The Brand (Brave?) New World Of Online Public Relations Ready or not, IHEs must strategize about how they appear in mentions on the web. By Karine Joly April 2006

Printer-Friendly Page Email This Article

Dan Rather hasn't been the only casualty of the brave new world of blog swarms. In a speech to the Denver Forum civic group she gave last August, former University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman said she wished she would have assigned one of her staffers to read political blogs every day, as reported later in The Denver Post.

Hoffman resigned in March 2005 in the wake of two major scandals caused by the institution's football recruiting practices and Professor Ward Churchill's essay comparing some victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks to "Little Eichmanns," referencing a known Nazi official.

Influential bloggers played a major role in exposing (and fueling?) these scandals. In her speech, Hoffman recalled that "one of the first mentions of Churchill's essay appeared on a blog called 'little green footballs' after the professor was invited to speak at Hamilton College (N.Y.)." Within 10 minutes of the posting, people were asking Gov. Bill Owens to tell her to fire Churchill.

Scary, isn't it?

The explosion of consumer-generated online media has ushered in an era of invasive and pervasive transparency. While some big companies, small businesses, news outlets, political figures, and institutions of higher ed have understood the associated opportunities and risks, the majority are still ignoring the brand-new world of the "read/write web." In this world, anybody can write anything about an institution and potentially have it read by either millions of people or a handful of influential individuals: trustees, lawmakers, major donors, or news reporters.

Yes, newspaper, radio, and TV journalists do read blogs. Last spring, the 11th Annual Euro RSCG Magnet and Columbia University Survey of the Media found that 51 percent of the 1,202 journalists questioned use blogs regularly; 28 percent rely on them for day-to-day reporting. Also, 53 percent of these journalists who read blogs reported doing so to find story ideas, 43 percent to research and reference facts, 36 percent to find sources, and 33 percent as a way to uncover breaking news or scandals.

So, what can you do? Know your enemies, find allies, embrace the change, and listen to your institution's experts. "A lot of academic PR professionals would like to be doing more but are having difficulty persuading their administrative colleagues that the new media have to be taken seriously, and that there's much to be gained by getting ahead of the curve," says Dan Forbush, president of ProfNet, a PR Newswire service, and editor of the website Future of PR, which is dedicated to the new paradigm. And although we are just witnessing its emergence, a few pioneers in higher education have already started to develop interesting strategies, both to weather the dangers and take advantage of new possibilities.

"The beauty of these new technologies is the same thing that scares a lot of folks-micromedia provide direct, cheap, easy access to your institution and the folks who are a part of it. This is the true no-spin zone," analyzes Charlie Melichar, vice president of Public Relations and Communications at Colgate University (N.Y).

Your institution should closely monitor blogs and other consumer-generated online media. They can be powerful research tools on your target audiences by providing very useful insights on people's general state of mind and their opinion about your organization. "Blogs can provide some fantastic information on perceptions," says Melichar. "The best part is that posts tend to be very straightforward-folks peel back the veneer a bit when posting, which leads to some really rich content."

Just as you wouldn't ignore what the traditional press writes or says, you should keep an eye on what the new media publish about your institution.

At Duke University (N.C.), blogs get special handling. Besides monitoring coverage in the conventional media, says David Jarmul, associate vice president of News and Communications, "we've added blogs to our coverage, mainly by having a student search on Technorati [a real-time search engine for weblogs] several times a week."

   1   2       Next>>