you should print or not -- who you need to reach and how you need to reach them will dictate that. (Although I have written about this for CASE CURRENTS.) But if you do choose to print, make sure you're giving people something worth printing.

The Best Test
Will they want to keep it? Or is it a throwaway? I was reminded of this when I saw Lois Kelly's post about brag books. The post is about a real consumer product, but the series of books she mentions reminds me of the approach I try to take with viewbooks and case statements.

More than a Brochure
As I write these publications, I want to give people more than a "brochure." My goal is to give them a useful keepsake that tells the institution's story at the same time:
  • For Oglethorpe it was a how-to change the world guide and a collection of personalized maps to Atlanta.
  • For Chestnut Hill Academy it was separate how-to guides to middle school and high school.
  • For William Penn Charter School, the case statement was a series of four little books asking provocative, relevant questions like "How do you define success?" The series became extraordinarily popular. One alum requested copies to give to people at his church.

What I like about these publications and those I admire that others have done (get your hands on the Yale case statement if you can) is that they are highly successful in achieving their goals, but they also intrigue, inform, and entertain their readers. They strive to be worthy of the special institutions for which they have been created.

To print or not to print? There's more than cost to consider when you ask, "Is it worth it?"

Friday, April 24, 2009

Early Adopter in the House

Living with an early adopter of new and social media is one of my professional secret weapons. Not so secret anymore given that I'm posting it here.

I'm married to and work in an office adjacent to Brad Rourke. In terms of new media, this is sort of like being in the advanced math class and sitting next to the class star -- it makes you better but it also shows you what's possible that you're not doing. Brad has been blogging since the 1990s, before the term was invented, and now has a popular city blog, a professional blog, and is experimenting with a micro blog focused on philanthropy. He had one of the first MP3 players (a Rio that held four songs), the first digital cameras and iPods, and a Flip video camera long before even the trendsetters buzzed about it. He was Facebooking and Twittering when it was something only "the kids did." Since then he has incorporated Skype and Seesmic. Now he's helping civic organizations use these tools and the big concepts behind them to further their missions.

What all this means for me is that by osmosis I find myself ahead of the game. I'm more likely to know what's out there before many others do and I get to see someone who's very adept at using these tools figure out how to maximize their potential. Using them myself can be another matter. While I'm no technophobe, I'm not a gearhead either. And coming from a print media background I've always had long lead times and many rounds of edits to get everything just right. So, it goes against my natural impulse to put things in writing on the fly in the way that social media outlets require. But I'm learning. Proximity to the early adopter also means that I can get frustrated when my adoption of these tools is less than smooth. I have to ask for help with simple things even as I see the next new tool coming around the bend.

What I'm learning is to focus in on the tools that are right for me right now, expecting that I will add in more as they make sense for my work and goals. For now, that means daily and frequent use of Facebook (where my professional and personal lives meet), Twitter (only professional), microblog posts fed to Twitter and FB, and, new to me -- a short blog for which I prep a few posts at a time and schedule ahead.

When Brad and I first got married we did a lot of mountain biking. It was new to me but I loved it. The hard work, muscle and focus of climbing the big hills was my favorite part as opposed to zooming down the other side and feeling out of control. Brad would sometimes ride behind me on the downhill, urging me to let go and fly faster. Sometimes I did and sometimes I waved him on around me. Ultimately, we arrived at the same place in our own way.

While you may not be married to an early adopter, chances are there are some in your organization. Like the math whiz, get a seat next to them. And if you're the whiz, save a seat for an eager colleague.

Photo by: Flickr user Ian Wilson

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Friday Favorite. (weekly featured link from me to you)

What role will "feral" versus "social" cities play in education in the year 2020? Will neighborhood schools no longer be physical spaces but rather a system that combines homeschooling, seminar classes, and community internships? For the answers, check out KnowledgeWorks Foundation's "Map of Future Forces Affecting Education." This multi-layered, interactive map explains future societal drivers like "grassroots economics" and "smart networking" and trends such as "cheap mobile devices" and "bio distress" and their combined impact on "family and community," "markets" and "institutions." Beyond education, it is simply a fascinating glimpse of the future in general.

5 Storytelling Essentials

(Update: 5/15/09) If you are coming from The Recruitment Minute, Welcome and thanks for reading. You might also be interested in Ask Better Questions and Is It Worth Printing?

As much as we think and talk about branding and storytelling these days, we often fail to consider true storytelling elements—character, plot, dialogue, scene, place, point of view, and sensory detail. Good stories have tension and conflict. Even the heroes have flaws. So how can you persuade readers of an institution's virtues and still tell a good story?

Protagonist and plot. Every campus's brand story is a mythic archetype with mythic heroes: the revolutionary, the discoverer, the change agent. As you begin a branding process, look for the plot lines in your institution’s big story from founding to now -- plot lines that make your heart beat, that have elements of risk and excitement. Once you understand the big story, everyday heroes will reveal themselves as well: students, faculty, and alumni who live and embody the brand.

Great beginnings. Good stories open by drawing the reader in emotionally, sometimes with childlike anticipation. But even intriguing openings should act as practical "doorknobs" that, with a turn, allow the reader to enter the story's world. Some of the most effective openings can be both emotional and practical: "What matters to you?" "Coming here was like seeing the entire world all at once." "Put yourself in the way of opportunity."

Sensory details. Once the audience enters your world, you must make them experience it. Whatever the medium—text, photos, film, web—the more you get out of the way and let your audiences experience the story for themselves, the better. In the best stories, action, description, and dialogue stand on their own. They have settings and scenes you can see, touch, taste, smell, and hear.

Scene, dialogue, narration. Institutional stories require scene and dialogue just as much as compelling fiction does. Think of photos as scenes, quotes as dialogue, blogs as the internal voice of a character, institutional voice as narration. How are they working together to communicate the narrative arc of your story?

Strong finishes. Endings are just as critical as beginnings. They can resonate and reverberate in the reader's mind to project an imagined future that continues to play even after a book is closed or a film has ended. That's just the response we want to evoke in prospective students and donors—an imagined future.

Novice fiction writers typically hear that no one will ever care as much as they do if their stories get written. Accepting this harsh truth is the first step to telling a story good enough to lead to true communication. No one will ever care about our institutions' stories as much as we do. We have to make them care by telling good stories. Only then do we have a chance of making our stories theirs.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Ask Better Questions

I collect good questions. I've gotten them from StoryCorps, Teri Gross, Deborah Solomon, creative writing exercises, and colleagues, and interview subjects themselves.

One of my favorite parts of the job I do is to "discover" a school's* story. While focus groups with students, teachers, alumni, and parents are de rigeur in my line of work that doesn't mean all focus groups are created equal. To tell a school's story i.e. market a school in a non-generic way you have to ask questions that will get past the similarities between schools. You have to ask questions that will reveal what is compelling about that particular school's programs and culture.

That means asking questions I don't already know the answers to. If I ask, "What makes this school special?" Nine times out of ten, a student will say "the people," which gets me nowhere. But if I ask, "What impresses you about this school?" the answers are not only more specific to the school but are often different for each of the individuals in the focus group.

I have some tried and true questions. My favorite is asking faculty and school leaders, "Where do this school's ambiguities lie?" It always gives me gold in terms of revealing an institution's particular culture and any communication challenges that exist. But I'm also on the look out for new questions.

When I saw Seth Godin's "FiveTips for Better Online Surveys," I immediately wondered if they applied to in-person interviews and focus groups as well. Indeed, they do. "Make the questions entertaining . . .Boring surveys deserve the boring results they generate" is a good example. You want to ask questions that are intriguing and fun. "If this school didn't exist, would it need to be founded today?" falls under the intriguing category for most teachers and school leaders. "What's your favorite place on campus and at what time of day?" always brings a smile to students' and teachers' faces.

One of my all-time favorite questions came from an article I read about Anna Deavere Smith helping emergency room doctors ask better questions of incoming patients. The question was simply, "What happened to you?" I don't ask it just like that, but that question underlies many of the questions I do ask. If I can get a student to tell me what happened to them (what did they learn about themselves and about the world, who did they meet, how have they changed and why is that meaningful) at a particular school, I'm on my way. After all "what happened" is the plot in any good story.

*In this blog "school" refers to independent schools, colleges, and universities.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Friday Favorite. (weekly featured link from me to you)

Whenever I need the equivalent of a change of scenery before getting back to the project at hand, I head to The Daily Beast's Buzz Board. It's my favorite of all the sites claiming to offer the inside scoop on what's cool. The best part is the truly eclectic mix of notable folks passing along their recommendations for everything from mascara to art exhibitions, causes, getaways, novels, philosophers, and films. After checking out the Buzz I feel like I've had a refreshing walk around the block. Buzz Board is updated daily so I can usually find at least one to several new items during each visit.

So what does this have to do with schools and colleges? A university president from a well-known institution is a perfect candidate to buzz. Who wouldn't want to know what the president of Carnegie Mellon, NYU or Penn is reading? Schools with famous alumni and parents, who are big fans of the institution, can consider pitching those purveyors of taste to buzz about a favorite campus gallery, rare book collection, team, course or program.

Whether buzzer or buzzed, I'd love to see schools and colleges as part of the Buzz Board mix.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

College Media Coverage: The More the Merrier?

Given the media's insatiable interest in college admissions, has it gotten easier to pitch higher ed stories?

From 1992 to 1997, I was the director of communications for Scripps College. My big media coup at the time was riding the wave of "the Hillary factor." Hillary Clinton had just become First Lady and the fact that she'd gone to Wellesley boosted the popularity of women's colleges significantly. Scripps, the women's college of The Claremont Colleges, wound up in Newsweek, Glamour, and featured on The Jane Pratt show. It was a big deal because back then colleges weren't big news, especially small liberal arts colleges.

So, I began to wonder what it's like for college PR folks these days when media outlets like the New York Times and Daily Beast now devote huge amounts of space to college stories. Jodi Heintz, director of public relations, at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, gave me this insight:

"I think the media is very interested in telling a certain kind of story about higher ed. Generally, it is true that because of the bad economy local and national reporters are actually beating down the doors of colleges looking for stories and people to interview. The bad news, in my opinion, is that they are only interested in telling one story -- the story of how bad everything is. They are singularly interested in covering crisis -- falling applications numbers, or conversely, overwhelming application numbers, endowment catastrophes, hiring freezes or lay offs, tuition increases, etc."


Heintz recalls one New York Times article about liberal arts college admissions deans wringing their hands over drops in applications. The article only briefly mentions at the end that, at one such dean's college, it was still their third-highest year in total number of applications.

She says that while she has indeed seen an increase in the number of reporter inquiries from the top media outlets, she's actually chosen not to respond.

"I'm concerned that collectively we are feeding the frenzy. I understand that many colleges are facing difficult circumstances but there are far more nuanced stories to tell about the economic challenges. And, I'm sure we PR professionals in higher ed could do a better job of educating reporters and helping shift the conversation and coverage."

Monday, April 6, 2009

Diving In

I keep telling school and higher ed colleagues that the only remedy for their anxiety about social media tools is to dive in and start using them. But diving in also means you're going to have some belly flops along the way. For me, someone who really wants to "do it right," those flops can sting. Little things have tripped me up: not realizing that I had to put a space after "retweeting" on Twitter so that the person I quoted would see the message as well RT@bobjohnson for example. Not knowing that the comment I posted to a blog and then pointed others to would not appear until the owner of the blog okayed it. Not adding tags to blog posts to increase the chances that anyone would see them much less read them. Tethering my Facebook and Twitter updates and then not knowing how to untether them. The result being several erroneous and irrelevant updates on both sides. All of these are minor slips along my learning curve. No doubt there will be more.

I still vividly remember the day I learned to dive as a kid. Lots of belly flops, but I wouldn't let it go until I got it. Then once I had the hang of it, all I wanted to do was dive in again and again. With social media it's the same feeling for me just a different pool.

Photo: Mike Warren