"All the world's a twitter." That according to a recent Newsweek article. And it seems that higher education is no exception. Just this week alone, I've run across two different items (from vendors) encouraging higher education leaders to jump on the Twitter/Facebook/social application de jour band wagon. All this hype about the latest and greatest magic bullet, I must confess, leaves a lingering twinge of doubt in my mind. Are higher education marketers (and some so-called experts) throwing common sense to the wind in their haste to jump on board with bleeding edge technologies?
Recently MarketingSherpa (a group of experts I find are spot-on time and time again), released their latest Email Marketing handbook. In the opening summary, Stefan Tornquist (Research Director at Sherpa) recounts a recent panel appearance he made at a higher education conference. Stefan goes on to relay how stunned he was at the crowd's focus on Twitter, SecondLife, etc and relative disregard for foundational channels like email marketing and search engine marketing. Here I'm going to rat Stefan (and those attendees!) out. I was a co-panelist at that conference and it was at the UCEA Marketing Seminar in Scottsdale this past February. And, Stefan is exactly right. Many attendees were buzzing around looking for the latest shiny object and we actually received questions about using Twitter or SecondLife to market continuing education. The same crowd admitted that they have a long way to go with their adoption of email and search engine marketing.
So, after reading Stefan's comments in that executive summary, my twinges of concern over this rush to join the throngs on new social applications seems to be well-founded. And, my hesitancy doesn't necessarily revolve around the channels themselves (although I must admit I do shake my head a bit when higher ed marketers want to jump on Second Life). My concern comes primarily from the fact that no one is talking about strategy. How are these channels going to help you meet your stated enrollment and marketing objectives? How are you going to measure their effectiveness?
Today I saw an article about tips for using Twitter in higher education. It was all about the weeds of Twitter (how often to tweet, follow the people who follow you, etc). Nothing...I repeat nothing...about taking a step back to determine if this channel will ultimately support your objective or how to measure its impact.
Thinking strategically, tying our efforts to objectives, and measuring what we do along the way. That's marketing common sense. In the endless banter that is being hurled at higher education marketers these days, that common sense is sorely lacking.
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