I was interviewed by Matt Klawitter in Nov. 2011 for his blog series on “hiring trends and possibilities in higher education and digital marketing”. I cannot say it better than Matt, “MSU is an example of social media success”. Check out Matt’s story and the interview to learn more about what makes MSU a social media success.

Today I’d like to share with you a project, that was started exactly one year, the Graduating Student T-Shirt or “My Name Is On Senior Walk” t-shirt program. In short it’s the number one way we have found to keep up with our graduating students and get their information before we lose touch with them.

Unlike what you typically find when someone is talking about social media integration/marketing campaign I’m not referring to the act of putting your message everywhere and simply shouting it to the world. This is quite a common tactic for marketing groups to say that they have done a social media campaign simply by pushing their message everywhere they possibly can. Yet, if you’ve spent a little time in the social media world you know that simply won’t suffice anymore. Instead, I took this opportunity to help the Association integrate the true value of social media, one-to-one connections, into the event and increase the understanding of why we’ve been taking this “everyone is a person” approach to our social media marketing efforts. I’m glad to say that all our efforts are continuing to pay off.

Back in October of 2010, I saw an opportunity to create a collaborative campus partnership to enhance the University of Arkansas’s 2010 Homecoming by live streaming it for everyone around the world. The project started by one of our alumni asking us to stream a pep rally earlier in the season (of course with less than 24hr notice it was not feasible) and I thought what if we could stream the Homecoming activities too? We would be able to allow alumni & friends, students, fans and anyone else interested in the University of Arkansas (yep prospective students) to watch all the 2010 Homecoming festivities.

I was interviewed & quoted by Karine Joly in her University Business column on “Getting Your E-mail in Their Inboxes” for the November/December, 2010 issue. It’s a great article on how although online communications are changing email marketing is “Not Dead Yet”.