3. New Rules of PR & Marketing
David Meerman Scott
I credit David Meerman Scott’s, “New Rules of PR & Marketing” with shifting the way I think about communicating
online.
The way we reach our constituents is changing from outbound communications to an inbound tract. With that
comes a new level of honesty about our brands and our message. All of our online footprints are being created by
the people around us- our job is to believe in our products and encourage the conversation.
5. “Outbound marketing is the traditional
form of marketing where a company
initiates the conversation and sends its
message out to an audience. ”
Credit: Wordstream
http://www.wordstream.com/outbound-marketing
So what does he mean by outbound marketing
12. “Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that
focuses on getting found by customers. This
sense is related to relationship marketing and
Seth Godin's idea of permission marketing.
David Meerman Scott recommends[3] that
marketers "earn their way in" (via publishing
helpful information on a blog etc.)...”
Credit: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbound_marketing
13. “...create content that people actually want to see.”
For me it boils down to this... It got me to rethink the way I craft content.
15. “So how does this relate to
social media?”
Hold onto this question. We’ll get to it soon, but lets step back for a second.
16. What is social media?
Social media are primarily Internet- and
mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing
information among human beings.[1] The
term most often refers to activities that integrate
technology, telecommunications and social
interaction, and the construction of words, pictures,
videos and audio. [2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
So lets take a step back and define social media.
19. 500
400
300
200
100
0
April 2009 May 2010 *July 2010
Source: Facebook http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline
Facebook saw over 300 million new accounts added in a little over a year.
20. 200.0
160.0
120.0
80.0
40.0
0
April 2009 April 2010 June 2010
Source: eMarketer: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007271
Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-stats-2010-4#twitter-now-has-106-million-users-1
Twitter grew from 12 million in April 2009 to just shy of 106 million in April 2010 to a
reported 190 million in June.
21. Racing to
Tweeting to
2000followers!
1000 fans!
Social media participation is growing. Schools are actively pushing to build their networks.
22. Connect with our school!
We’ve created our channels and have begun to promote them - perhaps via email; on our
sites.
23. All good steps in an effort to boost our networks and connect with a broad range of people
who matter to our schools. How many of us feature “follow us; become a fan, connect; etc”
twitter & facebook buttons on our sites or in our email signatures?
24. What do you do
when you get there?
Big question is how do you engage your network as it grows?
25. Create & share
compelling content.
You do this by creating & sharing compelling content that speaks to these fundamental needs.
Your school enjoys a fan base that, for lack of a better word, “consume” your narrative stream or long story. The
object is to begin bringing applying families into this stream. This requires that you give fans and families substance-
not necessarily formality, but substance- events, stories, narratives, happenings and achievement on campus. Show
the ways students are growing and learning- real and substantive. Engage your fans by sharing the school experience.
26. Photo credit: shanebee
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/
How do we do this? I advocate that schools commit to a content library. One that isn’t as
concerned about polish, but a library that catalogs a form of content that offers a birds eye
view of what it’s like to “experience” your community.
27. Photo credit: shanebee
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/
Something that you as an admission office can add to & draw from at key points in the
admission process to deepen your connection with prospective families. It can come in a
variety of forms- blogs written by students, livestreaming events, student produced shows,
videos filmed by kids, or blogs maintained by faculty.
Which methods you use most is determined by which media you can produce most consistently with
reasonable effort and quantity.
28. Show rather
than tell.
I like to live by these simple words whenever we create content - show rather than tell.
29. Show rather than tell.
Photo credit: Northfield Mount Hermon School
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nmhphotos/4008777735/in/set-72157622454626351/
If you’re talking about your great art program. Show students drawing by the creek. Highlight
their work on a regular basis.
30. Show rather than tell.
Photo credit: Vermont Academy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31278469@N04/3919640397
If you’re excited about your school’s fall mountain day. Show students climbing to top.
Interview them about the challenges of the climb and how the event impacts the school
community. Let them connect the dots and their share it with your online communities.
31. Show rather than tell.
We all talk about school spirit. Let your students capture it via short videos.
32. “Your fans love nothing
more than to see what’s
happening & feel connected
to your school.”
Your fans- students, parents, alums- love nothing more than to see & hear what their kids &
their friends are doing.
33. Photo credit: shanebee
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/
It all comes back to building a library. Check out the content when you need it. Add to it
throughout the year; keep it current. Use it to show what’s happening on your campus.
34. Photo credit: shanebee
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/
Photo credit: tray
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tapps/3989627494
You don’t have to be a tech guru to produce content (from left to right- edSocialMedia’s
Steve Ritchie & Ernest Koe; Hiram Cuevas, St. Christopher's School; Travis Warren, WhippleHill
Communications).
Point is that I suspect that most everyone sitting in the room use social media in some form
or fashion to journal daily life and stay connected with family, friends & organizations.
35. Photo credit: shanebee
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/
It could come in the form of twitter...
37. Photo credit: shanebee
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/
or the most obvious of all... facebook...
38. Photo credit: shanebee
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/
When you think about it from an institutional perspective, you likely already have a wealth of
content capturing campus experiences. It’s a question of aggregating it and checking out the
content from your ‘library’ when you need it.
39. "When we blog,
we tend to talk like humans.
When we write home page
copy, we write like marketing
brochures"
-Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
42. Admission Timeline
Browsing School Visit
for Schools & Follow Up
Lets relate your content to the admission timeline to see how we can strengthen your
relationships so that when an enrolled student steps on campus they feel like they’re already
a connected member of the community.
By the way, this is an approximation of course- it may differ in your office - but it works. Lets
take the timeline and see how we can apply the tools & content to enhance & support what
you’re already doing.
43. Admission Timeline
Browsing
for Schools
This is an approximation of course- it may differ in your office . Lets take the timeline and
see how we can apply these new tools to enhance & support what you’re already doing.
44. Admission Timeline
Student & Family Profile
•New family to boarding school
•Talented writer
•Soccer goalie (collegiate talent?)
•Interests in science with a
particular focus on sustainability
46. What do families want when they first come to your site? Proctor does a really nice job of
weaving their content with that of their fans.
48. For those of you who don’t know this is Chuck Will’s blog at Proctor. He’s a leading voice and
the institutional memory to a certain extent. He knows current student & parents, alums, you
name it -they know him and he knows what the school stands for. His job is to capture that
in words and pictures 2-3 times a week.
49. His posts capture the attention of prospective families and gives them a way to stay
connected to what’s happening at Proctor- he helps them to envision what it’s like to be a
Proctor student.
50. Northfield Mount Hermon’s NMHbook - a dedicated section of their site
(www.nmhschool.org/nmhbook) that aggregates all of their social content providing an up-
to-minute snapshot of what’s happening on campus both from the perspective of their
faculty & students.
53. “Brian Rosenberg aka the President of Macalester College”
I don’t know if it started out this way, but this is one of the most effective outreach pieces
I’ve seen. It was done by the President of Macalester College. Self-deprecating humor,
showcased his campus, told you a lot about the school and what the feeling about the
campus is like.
54. “I have received several hundred e-mail messages from alumni,
parents, current and prospective students, as well as from other
college presidents and from folks I simply cannot identify, and from
countries including Pakistan, Japan, Spain, Singapore, and China
—where one alumnus, from the class of 1950 no less, managed to
circumvent the national blockage of YouTube and get the video
directly from the college's server. Amazing.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/article/What-I-Learned-From-YouTube/65141/
55. “Yet positive responses to our annual-fund solicitations spiked after
the video's appearance, reminding us that reputation, institutional
pride, and general good will can have as significant an impact on
development efforts as projects that are more deliberately focused on
raising dollars—and are far more expensive.
With this project, I have begun to learn about the nature and power
of the social media that are reshaping the way we communicate
with one another and should be reshaping the way organizations of
all kinds communicate.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/article/What-I-Learned-From-YouTube/65141/
62. Interests in science with a particular
focus on sustainability
How many schools in this room participate in the Green Cup Challenge? How many share your
videos with prospective students & families, especially those who’ve demonstrated an interest
this area?
63. Show rather than tell
Every example of content that I showed you came from outside of the admission/
communication office. It’s a product of the classes, daily life, athletics and each does an
excellent job of showing what it’s like to experience your schools. Perhaps even more so than
a highly tailored marketing piece.
65. Jesse Bardo
Last year Jesse Bardo was tasked with managing social media in their admission office.
66. NMH started out fast posting basic updates. Sports scores, travel schedules.
67. www.nmhschool.org
Jesse understood that a web site is fast in terms of posting information, but that social media
offered a faster, more focused opportunity to connect with fans of the school.
68. Social media provides an opportunity to publish instant information to large networks. But
Jesse knew that he needed to do more than publish scores and travel schedules to excite their
fans. He used these new tools to plug people into the incredible stories popping up on
campus each day.
69. Newspaper
SID Radio
English Dept Math Dept
Science Dept
He built a network of people on campus. Folks feeding him stories about the goings on on
campus.
70. His ‘sources’ loved seeing their stories appear on facebook, twitter, flickr, etc. The
excitement fed their desire to provide Jesse with more information.
71. Majority of tweets or facebook updates point to an item of substance. Giving the fan or
follower more to consume and additional reasons to connect.
75. *4826
*1641
*As of December 1, 2010
Great numbers supported by compelling, meaningful content. Makes the relationship that
much stronger.
76. 30% increase in
interviews from
2008-2010
Great numbers supported by compelling, meaningful content. Makes the relationship that
much stronger.
77. Exercise:
• Lets break into (three?) groups
• Consider the organic
Through the lens of social media think about the opportunities on your campus
that speak to your school’s culture & values. Is there a budding Chuck Will?
Are there academic classes or extracurricular programs that already produce
terrific content?
• Write down 3-4 examples & share
Consider how you could build on & translate each into compelling
social media outreach.
• Lets share the top 5 examples from each group
Vote on the opportunities that you think have the makings of the next social
media all-star campaign? What make them special? How do you envision rolling
out & sustaining each?
78. Photo credit: shanebee
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanesworld/21584252/
Exercise:
•Break into three groups
•Show rather than tell
•Build on something that
already works