I will post three sections on training and a fourth post with links to articles that I found to be helpful to my new blog team. The fifth post will include a questionnaire that I distributed to my bloggers last year. I think it’s helpful to go over this with the new bloggers so they know what areas I’m looking for them to excel in.

My training begins by defining the role of a student blogger, identifying requirements, indicating incentives, and outlining the equipment they’ll be using:

{begin training manual excerpt}

Your Role:

1. Create a blog that matters to you
2. Post about things that would interest your target audience
3. Be Better

Requirements:

1. Post at least 2 times a week (non-micro-blogging)
   Sticky blogs are posted to regularly. You slack on posts and people won’t come back.
2. Add spices

Spices includes links to the internets, micro-blogging, photos, audio, and video. Extra points for your own stuff (really).

Incentives:

• Points for more than doing the absolute minimum (2 times per week)
• Points for creating and adding your own spices
• Points for Being Better
• Points for comments and interaction

Equipment:

• Digital Cameras
• HD Camera
• Moleskine Cahiers
• Pens
• Ambassador Computers

{end training manual excerpt}

Explanation:

The role of my bloggers is not only to post frequently, but to post about things that matter to them personally and would interest a prospective student reader. They also need to continuously strive to improve their blog by adding additional content (media, links, share on facebook, etc.)

By posting twice a week (at least), their blogs will draw students back with fresh new content. If you add spice to a blog, you’re adding links, video, pictures, bulleted lists, bold topic headings, etc. No one wants to read a bunch of paragraphs.

The whole rewards system is subjective and really makes no sense. I take note of well done work and I reward it with prizes of their choosing. Bloggers create wish lists and if they are excellent, they get rewarded.

If you want your bloggers to add pictures and videos, give them the supplies that they need to produce the content.

I’ll have more Student Blog Training Materials after the weekend. Let me know what you’re doing to make your blogs better than last year.

“We need to think beyond the blogging box and become really engaged with what we are doing, because we could create something that will attract viewers.”-Steven Hodson, Mashable

I look at blogs like I eat a McDonald’s cheeseburger: one bite, throw away the wrapper. Most money-making-tons-of-hits blogs are great at giving the reader bite sized information initially, then allowing them to re-read for the detailed stuff. But before you feel the need to have your bloggers bullet point, embolded headings, write small paragraphs and use italicization let’s talk about why Student Blogs are different.

The Difference

The typical student blog reader is reading for the experience. They’re not coming to each page needing tips on gardening or pet grooming; they want to feel like they’re at your institution. The difference between the mainstream blogosphere and Higher-Ed student blogs is in what the readers are looking for. The mainstream reader needs the gist first and the details second. Readers of student blogs need details immediately.

Video Application

You may find articles like this one that suggest that video may be bad for blogs because of the time commitment a reader must make. The great thing about the Student Blog is that readers come to the site ready to invest some time.

Viral Videos usually succeed if they are highly instructional or have the “i’ve never seen anything like that before in my life “quality.” Sure, your log videos may not be viral smash hits, but they will be experiential and that is what’s important.

The Rules

• Video content posted in a blog can be anything you want it to be, because your blog readers are ready to take the time to watch your stuff.
• Video content posted elsewhere should be instructional or entertaining.

Check out that Mashable article and subscribe to their feed. They post some great stuff about web communications.

It’s a good idea to get your bloggers into the same mindset. If they get in the habit of writing down ideas in a notebook that they carry with them at all times, they may not have to use the excuse that they have nothing to write about. You’re never creative when you have to sit down an crank something out, but your mind will definitely wander while you’re waiting for your fresh cut fries in the In-N-Out drive-thru.

I’ve purchased a dozen packs of the 3-pack Moleskine Cahiers to hand out to my bloggers this Fall. I may even get them some cool pens (like the Fisher Space Pen) to encourage their writing. The whole point of this is to give my students an inbox for their thoughts. These notebooks are great for stream of consciousness stuff, but it’s also a good idea to equip them with online inboxes.

Micro-blogging is a great inbox for the crazy stuff you see on the internet that you want to share or remember. I’ll have to write about this later, but I connect accounts like del.icio.us, evernote, and tumblr together so that I have a synced up inbox with all of my clippings for easy reference. It may even be a good idea to take the feed from a micro-blog such as tumblr and work that into the respective blog. Again, more on this later.

So yeah, inboxes. I’m a big fan. They help harness the incredible power that is ADD and give hope to those who can’t remember who they were suppose to meet in 15 minutes.

Flock is a web browser based on Firefox that allows the user to access their facebook, youtube, twitter, flickr etc. while browsing. One of my biggest obstacles as Digital Communication Coordinator is keeping the staff consistently motivated to check their SNS accounts. Flock actually makes me want to upload all those photos that I have sitting around. It makes me want to update my status–letting everyone know that I’m jump starting my car. The more active you are on facebook, the more you show up on your friend pages. They’ll look at your new pictures, they’ll comment, and they’ll ask you questions.

You can also look at media streams and easily message your Facebook friends with web, YouTube, and other Facebook content. It’s really easy to transfer your media from account to account, and you’re able to plug in Wordpress and blogger accounts as well.

You’ll have to just try this out. Here’s the link

Con: no myspace integration… yet

How to Promote

For a while now, I’ve been plugging our different avenues of communication in four ways

• email- it’s good for some things, granted a good percentage of students don’t do email. I’m also pretty cautious of how many times I email students about this stuff. The students who do care may start to delete my emails along with the continental sky points notices if I inundate their inbox with shenanigans. A great way to plug your stuff is to put a limited number of links in the signature of your email. So you’ll automatically notify students in a non-mass email sort of way.
•  Phone Calls- So I’ll talk to a student about what’s going on on the web, but the trick is… telling someone where to find something is a pain if they’re not navigating on the web as you direct them. You can give them urls (pbablogs.com) or locations on a web page (click the blue letters below my left ear on the about me page) but mostly this is just you making yourself feel good about getting the word out. You won’t notice traffic increases this way. I’ll remedy this in the last paragraph.
• Cross Plugging- I should probably come up with a better term… maybe later. So if you’re running a student blog, have a student put a link in their post to a video on YouTube and then plug the PBA podcast at the same time. Niceeee. (That was nice with 4 Es… spell check can’t handle me) Maybe you get crazy hits on your admission site… Throw up some banners linking students to other content.
• Print Publication - Ok so this isn’t something that I’ve tried out, but I hear it works well. Even better, why don’t you print up something like a club flyer (uv coated glossy 3×5 card) plugging your site. While your at it… put your IM on your business card.

Resolution- Closing the Black Hole

For your print publications, your phone calls, even your emails… It’s a great idea to have a single site to direct students to and let them experience the fullness of your web presence. It smacks of simplicity, but it’s important that you take all the difficulty out of finding out about your school. Any friction and they’ll give up and miss the cool stuff you’ve been posting. You owe it to your students to make things easy.

What’s more, you could just have all of these resources out there and no one uses them like a library in a national park or something. And your central site could look a lot different than what I have in mind. It could be something as simple as a links page on your admission site, or a whole separate web site. Just put all your stuff in one place.

Tibi over at Lost Art of Blogging gives some tips on Stickifying your blog (making up words here left and right). These are some great tips for student bloggers, but I think they can be applied to Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Podcasting.

If anyone knows about a free desktop video capture program for os x, please let me know. I’m working on some podcasts that publicize what my institution is doing online.

::Edit:: Just purchased one for 20 bucks. I got tired of searching.

Ok so I thought that I could at least start this post from my cell
phone. I wouldn’t suggest using your phone to blog tons of text, but
there are some quick and easy things you can do to create stickiness
(keep people coming back to your web sites).

Most phones are equipped with camera capabilities. Facebook and
wordpress allow a user to post these pictures as you take them. It’s
pretty convenient. Facebook just has great connectivity options in
general… from video messaging to cell phone management. You can set
up your facebook account to text message you when stuff happens.
Facebook texts you when… say, you get a new friend, and you can add
the friend, message them, or reject them just by replying. Very cool.

Check your mobile plan for hidden charges

As we all know, texting isn’t free, and if you’re popular (I wouldn’t
know) you can rack up texting charges. Unlimited texting and data
plans may be pricey, but if you use them they’ll be worth it.

I don’t know of many schools who do this stuff. You could be on the cutting edge
of College Recruiting!

My thumbs hurt. TTYL

Prospective Students Want the Down-Low

Still, there is a reason why students have their friends show them around campus. They know their friends, and they share a lot in common with them. They will trust the opinion of their friend as it would be similar to their own in the same situation. Plus, we need the secret information. Where are the $1 fish tacos? How can I print stuff for free? I’ve heard all the good news, what are the negatives. Student Blogs, left relatively unedited, are extremely effective for giving prospective students inside information.

Leave Them Alone

Freshness is entirely more important than the number of bloggers you have, their posting frequency, or even content. I’ve referred to spam filters built into teens and twenty-somethings and blogs can definitely activate the canned alarm if the content is edited. Visitors to a Student Blog site are hoping to hear the real story of student life at your place. Let them hear it. I’m a big fan of correct spelling and punctuation and I review our student’s posts for these errors, but I leave the content alone. You can be sure that your student blogs will reflect favorably on the institution by carefully selecting your bloggers.

Spread the Appeal Around

So you’ll need to pick a group of student authors who differ by degree program and who are involved in different areas of activity (We have a London Semester Blogger). If they’re fluent in Spanish, have them blog in that language and include an English translator in the menu column (not that translators work that well). Let them write in their own voice. Gangsta, Like… Like… Like…, or all lowercase letters, there will be some student that sees themselves in a post, and they might even like what they see.

I Know Nothing

Through tracking stats and watching the students post, I’m learning more daily. There’s a definite way to go about setting up a blog, and there are an overabundace of how-to sites. I may even post my suggestions. Word.