Presidents who blog... media interest & a chili dip recipe
A reporter from the Kansas City Star called Wednesday for a quick interview on my thoughts about college and university presidents who blog. I thought I'd share some of the questions and my responses here.
How do these blogs fit into the marketing picture?
- Blogs are in part a reflection of the interest in "reality based" marketing that moves us away for carefully scripted statements about various issues and topics. Presidents who share their honest personal opinion abut important things on their campuses fit well with the Web 2.0 era of online communications.
Are there legal issues to be afraid of?
- I've seen a few references to advice from lawyers that presidents should not write blogs for fear that they will say something that might damage the legal standing of their institution. To date, I'm not aware of anyplace where this has happened. If we always listened to the advice of lawyers protecting us from worst-case scenarios, our communications would be limited indeed. (And its worth noting that at least a few traditional PR people are quite wary of presidential blogs and get nightmares at the thought that a president might go directly to a blog and write something that hasn't been prepared for them and reviewed by the PR staff.)
Are blogs spreading rapidly throughout higher education?
- Not that I've noticed. I have 15 listed in my July 1 blog entry and that list has grown slowly over the past year or so. Blogging isn't for every president. You have to have the right personality, an ability to write in a relatively informal style, and the time and interest to post on a regular basis. I'd expect slow cotinuing growth.
- There's no special pattern to where you'll find presidents who blog. The 15 include people at major public universities, smaller private colleges, and two-year schools. As is so often the case in higher education marketing, who's doing what often depends on who "gets it" at a particular place more than the type of institution.
Is there an award given for best presidential blogs?
- Not that I've heard of yet. Might be time to check CASE and other possibilities.
Those were the questions of most interest to the reporter. Her start towards an article was prompted by the blog of Ronald Slepitza at Avila University. She did ask about the content of various blogs, but I've never done a systematic review of that. Some of them are very serious indeed, some are much less so.
The best blogs, of course, mix things up. If, for example, you might use this weekend a recipe for a "Skyline Chile Party Dip," you'll find one on the Avila presidential blog at http://www.avila.edu/President/presblog.asp