November 2009 Archives

While we have been using video here at the school for years, only recently did we purchase an inexpensive Flip camera. For those of you not familiar with the Flip, it is a small, tiny, hand-held, fully HD-quality video camera. There is no real zoom and really only one button: On and off. But the ability to grab HD-quality video anytime and anywhere is pretty incredible, and very useful.

For example, our Director takes her Flip with her to alumni events for impromptu interviews. These are short clips with our alumni sharing a story about their time at the school, or their excitement at being at the event. Not only do we get fun, engaging quotes from real people, but our alumni are excited to see us using the newest technology. They ask about the camera, try it out, and love that they will shortly be online, viewable by other alums.

In addition to the Flip, we set up traditional video interviews with faculty and researchers here at the school. These are pre-planned and organized recordings and are the more structured way to create video. This process is another great tool for us because these clips tell a deeper and more involved story. They share a different kind of knowledge and offer another kind of engagement. 

But with the Flip we can grab video on the fly, as we think of it. Suddenly you are on video safari, everyday, 24/7. The chase is on, and the challenge is: Can you capture it? Are you willing to accept on-the-fly editorializing? Reality TV? Sometimes it's great and sometimes not, but with a little editing, these live action snippets give a very real and immediate face our alumni outreach and larger goal of sharing the great stories of the Leeds school.

So the Leeds Communications team has done a pretty good job of educating and engaging our internal faculty and staff about Social Media and its possible relevance to their personal and professional lives. At least I think we have.We still get puzzled looks and raised eyebrows from some of our constituencies who don't see the ROI. But then many of them are not "in the trenches" as those of us trying to build communications, media and PR strategies in a rapidly changing communications landscape with, in our case, very limited resources.

Interestingly, the more we pursue a SM strategy, the more feedback and connections we are getting from others who are active in SM or just interested our efforts. It's been great too! One of my campus communications colleagues shared a blog post of another higher ed professional who is leveraging these new tools to benefit her faculty. Rather than relying on the traditional mainstream media model of pitching faculty stars for possible coverage, she is using SM to do it herself. It was gratifying to see her rational as we are pursuing similar strategies for our faculty and programs as well. To pave the way, we held several SM presentations including "What is SM?" "SM Basics" and "Social Media and Pedagogy" ( I had to throw the "pedagogy" word in--it's big in academia) Actually, we didn't host that one, a school colleague did, but it was definitely in conjunction with our efforts. We've gotten positive feedback and folks seem grateful to have a better understanding of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. And just in recent months we have been getting great response to our online efforts in these areas. Not bad for "free"?

We decided to hold two more contests via social media last month. The prize was two pairs of tickets to the homecoming game Oct. 31, CU-Mizzou. Who doesn't like free stuff? Having used Facebook in September to give away free tickets to the Rocky Mountain Showdown, our first forray into social media giveaways, we wanted to use both Twitter and Facebook this time.  

We brainstormed some ideas and we decided:

- Twitter: Ask people to tweet why they should win with the hashtag #LeedsCU. A winner would be chosen at random at the deadline. The more creative the reason, the better but really this time winning was purely left to chance. And who can argue with that?

- Facebook: This was more difficult this time to decide. We had a variety of ideas(best Halloween costume, best kid photo- since our homecoming event was family friendly this year, Best kid Halloween photo), but I kind of now wonder if our first experience with a Facebook contest left us a little wary to try something with a similar structure. In the end we opted to steal, er I mean be INSPIRED by a contest I saw my alma mater doing for its Facebook page. (I know I know, don't even ask me who I am rooting for on Nov. 27)

The Twitter contest was a huge hit, in my opinion. I posted it both on the school Twitter account and my personal account. It was retweeted on both sides. A total of eight people participated. Their reasons were great. I made sure to acknowledge when someone used the hashtag and gave their reason why they should win. I also used each tweet as a opportunity to explain the contest: the prize, the deadline, the hashtag, how the winner would be randomly chosen. I announced the randomly chosen winner on Twitter and arranged for his tickets pick-up via Twitter, told the other seven they won a free Tweet Me! Poke Me! Leeds shirt just for playing (free stuff for you! free advertising of our social media spots for us! win-win!) and got their mailing addresses via direct messages (DMs) on Twitter.  

The Facebook contest, though, struggled. One person entered at the very last minute. Looking back now, I think perhaps the task required more time than we allowed (a week, including a weekend), and we also didn't provide pumpkin carving designs like my alma mater. Also we had an early critic of the prize noting on our Facebook Page that free tickets to see a lackluster football team might not garner much contest competition. However, Buff pride runs deep, as the Twitter contest proved. I think this taught us that the prize of any contest needs to be worth the effort of participating. If the Buffs were a hot ticket item this year, then I would guess we would have had more Buff-o-lanterns. But a creative tweet about Buff prize was just the right amount of effort put forth, at least for eight CU fans, for a chance to win. Hey man, free = free.  

p.s. Here are the Twitter replies to "Why Should You Win Free tix to See CU-Mizzou on Oct. 31?" I loved how this contest engaged our Twitter followers!

@mandymarks #LeedsCU I deserve to win because I rep the #cubuffs in San Fran and I am flying back to support my team

@CJ_Powell I deserve to win because I never win anything. Come on, #LeedsCU, help a Buff Alum out!!! #LeedsCU

@aviraj I should go cos I wanna see+hear 53,749 screaming Buffs. PLUS I've never been to a football game. Ever. Mercy tix? #LeedsCU

And our winner, who tweeted twice! (FYI only one tweet per person was submitted into the drawing)..... @BupsJones And...we have not seen the Buffs win, in person, in over 5 years (6 different games). #LeedsCU AND Tweet No.2: I should win because I am flying in from Chicago with my best friend, a fellow Leeds '02 Alum, for his birthday! #LeedsCU

@hydrogenated #leedsCU I should get tix because I have H1N1 today and I'm going to miss all sorts of fun stuff this weekend.

@laurenkl Once from Missouri, my allegiance is now to the Buffs, would love to see the showdown! #LeedsCU

@LeslieNorgren Winning tickets for the CU-Mizzou game would awesome! I should win because I bleed black & gold. #LeedsCU

@RyanonBoulder #LeedsCU- I should win the tickets because it would be a chance for my 6 mo old son to see his dad's favorite team for 1st time - Go Buffs!! 

 

Homecoming is one of the most cherished and well-attended university traditions at college campuses across the country. This year our Homecoming celebration was scheduled for Saturday, October 31 on a big beautiful quad just west of our building. The tent was to be set up on Wednesday, October 28 for some other school events that week with Homecoming being the grand finale before the football game on Saturday.

Well, the Colorado weather gods had another thing planned altogether. On the Wednesday the tent was to go up it snowed, oh I don't know, over 18 inches! What!?! See photo proof below. It was so bad that they closed the campus and sent us home at 2:00 p.m.

We returned to work Thursday (though it was still actively snowing) to be informed by CU's groundskeeper that due to the snow on the ground and the inherent wetness should it miraculously melt in the next 36 hours, all Homecoming events scheduled for grassy areas on campus would be cancelled.

That would include our event. Ugh. Though many other campus entities had no choice but to cancel their events completely, we are blessed with a beautiful new building that has the perfect space for large receptions and gatherings. After confirming the availability and feasibility with our building manager - we were good to go.

Homecoming shall go on - but we've got to let people know about it!  As many other outdoor CU Homecoming activities had been cancelled, we had to spread the word that 1. Our event was still taking place and 2. That we had moved indoors. And here's how we did it:

1. We updated the home page of the Leeds School of Business website
2. We updated the Homecoming page on the Leeds School website
3. We sent one email to our e-newsletter distribution list and asked for help spreading the  word (it's worthy to note that we usually only send one email a month but that we made a special exception in this situation)
4. We used our Facebook fan page to post status messages about the change for multiple days leading up to the event
5. We used our Twitter account to announce the change and asked people to retweet for multiple days leading up to the event
6. We emailed our internal faculty and staff and asked them to share the news with their friends and colleagues that normally attend the event

Yay for technology! The event was a true success. We probably didn't have the sheer numbers we would have had being outdoors on a beautiful game day, however, we had 200-250 people come out to enjoy the food and activities (face painting!) before the football game.  Photos and video from the event can be seen here!