New President? New Priorities.
It’s official. We live in a twitter world. All of us. Whether or not we use the social media marvel known as “twitter.”
Slowly but surely, we’re all being squeezed toward communicating in short bursts of carefully chosen words. If you’re a text-message user, or if you “tweet” on twitter, you must confine your blasts to 140 characters (including spaces). Likewise, if you’re being interviewed for radio, television or print you must discipline your comments and observations to achieve soundbyte status. And if you’re writing an article, blog post, or blog comment you mind the K.I.S.S. principle knowing that shorter and punchier is always better.
It’s just the way we operate today, and for the foreseeable future.
In my professional circle, a handful of friends periodically ask me to “tweet” about a topic, a challenge, or an issue du jour on their campuses. I love those requests, because my response can be very tweet-like. Short, punchy, prescriptive and efficient.
The most recent request sought three strategic marketing priorities any new college president should focus on. I suggested the following (and lengthened them a bit for the sake of clarity here):
- Ratchet up accountability across the campus, especially in the areas of recruitment, advancement and marketing. Rely on metrics and return-on-investment measures to make decisions…not hunches, politics and intuition. Invest accordingly.
- Segment your school’s marketing program as effectively as the college “segments” the academic program (by division, departments, concentrations and programs) to make sure we’re delivering the right marketing messages to the right people at the right time using the right channels and the right language. Invest accordingly.
- Shift your annual fund paradigm so you place as much (if not more) emphasis on referring and recruiting new students each year as has historically been placed on charitable giving. The lifetime value of an enrolled student is exponentially greater than the impact most individual donors can have on a school. Invest accordingly.
In future blog posts I’ll expand on each of these three big ideas. In the meantime, post a comment and share an observation if any of these priorities resonate with you.
Photo by tehusagent
