#findray

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the Annual CUPRAP Spring Conference. It was a good conference and worth my time. But I saw an interesting social media campaign by a vendor that I thought was worth mentioning here.

A few days before the conference I started to tweet using the hashtag #cuprap. Whenever I speak on social media I like to use the conference hashtag as a teaching point. Zone 5, a communications firm, was also using the hashtag with an interesting promotion. They were encouraging people to #findray at the conference. There were buttons and logos and Ray even started tweeting from sessions and some of the nighttime conference functions. At one point I think Ray even made a comment about the mustard sauce at the Thursday night dinner.

Eventually I did find Ray – or maybe Ray found me. But Ray turned out to be Ray Witkowski an employee of Zone 5 who had not attended the conference before. Once you found him you got a t-shirt and a chance to win an Ipad. I found the approach refreshing, interesting, and a good use of social media to create buzz. I may never use the firm but they will stick in my head as innovative and interesting in the future.

CUPRAP Conference

I had the opportunity to attend my first CUPRAP conference today and present with Alana Mauger, Director of Communications, at Montgomery County Community College in PA. We had a great session with lots of good questions and interaction. You can follow the CUPRAP conversation on twitter at #CUPRAP. I promised to post our powerpoint so here it is please feel free to download it and share/steal ideas from it. I’m sorry we didn’t get through everything but as one twitter follower commented this afternoon”You’ve done a good job when you don’t get to finish.”

CASE District II conference thoughts

I am attending the CASE District II conference in Philadelphia and I took a bunch of notes in the sessions today and have a number of thoughts and observations. They are in no particular order and rather random but I thought I would share them tonight.

Ithaca College presented on the peer to peer communication approach. I was blown away by the comprehensive nature of their web/print strategy and how they engaged their students. I believe they said that they have 35 active bloggers in the community and quite a robust twitter and facebook page: http://www.ithaca.edu/

They also have a feature in their CMS that allows them to “recommend” content to other departments on campus.

Adelphi and Hofstra presented on how to boost the buzz of your brand by using key events on your campus. Some tips they recommended:

• Use an Advisory committee
• take photos of students with key speakers and post them for parents to download
• Connect it to strengths you already have on campus
• Think about how can different departments be involved?
• Use social media and print

Barbara Brooks from Colgate gave a good presentation as well on communications in lean times. As she was talking I was thinking about LinkedIn and how to take better advantage of the data. Can we use the update feature to track when alums change jobs or do interesting things with their careers?

CASE District II call for proposals

CASE District II has announced the call for proposals for the annual District Conference in Philadelphia on February 7-9, 2010. This “Call for Proposals” is an opportunity to suggest conference session topics and volunteer to share best practices, successes/challenges, and cutting-edge ideas at the 2009 conference.

Submit your proposal now

Deadline for Submission: August 7, 2009

#CASE CMT Wrap up

It’s thursday night and the CASE Communications, Marketing, and Technology Conference is over. #CASECMT was the hashtag check out the twitter stream.

I think our conference had the right mix of practical advice and nuggets to take back to campus and implement right away along with big picture strategy to think about for your instiutiton. Karlyn Morissette live blogged much of the conference if you missed it.

I thought I would put together 5 takeaways from the conference tonight. For those that attended feel free to add more.

1. Social Media is this generations word of mouth marketing

2. try and try and try even if you fail

3. collaborate

4. Web strategy is long term and not a project with a defined beggining and end

5. There are lots of professional to lean on for advice