Poll: Paying for online content

The Star Tribune recently announced that they will start charging for their online content. The New York Times did the same earlier this year with much media coverage and public debate. MinnPost operates on a reader-supported model.

As more and more communications channels are moving to a paid-service model, we're curious: do you pay for online content?

Link Roundup: Photography

Mastering photography is an elusive art. But, practice makes perfect and building photographic skills is an enjoyable hobby.

Here's an edition of link roundup on getting good at taking pictures.

-- 14 Ways to Improve Your Photography in a Few Days
-- 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources
-- How to Stay Up Late and Make an HDR Image
-- How To: Master Smartphone Photography 
-- iPhone Photography + Social Networking = Instagram
-- The Washington Post Wants Your Instagram Photos to Illustrate Health of U.S. Economy

The drive behind the Driven to Discover student campaign

Guest blogger: Drew Swain, U Relations marketing coordinator, manages the University's overall brand and assists in the development of the yearly Driven to Discover campaigns. Swain says the focus of this phase of the campaign is on students, and gives some insight at how that came about, and what's coming next.

Here's Drew:

You've seen professors explain mind control. Professors growing hearts. Professors teaching classes from the Arctic. Professors even lecturing on what makes Superman faster than bullets. So what about the students? Where do they fit into the University's mission to discover?

That's the focus of the new iteration Driven to Discover, the Driven to Discover Student Campaign, which was just released. You might have already seen some of the TV spots.

The inception of the campaign was really a confluence of factors. We wanted to take an uncharted path to further the Driven to Discover brand and one of President Kaler's incoming initiatives centered on students. Meanwhile, the U of M Foundation was starting its new scholarship drive. It was a natural fit to make students the campaign's "heroes."

As higher education communications pros, when you look at Discover Student, you should notice its unique approach. While student related campaigns of other schools are direct recruiting tools, we're telling our audiences how the student experience at the U is unbeatable. There's nowhere else in the state and most of the region where students can be paired up with elite faculty like Andy Van de Ven, one of the world's top minds in managing innovation. Nowhere they have such an array of opportunities to discover their passion and profession through partnerships like the Guthrie BFA Program. And nowhere they can be exposed to such distinct student-related experiences (hello, Sheep, Goat, and Lama Club).

The next step in the student campaign will make it even more focused on students, when it asks them to directly participate in a scholarship video contest. Students will be asked to submit 30-second videos of themselves explaining what they have discovered at the U. Winners will be chosen based on "Likes" on the U's Facebook page, so stay tuned in mid-December when voting begins!

Buzzword (BS) Bingo

My office, U Relations, had a meeting this morning, and our new chief passed out bingo cards with some overused words on them. Words like, "Value-added, Win-win, Think outside the box, At the end of the day," etc... She encouraged us to call her out if she used any of them. Refreshing.

The concept, if you're unfamiliar, is to prepare bingo cards with buzzwords and tick them off when they're said during a meeting or speech until you "win-win."

The moral to the game is that the listener feels that the speaker, through the subterfuge of an infinite echoing of trite terminology, is masking a lack of actual knowledge and just spouting off a bunch of buzzwords rather than providing information or ideas of actual value. In other words, our chief was saying, "I actually know what I'm talking about. Feel free to question me on it." Refreshing...because it's actual, mutual communication. 

Just look at what one recent winner said about the game:

"Thanks Bingo creator for thinking outside the box and proactively creating this value-added knowledgebase that is a strategic fit with my core competencies and current client focused mindset. I can leverage our existing process and exploit the inherent synergies to expand the knowledgebase to cater to our result driven folks who will work 24/7 to put it on a fast-track. This cascading game-plan is what I call a truly win-win situation."

I'm happy to say that no one "won" the game today.

Have you followed @PrezKaler?

Guest blogger: Elizabeth Giorgi ( egiorgi at umn.edu )

Elizabeth Giorgi (Liz), social and multimedia coordinator in University Relations, has some words of wisdom about the whimsical world of social media. Liz manages the U's Facebook page, YouTube channel, and the recently launched @PrezKaler Twitter account. In her free time, she also blogs about social media, Internet culture, and general geekiness at beinggeekchic.com. Her conclusion here may seem intuitive: ask yourself the most important question of all: Would I read this? But the road to a good Twitter post and indeed much social media is fraught with the perils of tedium.

Here's what Liz has to say:

You may have noticed that our 16th President has a beard. Did you know that he is the first since U president William Watts Folwell? It's these kind of quirky details that we hope to capture with the @PrezKaler Twitter account.

People are already starting to ask me what my goals for our social media accounts will be in 2012. The introduction of the @PrezKaler account is a huge part of what I see as the future of social media at the U. Here's why: we tend to pay attention to and share the things that we see from friendly faces. As a large entity, we're not always effective in doing that.

When you break down the walls of academia and focus on one voice, you can make the conversation more personal and more impactful. So, how does the beard come in? One of the ideas we're playing with for November is to have people tweet their pictures of their "Novembeards" to @PrezKaler as a sign of solidarity. Who would you be more likely to send a photo of yourself to? A nameless face acting as a large department? Or a guy you see on TV or in the halls? We're betting on the latter.

Getting Twitty with it
In a nutshell: We need to be sassier, more personal, more risky, and more ever-present.
 
As for the larger accounts that do represent us as a whole, aka the University of Minnesota page on Facebook, the U's page needs to find a way to more clearly distinguish ourselves from other information on your news feed. That's where sassiness comes into play. We recently posted a photo album on Facebook with some autumnal scenes. One caption reads: "The Lilly Plaza is a little-known study spot. Oops, did we just let out the secret?!"

When you look to establish your goals for social media this coming year, think about what you can do to distinguish yourself and use a more personal voice. And ask yourself the most important question of all: Would I read this?

Poll: Revisiting ebooks

A year ago we asked, "Do you use a portable device like the iPad or Kindle for reading books?" Results:


So...today we're wondering what you're using:

Communicating with your faculty about the value of research and expertise publicity

Jeff Falk (the handsome fellow to the left, in full professional regalia), assistant director of the U's News Service, has some helpful advice today on getting University research and researchers in the news. First step: making sure faculty see the value of media relations. That's where you (we all) come in. Here's Falk's post:

"If your research is stale, if your classroom is boring, if your community engagement is ineffective, you must reinvent yourself, or, frankly, you must step aside," President Kaler implored faculty in his Sept. 22 inauguration ceremony address. "As you expect me to deliver on my job, I expect you to deliver on yours."

Here at the University News Service, we believe there are few better and simpler ways to highlight the value of faculty research and expertise than through focused and strategic media relations. Here are some suggested talking points to emphasize with faculty when discussing the importance of media relations:

--News stories on University of Minnesota research and expertise are read by state legislators, the governor, and Minnesota's Congressional delegation as well as citizens, donors and, when there is national publicity, people at federal funding agencies.

--Research results can help inform decisions on important public issues.

--Many grant applications require public outreach and education, and there certainly is a need to improve public appreciation of science and how research benefits society.

--Popular press coverage makes it more likely research will be seen and cited by other scientists

--Announcements about grants, appointments, and awards rarely get more coverage than brief mentions in local newspapers. This is why it is important to focus on publicizing research findings and faculty expertise.

--Finally, popular press coverage of research often results in valuable contacts with potential collaborators. Most national and international publicity about the U comes from coverage of peer-reviewed research findings.

As faculty have been charged to push the envelope, we as communicators need to take advantage of this opportunity and help them understand the value and impact of telling their stories.

--Jeff Falk ( jfalk at umn.edu )