Kaplan University…the best recruitment ad I have seen to date.

Lately I have been approached and in contact with numerous universities that are seeking help in their recruitment endeavours. They say that their ads, brochures and pamphlets aren’t working anymore, they want to start using “social media” as part of their recruitment efforts.

What do I say to this? Social media is not just another tool for your campaign!

Social media is something that should be a permanent part of your product (or your organization). In the case of universities, it should be integrated into the student experience (e.g. podcasts of lectures, social networks for students, wiki use for group projects, mandatory “social media” professional development for professors, etc…). I refuse to encourage my clients to use social media as part of their promotional efforts if social media is not an inherent part of their organization first. Good marketers think of 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). Too many self-proclaimed marketers ignore the “Product” element and their “Promotion” efforts are fruitless as a result.

Have a look a this TV ad from Kaplan University. It is the first university ad I have seen that directly responds to Michael Wesch’s incredible A Vision of Students Today video. Judging from the YouTube comments, most people seem to agree. Now my question is, does Kaplan practice what it preaches? If it doesn’t, this ad will likely see a tremendous backlash, if it does (preliminary feedback from students indicates this is the case), then this may go down as the turning point in university recruitment messaging. What are your thoughts?

Putting things in perspective…

Those of you that regularly ready my blog are most likely aware of my deep fascination with not only social media, but the cultural, anthropological and psychological aspects behind it’s use. I’m always interested in “what’s next” and the “why” behind it. The future us “social media junkies” talk about is the semantic web (aka. web 3.0)…a fascinating, widely philosophized topic that you can easily get lost in.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, expressed his vision of the Internet as follows:

“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”

Sounds like a scary thought, but we’re all contributing to it whether we like it or not. Professor Michael Wesch explains it best in his video “Web 2.0 – The Machine is Using Us“. Today I stumbled upon a visual representation of the blogosphere that really got me thinking. I have pasted it below.

This is an actual diagram depicting the blogosphere. The core represents mainstream discussion (politics, entertainment, headline news, etc…), whereas the branches represent increasingly obscure topics the further out they stretch. The lines represent connections between bloggers (e.g. inbound links and comments). The details are explained here. You can take this a step further and argue that this is a visual representation of human thought…begging the question, what happens when “this thing” thinks on it’s own?

This is not the reason for this random post however. Rather, it is something that got me thinking about much bigger things. I’ll give you a hint: Think of what  that illustration above really looks like (and no, it’s not from “The Mothman Prophecies“).

…did someone say space? the universe? stars? galaxies?

I want you all to watch this humbling video that caught my attention today. It’s not anything new, but it is presented in a powerful way and puts our “micro” level problems in perspective relative to the “macro” universe we live in.

Thoughts?

U.S. gets a new President, White House launches new web site & blog…

Being a Canadian, I can’t think of ever being so interested in and passionate about U.S politics as in the last 4 years; Clearly I’m not alone. Today’s Presidential Inauguration Ceremony was not only attended in person by over 2 Million people (the most to date), but also set unprecedented records for LIVE video streaming viewership and online discussion (just track hashtag #inaug09 on Twitter).

We have all heard how Barack Obama leveraged social media during the campaign (just Google it…). Politicians and campaign planners will surely continue analyzing his every move for years to come. What interests me however, is not what he did to get to where he is today, but rather what he plans on doing starting tomorrow. More specifically, I’m interested as to how President Obama will continue to leverage social media under White House restrictions.

I truly believe 100%, that he genuinely wants to interact and engage with U.S citizens more than any prior President. He is not resistant to new communications channels (and the modern technology that enables them), but rather embraces them with excitement. He understands the democratization of the web, the importance of citizen empowerment and the power of the individual (in aggregate) more than anyone. In fact, he has already demonstrated it as President. Today, just as Barack was being sworn in, the new White House Web Site was launched.

Of course, what kind of President would have a website without also having an Official Blog (complete with an RSS feed), brilliantly launched and introduced during his swearing in. It has already been updated 4 times , which is a clear indication that the contributing bloggers don’t have to go through the stale, traditional, communications approval process that is still required (and rightly so…) for other media channels.

The Blog will be run by Macon Philips, who is the Director of New Media at the White House. He has introduced himself as one of the main contributors. This kind of disclosure is crucial towards the success of a government/political blog. People want to know the person behind the words, they want to put a human face (and voice) to the Ivory Tower world of the White House. This is their ticket in.  I can guarantee that Barack Obama had a lot to do with this and will surely be contributing in one way or another, even with the weight of the world now on his shoulders.

Congratulations to the entire Obama team on a job well done! Most importantly, congrats to you, President Barack H. Obama. This is one of the first times in my life, that I am truly proud to be a northern neighbour of the United States of America. Let’s hope our Canadian political system will one day undergo similar reform/rebirth so that we are able to boost our abysmal voter turnout percentage.