Fast Tip Friday: Being easy to work with can go a long way

I woke up this morning to an email that said the two-person department made up of my boss and I were the easiest to work with at Dartmouth.  What a great compliment!  It's not because we automatically say yes to everything or allow ourselves to be walked on.  Rather I think it's because we listen to what people want/need and we do our best to fulfill that need.  This applies especially to the little stuff.  Don't dismiss requests as unimportant and never say "no".  Instead, give alternatives.     

This seems like something that wouldn't need to be commented on, but in the six years I've worked in higher education I've found that more often than not, people like to make things difficult just to prove they are "in charge" of something.  Then they find themselves excluded and complain about it.  It's unnecessary.  If you're laid back and easy to work with, then people will want to include you.  If you're not, then they'll try to work around you.  It's as simple as that.

My "prospective Dartmouth student" experience.

Yesterday was a beautiful day and I didn't really have a lot going on in the office (plus my boss had been bugging me to do a campus tour) so I got my butt down to campus and played prospective student at Dartmouth for a day.  

The first stop was an info session in the admissions office, given by their senior assistant director of admissions.  The first thing that struck me was the complete lack of photography in the admissions offices - I've seen some great, dramatic and powerful photos taken by the school's photographer but the walls were completely bare.  I thought that was odd - an admissions visit is just as much about selling the school to the students as it is the students selling themselves to the school.  If not photography then put something up to make the room a bit warmer and more inviting.

The information session I was in was great.  It was probably the most unique way I've ever seen a school do it.  The presenter talked a little bit about why all admissions visits at all colleges seemed the same and then just opened the floor up to questions about anything - Dartmouth specifically or just generally applying to college.  She acknowledged that Dartmouth wasn't a perfect place.  The whole thing just came across as really authentic - it was about helping the students and their families instead of selling the school with a boring presentation that is the same as every other school out there.    

She gave KILLER advice on the essay - having read about 9 billion essays during my time as an admissions officer I was totally with her: Get a copy of the application and your high school transcript.  Then get a piece of paper and make two columns on it.  In the first column, write down all the things your admissions person is going to know about you based on your application and high school transcript (for example, you played soccer for four years, captain of the team, youth coach in the summer, etc...).  You'll find that an admissions person will know very little about you from that information.

In the second column, write a list of reasonable assumptions the admissions person can make about you based on the information in the first column.  So in the soccer example, you can assume the kid has persevered, has leadership experience, has learned all sorts of valuable lessons from playing sports, etc...

Now, based on the information they already have on you in those two columns, figure out an essay topic that makes you a real, three dimensional person.  The kid in the soccer example is probably going to write his essay about soccer and all the valuable lessons he's learned...but the admissions officer already knows that.  It doesn't give them any more information than they already had to really make the case for why a school should except you.  A real person is much harder to deny.   

Another thing I liked is that Dartmouth actually requires a peer evaluation on their application. Most schools require a guidance counselor recommendation (and they're usually just a form letter and boring) and a teaching recommendation but a peer evaluation allows them a different perspective on a student - one from someone who knows them well and is not in a position of authority.  I thought that was a great idea and probably much more interesting to read than the usual letters.

So then I moved on to the tour.  I'll be honest - the tour didn't really do much for me.  I've only been to campus a few times and had already seen everything they showed us so walking around and seeing the outsides of the buildings yet again really wasn't that helpful.  Plus the tour guides annoyed me with their presentation style - you could tell they were friends and they spent most of the time talking to each other ("You really do that?!  Oh my God!") instead of to the audience.  I also thought they came across as a bit fake - like they had really been trained about what to say and what not to say.  I felt like I left it with no additional information than when I started it, aside from places to get free food on campus.  Maybe the prospective students ate it up though?  I'm not sure.  

All in all, it was good, but a bit anti-climatic after the killer info session but still better than I've seen other schools do it.  Plus I got to be outside on a nice day instead of stuck in the office, so really I can't complain :-)

Experiment: List your job responsibilities and requirements

I had a conversation with a friend today that really solidified for me how ridiculous the expectations are in higher ed for people who work on or in conjunction with the web.  We are expected to know EVERYTHING, be really REALLY good at all of it and do it for exceptionally crappy salaries (for the most part...some schools have learned to pay).

I want to get a sense of just out of hand this has gotten, but I need your  help to do it.  Leave a comment listing your job requirements (how many years experience, degrees, etc...), the required skillset (HTML, CSS, PHP, writing, marketing, etc...I'm looking for the REAL DEAL of what your job requires, which may be different than the JD) and if you want to, a salary range.  If you don't feel comfortable posting a comment, shoot me an email at karlyn@karlynmorissette.com.

Thanks for your help!

   

Change happens in the room

I got into a pretty heated debate this week with Drew and Kyle.  They contend that, in order to improve efficiency, its better not to attend meetings unless absolutely necessary.  They say there are too many unnecessary meetings and that no one listens to them anyway so they are just going to cut them out altogether.  They'd rather be in their office working on things they can control.  

I couldn't disagree more.  Are there unnecessary meetings?  Yes.  Welcome to the world of rule by committee that is higher education.  But I'd rather be in the room at those seemingly unnecessary meetings than sitting back in my office flitting around.  Why?  

1. Brainstorming: How many times have you been in a meeting that has gone completely off-topic with an unplanned brainstorming session?  What if you aren't there to participate?  Then the web component gets completely lost in the conversation and people end up making decisions about strategy without any consultation whatsoever.  In the long run, missing meetings where this happens will actually cost you time, as you struggle to bring the web into alignment with everything else that was decided.  So much for efficiency!  


2. Big Picture: Cross-medium integration will NEVER happen if you excuse yourself from meetings about marketing strategies on mediums that aren't the web.  How was I able to integrate all of our latest challenge materials? Because I attend print communications meetings every monday morning.  At most of those meetings, I don't say more than two words.  I'm there to hear everything else that's going on.  As I've previously blogged, it's your job to be in the know. 


3. Out of sight, out of mind: Culture change takes a long time at any organization.  Want the web to be viewed as important?  Than it has to be visible.  And yes, people are going to laugh at you and not take you seriously but if you back down and lock yourself in your office, you've let them win.  

Still want to work on your efficiency?  Fine.  Bring your laptop with you to meetings.  If they are talking about something that doesn't apply to you, do other work.  I do it all the time.  But always keep one ear open.  So what's the worst that could happen?  You've done work, but at a different location than your office.  People may give you the evil eye for having a laptop at first, but if you're consistent about it they get over it and it becomes expected.  Besides, brining your laptop is really great if you need to show someone an example of a web page in order to make your point. 

Kyle says I sound self-righteous with this story, but I'm going to tell it anyway: When I first brought up the idea of using AIM for prospective students to my former bosses in 2003, I was literally laughed out of the room. How could I possibly know what I was talking about?  They knew better and they knew the phone was the only way to communicate.  But you guys know me - I like to run my mouth and I continued to do so for the next few years until they finally "got it" and put me in charge of one of the first full blown e-recruiting programs in the country.  Five years later, they'll deny it up and down if you ask them about it ("we were ALWAYS going to make this change....ALWAYS knew it was the right thing to do") but the only reason that change happened was because I was IN THE ROOM pushing the web.  If I had excused myself from those meetings because they weren't important, I'd still be a counselor.   

I'm not the only one that can tell a story like that. A few years before I got to the development office here, the general consensus among all involved was that the web wasn't going to raise a dime.  This year, the web systems set up before I got here processed in excess of $6 million. I'm sure that progress wasn't made by people who sat in their office and refused to attend seemingly unnecessary meetings.  

A lot of us talk about wanting to effect change in our organization but few of us will actually step up and put the work in to get it done.  Change doesn't come easily and it doesn't happen overnight.  Hell, even if it does come, you may not even get credit for being the catalyst!  But if you really want it, then do what it takes to get it done.  

So why are web standards important?

Many years ago, I could roughly be characterized as a standards nazi.  And then I started working in higher education!  All of a sudden, it wasn't important anymore.  What was important was banging stuff out the door and making sure it looked decent - not great, but presentable. And, yeah, I'm aware that it's better to use really clean code and make sure all of it validates and separate your presentation and content and write beautiful CSS-layouts instead of tables-based ones, but frankly I'm making crap money (compared to the corporate world) and working way too many hours and not being respected because all I do is "play on the web" and just don't feel like going the extra mile to write code that will make geeks go "ohhhhhhhhhhh....."

I would be shocked if I was the only one who could tell that story.  In fact, I know I'm not as I've heard similar ones from more than a few web people who have somehow stumbled into higher education.  But as professionals, it's time to start holding ourselves to higher standards (no pun intended).   

The problems: 

1) Marketing is about the message, not necessarily about the back end of the technology that's conveying it.  I don't think its wrong that the web is located hierarchically under marketing/communications at many colleges/universities.  In fact, I think that's exactly where it SHOULD be located.  What irks me is that the people who end up managing the people responsible for the web usually have no idea what goes into using it as a tool to convey a message.  Not only that, but many have little desire to learn - they've got their print stuff down and that's all that really matters.  I remember sitting in a former boss's office circa 2004 and trying to explain the W3C and why its important and got a lot of blank stares and nods.  It's not that I think managers should know every in and out, but I think that if you're going to manage something, you have an obligation to bring yourself up to speed with the basics and for that, your employees can be your most valuable resource (assuming you've made good hiring decisions!)

2) Standards aren't rewarded.  We're all stretched to the limit in terms of how much time we have to dedicate to projects and its just human nature to want to spend that time working on the things that are going to get us the raises and the promotions and the accolades. Standards aren't going to do that, precisely for the reasons I outlined above - higher ups don't understand them or why they are important.  So you can spend hours working on them but what they are going to see is a website that, outwardly, basically looks and functions the same and think that you haven't dedicated your time wisely - no raise for you!

Frankly, I don't know how to solve either of those problems.  Ultimately it comes down to a mindset shift in higher ups and we all know that that's something we have little to no control over.  I think continual education (and a little prayer if that's your thing) is really all we have.  Maybe some of the arguments below will help.

So why are standards important anyway?

Way back when many of us first started building websites, we had to muddle our way through getting our pages to display the way we wanted them to because HTML was suppose to be a presentation language.  So we used lots of nested tables and font tags to make everything look pretty.  Then standards came along and those that embraced them found it was like the clouds opening and the hallelujah choir playing.  

It makes your life easier: Separating presentation and content makes it infinitely easier to maintain your content.  This is one possible argument to use with your boss - it may take some time now but down the road when you decide you want every link on our website to be bright red in large font and blinking, I will only have to change that in one place instead of in 5,000!*  It also makes your content degrade as well as possible, given the fact that we have no idea if the pages we create today will be able to be read 100 years from now

It makes your pages more accessible: It doesn't make your pages completely accessible, but it gets you towards that.  How would you like to be the first school sued by the ADA for not allowing people with disabilities to surf your pages?  Potential lawsuits also make good arguments with the bosses....

It makes things load faster: Ok, so maybe this is less important than it was in the days of prolific dial-up, but whether you want to believe it or not people do still use it! 

Improve search engine rankings: Search engines like well-structured, clean  markup, which means more visitors to your pages. 

Better user experience: You don't know what type of device your users will be viewing your pages on but standards can help you be pretty sure that it's going to work on the largest number of devices.  

It's the professional thing to do: You may think "who cares....my salary is a joke" now**.  But ever want to move out of higher education and into the real web world and double (if not triple) your salary? Well you better know standards because you're going to have a tough time getting  your foot in the door at any design reputable shop without them.  

Alright, I'm convinced.  Where do I get started?!

An important thing is to make sure you are referencing reliable content when you're looking for information.  There are tons of books out there at your local Barnes and Noble and loads of useful links out there.  The biggest thing, I think, is that you need to be honest with yourself that this is not an overnight "quick fix" and will probably involve quite a bit of frustration.  And you'll need to weave it into banging the time sensitive stuff out the door.  But I'm confident it can be done and I'm embarking on it here as an example of that.  It's not that I don't have my fair share of things to do....I think it's something that I'm professionally obligated to do.  So look for more blogs on this topic in the future, as I prepare to spend the next several months looking like this at my computer: 

*to be clear, my boss rules and would never make me make every link on a site large, red and blinking

**any references to salary are not a reference to my own being poor...i'm pretty cool with it in fact...moreso a reference to broader higher ed thing of not paying web people very well.

"Outside" experts just don't seem to be important...

So my blog got a fair amount of attention last week because I blogged An Event Apart and then Zeldman linked it on his website, which brought a lot of visitors I wouldn't normally have.  And the analytics were fascinating.  But they were also sad for me because they ended up confirming what I've thought for a while - that higher education web professionals are so closed off to ideas that don't come from inside their niche world, that they've lost all grasp on the notion that there is a great big wide world out there of web design where they could be looking for inspiration from.  

Exhibit A: Time spent reading An Event Apart blogs - this was really interesting stuff.  People who hit my blog from higher ed networks spent SIGNIFICANTLY less time reading the AEA posts than people coming from non-higher ed networks.  You could almost sort the thing by time spent on site and have it be completely segmented between non-higher ed and higher ed.  To me, this said that people just don't care what goes on at this conference and that baffles me!  This was an event with some of the biggest names in the game and my higher ed readers basically said "ehhhh....not important".  WHAT?!  And watch - in a few weeks when EduWeb happens, they'll be a plethora of blogs about the event and how great it was, though I'll bet money the reality is that it'll be no different than it has been for the last two bloody years (except in a different location) and that few or no original ideas will come out of it.  

  

Exhibit B: "That what we have edustyle for!" - I was talking to another blogger about my theory and of web design inspiration, he commented that that was what we had edustyle for!  My jaw literally dropped, as my point had been missed entirely.  Edustyle is fine for what it is - it's not a site I visit at all but if you're looking for examples of what other colleges are doing, I guess it gets the job done.  But it is ironic that any honest higher ed web person will tell you that the industry is YEARS behind the corporate world and then in the same breathe say they look to only higher ed websites for inspiration.  

I feel like I outgrew higher ed web stuff circa late 2005, which is when I first started attending professional development events outside of the industry to draw inspiration from.  To me, it seemed natural - higher ed was just giving me the same thing over and over again where as things like SXSW gave me new ideas and perspectives.  I still went to the higher ed stuff because my job required me to, but it wasn't out of any sense of excitement for what I would learn.  Is it the lack of formal education in web design that leads to problems like this?  I find that especially with the younger crowd, people have never bothered to learn the basics of design and standards so they have little regard for their importance.  I never thought I would become so parent-like..."those young whipper snappers just don't know what they're doing"....yet here I am.  

Mark Greenfield likes to argue that higher ed websites are becoming irrelevant and I would agree in the sense that I think higher ed websites aren't taken seriously because most of them are just bad.  Your users aren't comparing you to every other college website they visit.  They are comparing you to EVERY website they visit and when you don't have a respect for basic design standards, you're going to have a hard time competing with sites designed by big time experts, like those who spoke at AEA.  

But clearly they are irrelevant because they didn't speak at EduWeb.  Pity.   

Just because other schools do something doesn't mean you should too

I was reading an interesting piece in Conversation Marketing today titled "If your competitor jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?" It's about not resorting to shady tactics just because your competitor is. Now, I'm not saying that college resort to shady tactics for the sake of marketing :::cough:::fudgingadmissionsnumbers:::cough::: but the article brings up a good general point about marketing - just because another school is doing something doesn't mean it's the right strategy for your institution.

At my last job, their mantra seemed to be "well, let's see what everyone else is doing and then do that". It absolutely drove me crazy!!!! Just because another school is implementing a strategy that may or may not work for their audience does not mean you should follow suit as if it was the magic bullet of marketing. I would say that 90% of the marketing strategies I've come up with in the past four years have been completely organic. Many of them (particularly involving email marketing) have actually been almost by accident. For example, you're in the midst of building an email newsletter and start asking yourself why it can't be more segmented and customized to the specific needs of the audience. Before you know it, you have email campaigns with not one or two, but 25-30 different parts! It's not based on something someone else did - it's based on what you think will work for your SPECIFIC AUDIENCE. And that should always be the yard stick you go by. Never be afraid to experiment with new ideas and always have a focus on what the end user needs, wants and experiences with your final product.

One more point: The same goes for speakers at conferences or bloggers - just because they say it doesn't make it so (or it may be so in some instances but not necessarily for your institution). People who speak at conferences or blog are not gods. They are just people, many of whom are struggling along with the same issues you face every day. They don't have all the answers and if they say they do, they are lying. Now, that's not to say their ideas are worthless but please just take everything you hear with a grain of salt and don't be discouraged if you apply their ideas to your institution and it doesn't work. There is no magic bullet.

Key Takeaways:
1) Build your strategy based on the specific needs of your audience, rather that what other institutions are doing.
2) Speaking at a conference or writing a blog post does not make someone buddha.

Getting what you need from people who don't view the web as important.

There is not a single web person out there who hasn't had to deal with the harsh reality of people not seeing the power or value of the web. Whether they be upper administration or colleagues on your level, there will always be those who don't understand why the web should get any of their time. Unless you have a full blown web team with writers and designer and producers, chances are that you're going to have to work with other, non-web, professionals at your university....which can often lead to headaches. Your expertise is ignored. They don't deliver content on time. When they do deliver content, it is half-assed. Ultimately, this reflects on you since you are delivering the final product and you will perpetually feel like punching a wall.

But you have to work with them anyway. Since very few of us have a full-blown web team to work with, here are some strategies to get what you need out of your colleagues who may not see it as a good use of their time to provide material for the web:

1) Be proactive: Plan things in advance, instead of on the fly. You'll have a lot more ammo if you go to someone saying "You know three months ago that we were going to need this" rather than "You knew three days ago that we were going to need this." Involve them in the process of creating your master calendar so that they feel like they have buy-in.

2) Talk to people like they are human: All too often in higher education, people get very territorial and treat every other person they work with like they don't know what they are doing. We all get hired for a reason (seemingly because we are viewed as an expert on the day of our job interview) but those reasons tend to get tossed out the door as soon as we start the actual job part. Don't buy into this. Treat the people you work with like they are the experts that people saw in them on their interview. Make them feel like you respect them and their opinions and they will be much more open about having a dialogue with you regarding what you need from them. It also doesn't hurt if you ask them leading questions so that they feel like they came up with the ideas themselves (this tends to work more with men ;-) )

3) If all else fails, babysit: No one likes to babysit but it is sometimes necessary. Make sure that everyone knows their deadlines well in advance and that you have notified them in writing (preferably email). Remind them of the deadline EVERY TIME you have a conversation (in person or electronically) on the topic. Send last minute reminders before deadlines to check on progress. If they miss the deadline, send follow-up reminders. If missed deadlines are still a problem, make sure your (and their) supervisor knows of the issue and has the documentation.

Finally, make sure you use positive re-enforcement when people do what you need them to do. Thank them. Show them the results of their efforts. Make them feel like you value your contribution. I find that the words "thank you" or "great work" are so often ignored in our business and when you're having a bad or stressful day, knowing that people value your efforts can make all the difference. So be nice - but only AFTER you get your stuff. Being nice before then just makes you a pushover.

ByStudents.com

Yet another website has launched that are going to push colleges off the authenticity cliff: www.bystudents.com

They also have a Facebook group up at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9551069964


I got all this info from the eMarketingCollege mailing list, which you should be on if you aren't already: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/emarketingcollege/

A New (But Only Slightly-Varied) Direction for KarlynMorissette.com

Most nights when I get home from work, I relax by popping in a disc from one of the seven seasons I have of The West Wing on DVD, plopping down on my couch and doing needlepoint.

Yes, needlepoint. Bet you didn't see that one coming ;-)

I just made it to the halfway point of the project I'm working on now this weekend and as I was doing so, I had a revelation about the direction I see this blog taking. I never really started it with a specific purpose in mind, beyond collecting my thoughts and sharing them with the community. But I feel it veering in a direction I have discussed often in previous blogs and presentations: the business aspect of the web in higher education.



Needlepoint is a very slow process. You work in specific colors in small sections at a time. When you're working on one section, it's oftentimes hard to see outside of that to the bigger picture. You spend hundreds of hours making thousands of stitches before the project finally starts to come together. Now, if you think about it, this is not very different from the various aspects of higher education. There are any number of areas that have an impact on the web in higher education and each has a tendency to get tunnel vision:

-Senior Administrators: Focus on the bottom line but know very little of the day-to-day details of achieving it.

-Marketers: Focus on 40,000 foot view strategies of spreading the word to their constituents but don't necessarily know the best tactics to implement those strategies.

-Communications Folks: In higher ed, these guys typically tend to focus on print communications. Maybe they have a subset for the web or maybe the web is located outside of them in another department, but either way its usually an afterthought. They think linearly and focus on the story of the specific project they are working on at the time.

-Web Folks: These tend to be former designers or developers that have stumbled upon higher education. The Communications folks keep them around to translate print into the web. They think very non-linearly and can build out on print work, but also tend to focus too much on what is the cool technology of the moment rather than what is ultimately going to achieve the desired business result.

Now, I'm making broad generalizations here and understand that they will not apply in every circumstance. Nonetheless, think of each of these areas as one of the separate colors in the picture above. They are all very unique of one another, but if we pull back to see the big picture, we can see how they all work together, none being any more or less significant in the grand scheme of things than another:



By pure happenstance, I have a broad range of experience that spans all of these areas and I think that perhaps the best contribution I can make to the higher ed web community is that perspective:

-I've been designing websites on and off for over a decade and have been building customized and segmented email campaigns for the better part of five years

-In my last job, I created a web communications strategy start-to-finish that focused on story-telling and connecting with constituents on a human level.

-I have an undergraduate degree in public relations and a MBA, which gave me an understanding of a variety of marketing techniques as well as an appreciation for making wise business decisions that achieve the bottom line.

It wasn't until recently that I found a true appreciation for how unique this skill-set is and how lucky I am to have had the opportunities that I've had. I find that many people may have a good grasp of one or two of these areas but very few have an understanding of all of them. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I credit shear dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time rather than some brilliant master plan for gaining experience in all these areas (I barely know what I'm doing this weekend most of the time).


I think the most difficult of these areas is the business aspect. One of my most common criticisms is that so few managers treat their university like it's a business. Let's be honest: It's not sexy. Its not exciting. It oftentimes forces you to forego the strategies you would have the most fun implementing for the tried and true ones that are boring but result in significant returns. But we all need to acknowledge that although most of us work for a non-profit, the bottom line is just as important in our industry as it is to an evil corporation. So that's where the primary focus of this blog is going to be from now on - the business aspect of the web in higher education. Of course, I'll still post neat tools or interesting articles (and the occasional rant or two) as well.  

So I hope you enjoy it and get something out of it :-)  

Social Networks Galore!!!

Higher Education Professionals (not web specific!) - Started about 10 minutes ago by my best buddy Meaghan: http://highereducationprofessionals.ning.com


Also, I was poking around TargetX's website yesterday and found the new version of their knowledge center, where it looks like they've partnered with Ning to create their own social network. If people get on it, it could be cool! Check it out: http://knowledgecenter.targetx.com/