I’m very proud of our team here at AgencyND.  The new Notre Dame Arts and Letters site got some serious love by the EDUcheckup in this video episode.

You know, sometimes it’s hard being an Agency within a college.

You see, we don’t force anyone on campus to use us.  We’re not OIT and we can’t demand that our marketing services must be used.  We also have some limited resources (there’s only 21 of us) but who doesn’t have limited resources?

Each dept, center, institute, etc… has its own marketing money to do with it what they want.  They can come to us or they can go to anywhere of their choosing. Read More

When I was speaking with the Mendoza College of Business School at the University of Notre Dame Marketing team the other day, we did some quick analysis of their site to see how they ranked vs. their competitiors.  Now I’m not going to show you their stats, but I am going to show you nd.edu vs. some of our competition and how I would do it quickly just to set a benchmark.

There is much more in depth analysis you can do but this is down and dirty and gives you a snapshot.

First, I head over to Compete.com.  Now depending on how much traffic your website gets, compete.com can give you a pretty good reading of your website.  Now this is not based on internal analytics so it’s not perfect but for a quick analysis, it’s fine.

Here’s nd.edu vs. stanford.edu vs. duke.edu and bc.edu.  Interesting results that aren’t really far off from our internal analytics.

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Links to Slideshare Presentation

I used to beat people with my social media sledge hammer.  In fact, at my old job, I did carry a heavy hammer (not a sledge hammer) around all the time.

In a presentation of over 150 people at Junior Achievement, I used a sledge hammer to smash apples.  That was a fun presentation.  I hope Mitch Maxson had fun, too.  He was co-presenter.

Yes, it was all very Gallagher.  If you don’t know who he is, then I’ve aged myself quite well.

Social Media isn’t a hammer but it is a tool.  A great tool.  But it’s not a strategy.  It’s a tactic that you should use as a tactic.  But I wouldn’t consider it as much of a marketing tool as a customer engagement/service tool. Read More

I get lots of questions on this.

Facebook Fan Page? What is Twitter for?  People keep sending me invitations to Linkedin, should I join?

Should I be using this social network or that one?  What should I be doing online with social media marketing?  It’s all the buzz – I should be out there, right?

It really, really depends on you.  You, the marketer or marketing department.

Yes, I’m a big advocate of social media – when it is used to benefit your audience, the relationship and yourself.  That’s right, I said – yourself.

The reason I say this is because of experience.  In my early days of social media, I pushed many of my clients into social media.

“You’re gonna love it.”

“It’s great.”

“You’re building relationships.”

“Look at how many people I’m connected to.”

But just because it works for me, doesn’t mean it will work for you.  Why?  Because it’s a different mindset for a marketer.  This isn’t what they taught you in school about outreach, frequency, and return on investment.  There are really no classes on how to do it – even though, I’ve been known to teach a few.

I know what you are thinking.  This isn’t helping me, Don.  You are telling me nothing.

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According to a new report, you don’t.

Leave it to marketers to try everything in their power to ruin the internet.

I should know because I’m one of these marketers.  People know that when I’m talking about Notre Dame or any kind of product, really, that I’m lying.  Why?  Because that’s my job.

Or is it?  I believe that my “friends” think I’m a reliable resource of information.  Sure, occasionally, I’ll push something because someone reached out to me and asked me to but most of the time, I push things that have helped me, that have made my life easier, or that I think is just fun.

Image Provided by: whatmegsaid – Flickr Creative Commons

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You're fired.

People often ask me if the person they have in charge of their marketing is really the person that should be there and often they say it like they already know the answer.

I get tired of those looks.

The last thing you need to do is replace the person who knows your department/college inside and out and is dedicated to spreading the word about your success.  Most marketers I know love their job.  They love crafting messages and trying to get the word out about what’s going on.

The problem isn’t the marketer.  The problem is that while you have been busy asking for new websites and social media and video, they are having a rough time just trying to keep with all of these things.

But you do need to understand that they probably need some love and attention.

Because here’s really what a marketer should be doing  – whether they are old school with brochures or brand new with blogs – they should be telling “good stories” about you and your faculty, staff, center, college, etc…

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How can I help you?

I had this big long blog put together about how I got to ND but it wasn’t coming together the way I wanted it to so I’ve decided to do something else instead.

I get a lot of questions throughout the day about marketing, mostly digital, and social media.  I want to answer those questions here.  So I’ll be pulling stuff from our Linkedin community and questions I get through email, etc…  Don’t worry, I won’t use your name if you don’t want me to.

Topics will include:

1. Strategic Planning
2. Websites
3. Blogs
4. Social Media
5. Email Marketing
6. Measurement

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So how do you get a siteless web presence?

Your website is one place on the web. One place that Google can direct traffic. When a person does a search for your site then you’ll hopefully pop up. If you have the right kind of URL, Title Tags, Meta Tags, and enough relevant content about you on the home page.

Now I’m not saying you need to talk about yourself a lot – just the right keywords. And I’m never into talking about myself too much – you should be talking to your customers, telling your story, and explaining your unique benefits.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll post a blog on what kind of tags you should be using and how they work on a website. Anybody interested in that? Read More

Last week I spoke of a siteless web presence. And what I meant by that comment was that you need to stop thinking of your website as a destination stop and more of aggregator of all your web content. Pretty simple, huh?

But first things first. Your website should be a living breathing thing on the web. If you don’t know how to update your site – or if you need your web guy to do it then you need a new website. One with a CMS (content management system) behind it. Updates should be frequent and relevant – so you can get some Google love.

BTW, this doesn’t have to be expensive – it can be almost free if you don’t mind taking some time to piecemeal things together on the web like making a Wordpress blog into a full blown site and adding interesting information widgets like Google calendars/maps and cool stuff from Widget Box. There’s a lot more out there – these are just examples.

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We were working on doing a brand statement for a company when a colleague Scott passed along some good information he received from an expert in the field.

Start with:

To (target audience), (your company) is the (blank) provider/service of (blank) delivered through (blank).

This helped us a ton to put together several brand statements.