Blame my degree in Organizational Communication for this, but I essentially bullied my director into allowing me to lead a discussion about our department’s brand.  It was a lengthy presentation that ended up being split into two parts, but I believe that our leadership team came out of that meeting with a better understanding of what differentiates us from other departments.  Below is a “concise” version of what we covered:

Foundation – What you need to know about your department before getting to the good stuff.

• Brand Definition:  “A name, term, sign, symbol, design, or combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition.” – American Marketing Association.
• What services do/should the department offer?
• Who are our target audiences?  This part of the discussion took nearly an hour.  While it’s natural to want to target the entire university, is it realistic?  We (eventually) narrowed it down to about seven segments, many of which overlapped.  Doing this allows us to better serve and understand that population.
• Note:  This does not mean we prohibit students in non-targeted segments from engaging with us.
• Who/What’s our competition?  Now that we know who we’re targeting (and we know a little bit about them), who or what else relies on these same targets?  A couple givens are class and work, maybe Athletics or the local bars if you do evening programming.

Positioning - Now that we’ve agreed about what we do, who we do it for, and who the competition is, we can position ourselves in a way that shows our target audiences why they will benefit from us.  Think of it like this:  consumers (in our case, students) have this bookcase in their brains, and there’s a shelf for everything.  When they see a department on campus, they put it on one of the shelves.  If we’re lucky, they’ll put our on the shelf we belong on.  If not, we could end up in that miscellaneous shelf on the bottom.  Positioning gives the book a definitive book cover.

• Creating your “Essence”:  This is a three-word phrase (adjective, adjective, noun) that is the very core of what your brand is about.  It shouldn’t change over time.  My favorite example is Post-It:  Fast, Friendly Communication.  What this essence does is opens them up to do anything that involves Fast, Friendly Communication.  Imagine if it was Sticky, Yellow Paper.  There’s only so much they could do with that.  In my office, we decided on Interactive Learning Experience.  It’s a bit broad in my opinion, but this is something that we now consider with every program that we do.
• Creating your “Promise”:  The brand’s promise is a one-liner that is unique to the department.  As author Brad Van Auken says in “Brand Aid” (for the record, Brand Aid was my best friend during this time):  The promise drives budgets and stops arguments.  An example is “Only the [dept. name] delivers [benefit] to [target audiences].  This promise should be echoed in your mission, your services, the way you communicate, and everything else.
• Creating your “Personality”:  This is a list of five to ten adjectives that describe the type of organization your department is.  Why is this important?  Because people relate to brands very similarly to the way they relate to people.  If you’re conscious of this, it pays off.

Identity – This step makes the book cover we just created attractive through the use of sensory components.  These allow you to project everything that you’ve created internally in a way that tells students what you are and how you’re different from your competitors.

• Department Name:  typically, we don’t have too many opportunities to change this, but we know we want it to clearly state what we are about, and ensure that the acronym isn’t anything derogatory.
• Logo:  Three Rules–easy to read from afar, recognizable in black and white, and meaningful.
• Slogan:  This communicates your office’s position in a way that’s powerful, succinct and memorable.
• Note:  Other things to consider are your hold music, any music played in the front office, the way your staff answers the phone, and your policy on email signatures and voicemails.

This discussion was eye-opening for us because it was nothing the department had considered, and on a large campus with a huge population of 1st Gen-ers, the more attractive we can be almost directly correlates with the number of students we can assist.  Have any of your departments undergone any kind of branding discussions?

Pinterest has shown tremendous growth over the past six months, and is one of the few newer (non-google) social media sites to gain traction. But, is it a fad that will show waning interest, like other recent semi-hit Quora, or will it have a longer shelf life?

First, my theory on why Pinterest gained traction. I believe the visual nature of the site appeals to us for the same reason that photo sharing is such a primary activity in the social space. So, in this way, it shares the same traction that, say, Instagram does. Initially, it also tapped into an interest area and a target market (females predominately), and it “solved a problem,” in a way that many social media platforms don’t do. Many social media platforms fail to gain a core audience beyond the typical techie/early adopter set. Pinterest gave itself a leg up by avoiding that trap.

Now that it does have that traction, it’s being leveraged by others beyond that initial audience. Brands from General Electric (fairly thin page) to Whole Foods (much more robust) are experimenting.  In the higher education space, University of Pennsylvania’s Career Services (and the great work of Shannon Kelly) is setting a standard with their page.  Others like Skidmore College’s D-Hall and University of Minnesota’s Student Union, along with many others, are dabbling.  It will be interesting to see where other student affairs pros take it.

So, to my original question:  is it a passing fad or here to stay?  Obviously, we don’t know the full answer yet.  But, my feeling is that it has taken root, and fills a gap and thus will be with us at least for a little while.  It’s a fun site, and while it will probably continue to be a primary place for individuals to share, it will be interesting to watch brands continue to experiment and develop their space on the site.

What do you think about Pinterest for student affairs departments?

Cross posted on Service Design Thinking, Marketing and Innovation in Student Affairs

Gary Alan Miller is the Assistant Director for Social Media and Innovation at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

I spent some time at Carnegie Mellon University visiting a former intern last week. As we walked through their beautiful University Center, I noticed a large number of campus clubs with tables set up trying to solicit students to join their group. Every table was covered with reading material and a bowl of candy to entice students to come closer. My mom taught me when I was really little to never go towards a stranger handing out candy . We also passed several bulletin boards littered with posters for upcoming events. It all reminded me of an advertisement I saw for a marketing class I was invited to attend…

“If you market it, they will come.”

I don’t agree. Both in business and for student groups. I prefer this slogan…

“Show not tell.”

Instead of an info table for your organization, set up an interesting or creative activity related to your topic, in a place with high foot traffic. You’ll get a 1000x times more curious onlookers by showing what you do verses telling people what you do. If nothing else, you’ll have spent your time doing something verses just talking about it from behind a table.

Let’s stop marketing to prospective members and start engaging them.

By now, you may have seen a link circulating across social media and email inboxes highlighting the ad campaign created by a group of students at Ohio University. The posters show students holding a picture of a Halloween costume, either worn commonly at parties or sold in party stores, depicting caricatures of their culture. You can see the full account with pictures of each of the posters here.

I post about it here on the Student Affairs Collaborative because every year, there is always one theme party that makes national headlines (not to count the thousands that don’t) as being derogatory, racist, offensive, and  whole list of other words that indicate unsafe environments for students with traditional marginalized identities. When I was an undergraduate student, my University community, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was torn apart over a Greek mixer titled “Tacos ‘N Tequila”- I’ll let your imagination do the work here, but suffice it to say that students were not dressed up as food or bottles of alcohol. The experience, which still elicits a physical reaction with me, cast a shadow over my college experience which, for all intents and purposes, was otherwise one of the happiest times of my life. I remember feeling frustrated, alienated, and hurt that people who lived in a place I love and called my home could make me, as a person of color, feel so unwelcome. Last year it was the Compton Cookout hosted by UC San Diego students, but there are plenty more out there that don’t make national headlines.

As student affairs practitioners, I feel that we are the ones responsible for addressing the issues that arise from such incidents. We are the ones that are held accountable for the parties occurring, though they are never officially University sanctioned. They are often a classic example of higher education, and especially student affairs, of being reactive versus proactive. Have you had any proactive conversations on campus about what to do if/when an oppressively-themed party hits your campus? What did you discuss?

As a student, I remember feeling frustrated that the administration didn’t automatically remove these students or ban the particular organizations from campus. Now, with a few more years under my belt, I understand their decisions as a necessary step to protect free speech rights at a public land-grant institution. But it still doesn’t feel good nor does it change the fact that, even though I was not a part of the group directly being stereotyped in the party, I still felt like an outsider in my campus community.

It is wonderful to see students at Ohio U. taking a proactive stand against a very public display of intolerance. I applaud the unsung heroes of the initiative, including the advisors who helped them with the program and funding for the project, the people writing articles about them in major news sources, and all the other supporters of the initiative. I think it is a wonderful example of student empowerment and activism and I hope to see the proactive educational initiatives continue.

How do you feel institutions should respond to theme parties? Can you give where an institution effectively responded to such a situation? What other ways can higher education, or we as individual practitioners, support proactive measures to counter negatively themed parties/costumes?

Viraj S. Patel is a Hall Director at Georgetown University.

A project I was assigned recently involved analyzing a set of grant applications. The proposals were centered on using technology to enhance student success. My job was to determine commonalities and missing pieces across the proposals. From a list of 20 or so findings, here are the four takeaways I believe are pertinent to our work:

1. Even in a fairly well-defined grant program, definitions for common terms differed greatly across the 81 proposals.
2. Many authors used buzz words in their application narratives, but failed to back up those words or concepts with knowledge or examples that showed they knew anything about the terms.
3. Risks and obstacles associated with the implementation of the project almost always dealt with resistance to change in other areas of campus.
4. Student affairs units were woefully absent among the collaborators in proposed initiatives.

In an era of fiscal responsibility and budget cuts, relevance matters. In era of accountability, meaningfulness is important. In an era of continued alteration, adaptation is key. In an era of “do more with less” (whether you ascribe to that theory or not), collaboration is necessary.  So, I ask you to consider the following as you plan for the upcoming academic year:

1. Does everyone on campus understand what you do? If not, why not, and how will you address that this year?
2. Do you use buzz words so you can be a part of the conversation, or are you driving the conversation because you and your area are the buzz of campus?
3. How are you addressing change head-on and helping others realize its usefulness and necessity?
4. Are you collaborating with non-student affairs offices to learn about their work and efforts, enhance their programs, and impact your campus’ students? If not, why not, and who’s at the top of your list for contacting?

It’s a new year, with new possibilities and new opportunities. How are you going to make this the best year yet? Not ever, because that implies you’ve no way to improve from now. Just yet… better than years past, setting a solid foundation for the years to come.

Matt Pistilli is a research associate in Information Technology at Purdue University. Connect with him on twitter.

As Student Affairs (or in my case Student Life) professionals, one of the key metrics by which we measure ourselves is the level of “engagement” with our students – how they engage with our programs, services and campus in general. We’re constantly trying to find ways to involve our students and encourage them to use our services and come to our events – to share knowledge and build community and, well, engage.

We’re constantly asking how we can engage with our students more. In fact, we ask it so routinely that when I hear it, part of me shudders a little.

As I look across the landscape of channels in which we push out to communicate and engage with our students (walk-in appointments, events, individual counseling sessions, workshops, infosessions, posters, TV screens, flyers, postcards, Facebook posts, Twitter feeds, Foursquare check-ins, blogs, vlogs, text messages, websites and email – lots and lots of email) I’m often left wondering: in what way are we not engaging with them?

We communicate and engage with them through pretty much every imaginable pathway, yet we still believe we’re not engaging with students and they’re not engaging with us as they should.

This brings up the next question: in what way are we expecting engagement? At what point will we believe students have engaged? Is this possible?

What do you think?

Are we over communicating with our students? Are we asking them to be too engaged? At what point will we feel we have successfully met that engagement threshold or are we truly asking the wrong question?

Nick Simonton manages the marketing and communications for Student Life and the Career Center at the University of Washington.

You’re probably starting to see these Quick Response codes, even if you don’t know exactly what they are. While Tom wrote about these almost three years ago, they are really coming into the mainstream. In fact, I saw the first QR Code in my hometown newspaper this morning.

QR Codes are those little square boxes with black markings. It’s a modern version of the barcode. By scanning the code, you can be directed to a website, an email address, a phone number, or get any short message.

QR codes have been around for a long time, but they’ve become popular because of smartphones. If you have any Barcode App, you can easily scan a QR code for additional information.

Simply create a QR code for the Facebook page of your next campus event, and include it on any printed promotional material. People can scan the code, and be directed to the site for more (and portable) information.

Or how about some “guerrilla marketing?”. Post a flyer with JUST the QR code– nothing else. That will tempt a lot of students into scanning it just to find out what it’s all about.

It’s easy to create a QR code. There are many free sites that will create them for you online in a flash, like http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

If you like to see how they are being used in the music world, check out this article: http://bit.ly/eujni3

And if you want to see how it works, grab your smartphone, run your barcode app, and scan the QR Code below!

I’ve been thinking a lot about first-generation students, trying to imagine what college is like for them and to determine ways we can serve them better. I remember a conversation I had with a first-year, first-gen student last fall who told me that he declined his work-study allocation because he didn’t know what work-study was. He had since become a finalist for a great on-campus position—a job he sorely needed and could benefit from in many ways—but the employer wanted to hire someone with work-study. By the time the student got to this part of the story, he was nearly in tears.

We can certainly wonder why he didn’t just ask someone about work-study. The answer: He didn’t want to look stupid or stand out.

What other terms do we use in higher education that are uncommon outside our culture and that create barriers to those who want to experience our world?

Consider these:

Student Affairs/Academic Affairs: Affairs? Really?

Engagement: Our marketing department created a huge banner that simply says, “Engage.” A faculty member quipped: “When did we start promoting marriage?”

Bursar: Financial services?

Chancellor/Provost: Few students understand what they do. These titles don’t help.

Union: This word makes me think “labor union” or “credit union,” not a place where college students hang out. Many schools have already changed this to “center.”

Discipline: Student conduct? A field of study? Both?

What words can you add to this list? Perhaps your institution has already changed some of its language. If so, what words do you use? How many of us distribute a list of campus terms and their meanings during Orientation? What can we do to lessen or eliminate the need for these translations?

I’m told that changing the names of things is costly (signs, brochures, and all). Not changing them may cost even more. The student I spoke about at the beginning of this post got the job after all. Imagine if he also could have been spared those moments of frustration and humiliation. Words matter.

As a serial stalker of the “new books” section of my local library, I came across a newly published (2011) gem titled Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) that Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business by Ann Handley (@MarketingProfs) and C. C. Chapman (@cc_chapman). Although the book is primarily written for entrepeneurs, the 282 page book would definitely benefit student affairs professionals and student leaders alike who are looking to develop and market educational and social program initiatives on campus.

The book is divided into four sections with 29 chapters:

• Part One: The Content Rules – This part educates on how good online content appeals to would-be constituents as well as how to give potential readers something they find value in and keep them returning.
• Part Two: The How-To Section – This section of the book illustrates specifics on how to develop blogs, webinars, Ebooks, videos, Podcasts, and other informational and media vehicles online.
• Part Three: Content That Converts: Success Stories (With Ideas You Can Steal!) – There are 10 case studies of various companies that have been extremely successful at developing remarkable content for their customers, which include Hubspot, Kodak, and Boeing just to name a few.
• Part Four: This Isn’t Goodbye – The final section (and chapter) of the book lists a 12-point checklist for how to develop remarkable content.

As the online, content marketing paradigm seems to be the hottest business model for success, I highly recommend this book to you as there are many lessons that you can utilize for success on your campus. I’ve found it to be an excellence resource that is not overly technical and is actually a fun read.

Scott M. Helfrich (@studentlifeguru) is the director of upper campus housing at California University of Pennsylvania, co-owner of Student Life Consultants, and the creator of http://www.studentlifeguru.com.

Recently a marketing consultant visited our campus and reported that the “branding” trend is over. I interpreted this to mean that 1) I can cross personal branding off my “to do” list, and 2) our campus can eliminate its struggling branding committee.

Oh, don’t cancel the committee meetings yet. The new trend reportedly is…authenticity. Say what? At first I was irked to think that authenticity was being commandeered as a marketing trend. Then I said to myself, “It’s about time.”

I probably should have seen it coming. Domino’s, for one, has gone “authentic.” Its commercials show customers condemning the old product—bland sauce, crust like cardboard–with corporate execs committing to addressing these issues. Okay, so maybe I’ll give their pizza another try.

I recently visited a campus that I’d been reading about in journals and hearing about at conferences. With its spectacular Web site, this institution is obviously working to craft an image of quality and innovation. This university is motivated to get out of the shadows of a better-recognized sister institution. However, the “truth” isn’t quite the image the campus is projecting, at least not yet. What I experienced, though, is that this campus is unique and wonderful in its own right. Students love it because of what it is—not because of what it’s seeking to become.

We owe our students authenticity. And, in fact, the students on our campus, and probably yours, know very well what we’re about (regardless of our brochures and Web sites). Students like our park-like setting, size, and non-party atmosphere. They say they enrolled here for the “three T’s”: trees (we’re surrounded by an arboretum), toilets (all residences have private bathrooms), and tunnels (our academic buildings are connected by concourses). Sometimes they’ll add a fourth T: teachers. Faculty and administrators cringe at students’ descriptions. I would, too, if I didn’t also know that our students are receiving a high-quality education at an affordable price. Try representing all of that with a brand.

A colleague of mine once described our state’s residents as “hardworking, family-centered, traditional, obedient, accepting: that is, not expecting too much, and not being too disappointed when not too much happens.” Perhaps this is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is anchored in truth. Our campus, perhaps not surprisingly, reflects our state. It’s a comfortable, safe place with solid students who are involved, who don’t get bothered by much, and who ultimately want decent-paying careers. We can connect best with prospective students by giving them a genuine, multi-dimensional perspective of our campus. They will decide whether it’s a good fit.

Has your department or campus defined its “brand”? If so, how has it impacted your institution? In light of budget cuts and declining enrollments, is your campus looking into changing its identity or changing how it represents its identity?

[With all this said, our community does enjoy a bit of a national reputation, built around a certain professional football team. But even the team is considered by many to be “authentic” (or more authentic than most). Community members (the team is owned by the community) shun diva-like behavior. Still, we’re a polite and forgiving people who will give a hero’s welcome to our misguided former quarterback, when he returns home to retire his number.]