cross-posted at Alumni Trending.  I have a challenge for anyone who works in an alumni or development office. Build a bank of questions that you can have in your toolkit the next time you are called upon to write an article, news item or feature that highlights one of your graduates. Once you get past [...]

My third contribution to the Agency Post, Hitching Your Brand’s Wagon to Pinterest’s Rising Star, went live today. I submitted it about two weeks ago, and already I know the basic research I did into the site is outdated. Pinterest represents the Interweb’s Wild West at the moment, at least among the female/under-60 crowd. I [...]

32 ways to tweak your blog in an afternoon via MarianLibrarian. I love this list because it is so basic, requiring rudimentary skills to implement. Why choose Oberlin College? Because of their over-the-top unofficial web site.  The boldest marketing efforts are generally the most memorable. A new way of looking at higher education fund raising. Think [...]

I contributed another article to The Agency Post, “Many Stories, Many Audiences,” which was published today. Creating compelling content for an organization presents a challenge for even the most seasoned writers. Working in higher education, I’m lucky to have several audiences to supply stories. Student achievements, faculty accomplishments and notable alumni all go into the metaphoric hopper [...]

Venture Beat’s article about “frictionless” sharing through Facebook’s soon-to-be-launched “actions” feature used the metaphor of the next block of Facebook’s Open Graph being the new “like” button. But it’s so much more than that. The example used in the article, a recipe site could create its own “cooking” action, means that we can expect to see [...]

Working in higher education, I’ve been lucky enough most years to have an extended break between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. This time of year, the campus is quiet and most projects grind to a halt, freeing up a few hours here and there to bring some closure to the year. These are simple [...]

I see my emailbox as an extension of my brain for storing all manner of ephemera, so when it comes to managing what messages I receive, I try to be as discriminating as possible. Here are my top recommendations for electronic publications related to the work I do; if there are others that I should [...]

In November, the kind (and knowledgeable) folks at the Educational Marketing Group published my article, “What Higher Ed Can Learn From Occupy Wall Street” in its Brand Manager’s Notebook. What would make anyone, especially from a college, think that those hippie hooligans who are occupying cities nationwide would have anything to contribute to higher education [...]

I had the idea to create a course that would reflect on some of the very pressing needs in the communication industry for clear and creative writing skills. Here is an outline for a little course I like to call Writing for Electronic Media. It’s not the first time this has been taught, nor is [...]