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I get asked this question all the time: how often should you redesign your website?

The answer? When you need to.

Recently, a client compared it to a car: sure, you can get a new car every three years, but if it’s still meeting your needs, isn’t that pretty wasteful? Then again, you could drive it for 12 years and it will be pretty obvious.

If it’s communicating what you need and achieving your goals, don’t change it. There’s no rule that says you should redesign your website every two years. What you should do is evaluate your strategy and communications plan all the time. Only then will you know whether your website needs to change.

It’s more important that you fit into the party than it is to get in the door.

Perry Belcher uses the metaphor of social media as a series of parties. (Aside: This guy makes me want to grill some barbecue.) How to Make Money with Social Media

So social media is a big party. And at a party, you can’t just waltz in and make a sales pitch. You have to build relationships and do your networking. It’s a two-way street. And if you’re not interesting, then nobody talks to you.

Now imagine how most companies are trying to use social media: they dump press releases, spam their “friends” and followers, and spew noise into the party. They’re not cool, and eventually nobody wants to talk to them.

Is your brand a 60-year-old at a frat party? Are you dressed in a toga at a black-tie gala? Or are you standing in the corner afraid to talk to anyone?

It’s more important that you fit into the party than it is to get in the door. As with any marketing effort, you have to know your strategy, know your audience, and commit yourself.

When you get a chance to introduce people to social media, what do you cover? What resources do you recommend?

I had a meeting today with a new-to-social-media-but-diving-in-headfirst communicator on campus and we covered some pretty basic stuff like Twitter, Google Analytics, and Technorati. I offered to send her some blogs that might be helpful.

So here’s a selection from my feeds (in no particular order). Anything that’s missing that I should subscribe to?

Higher Ed

• eduStyle Blog
• .eduGuru
• Berkman Center Newsfeed
• collegewebeditor.com
• Communications Services Blog
• edVangelist
• Karlyn Morissette
• mStoner Blog
• The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog
• Trending Upward
• Wayne State Web Communications Blog

Design

• EDU Checkup
• eduStyle
• A Tim Called Oak
• Human Radiator

Marketing/Analytics

• Seth’s Blog
• chrisbrogan.com
• Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
• seachangestrategies.com
• Social Media Explorer
• Grown Up Digital

I feel like this is a pretty short list… but I do try to unsubscribe as much as I subscribe (or I simply can’t keep up). What would you recommend for social media or higher ed marketing newbies?

When I talk to clients about social media, I hear two common responses:

1. I’m too busy.
2. I have no clue what you’re talking about.

That’s fine. These aren’t social media experts. Heck, they usually aren’t even professional communicators. They’re folks who have to do marketing on top of their already busy jobs.

Introducing: 30 Minutes to Social Media

Here’s my 30 minute plan for dipping your toe into the social media space. You don’t have to understand it all, just bear with me: it will start to make sense.

Keywords (3 minutes)

List 10 key words or phrases that are relevant to your business or organization. Include your brand names, industry keywords, and anything an outsider might use to describe you. How about your domain name? Your top competitor?

Listening

At least half of any conversation should be listening, right? So let’s start with that.

Search Twitter (5 minutes)

Go through your keywords list and search for them in Twitter search.

Look through the results… are people talking about you? Are they talking about your competitors? Your industry in general?

Do you see anything that makes you want to respond? Is there an authoritative voice that you wish were advocating for you?

Search Blogs (10 minutes)

Now do the same exercise on Technorati and Google BlogSearch. You only have 10 minutes, so don’t spend too much time reading the articles. But you might consider bookmarking some of them to come back to later.

Participating

Let’s step into the conversation a bit. There are a lot of ways you could do this, but let’s go for a direct route.

Comment on those Blogs (7 minutes)

You just found a bunch of blog articles talking about your brand, or at least about what you do. Are there questions you could answer? Misconceptions you could clear up? How about an opportunity to provide excellent customer service – the kind that nobody had to call and ask for? Leave 2 helpful comments. You only have 7 minutes.

Twitter account? (0 minutes)

It might be tempting to jump right in to Twitter and start responding to people, but it takes time to do this right. Let’s pass for now. If you decide to take the next step, then keep this in your back pocket.

Measure (4 minutes)

Google Analytics

This isn’t a social media thing, but it’s a key part of being smart on the web. Let’s spend 5 minutes and fire off an email to your web person asking to have Google Analytics added to your site. It’s free. If you manage your own site, then hurry it up and go do this… We’re not stopping the timer just for you!

If you have a web analytics package, then use this time to log in and look at your referrals. Where are people coming from? Go visit those sites and see how they’re linking to you. In what context are they presenting your brand?

Promote

Oops, time’s up! This is where you make a choice: do you go back to your job and keep putting out fires, or do you carve out time to really participate? It’s an investment, and one that certainly takes time. How should you proceed? Well, there are no shortage of places to learn about social media:

• The Use of Social Media in Higher Education for Marketing and Communications: A Guide for Professionals in Higher Education
• Chris Brogan’s ‘The Best Of’ Page
• Social Media in Plain English, video from Common Craft
• BlogSearch: social media

Wait One Minute!

If you’re a complete geek and, like me, can’t help but keep a tally of the minutes to make sure they total up like they’re supposed to, then you’ve noticed that we have one minute left. Or less, since you just read that sentence. Let’s use our last minute to think about what we got from this little venture into the social web.

We didn’t go very far or spend that much time, but just from looking through Twitter and blogs (two particularly searchable and easy outlets) you can see there’s a conversation going on out there whether you like it or not. Hopefully, you’ve seen there’s a way you be a part of it and help shape the outcome.

Maybe you’ve heard it before: you should give your visitors what they want.

But what if that’s not in line with your goals? Aren’t you spending all this time and money to achieve your goals?

So the advice should be: you should find a way to make your website mutually beneficial to your visitors and to you.

After all, your marketing is all about who you intend to target – not whoever already happens to be coming to your website.

.eduGuru has a good post about the three different approaches to data-driven work:

You’re doing your designated task like a happy hamster on a wheel, when someone else reads a new article, goes to a conference, talks to a vendor, gets a random complaint, or whatever, and it’s time for you to reverse course and spin the wheels in another direction.

Read the whole thing…

This hits home for me. I love data, but I always make an effort to point out that reporting is not analysis. We have access to lots of reporting tools these days, but do we understand that it all means?

The funnel is a common visualization tool borrowed from the business world, where customer acquisition may follow a similar path.

Many have applied this model to the admissions process, helping them to identify conversion points where schools can change their strategies for recruiting students.

Data, Data, Data

One big payoff of such a visualization is the ability to segment and measure against specific goals for each stage of the process. Noel-Levitz has published an excellent admissions benchmarking report. This is a good place to start if you’re unfamiliar with the concept of the admissions funnel or what the typical returns are. As you walk through the funnel, think about how you’d measure it.

What’s your strategy?

Our first step in using this tool is to figure out your goals and strategy for each stage. The goals are pretty obvious: submit an application, commit to the school, enroll, and actually show up.

The strategies for each of these are a little more tricky:

• What makes a student consider your school in the first place?
• Why would they commit to you over your peers?
• What’s stopping them from backing out?

Breaking the admissions process into the funnel stages above can make this process easier.

Inquiry

The goal in the Inquiry stage is to get the prospective student to submit an application. As with any product marketing, awareness is the first step to making a sale. If the student doesn’t know about your school and isn’t thinking of your school, they certainly won’t apply.

But awareness isn’t enough. After all, how do you feel about Kia? Even though you’re aware of the Kia brand, Kia suffers a perception problem. How students perceive your school is a big factor in their decision to apply or attend. This is a reputation business, remember?

Finally, the most effective tool in a salesman’s toolkit is the relationship. Having a personal investment in your school – even if it’s just because the student has spoken with your admissions counselor. One former admissions counselor I know is still friends with students she recruited years ago. And a growing number students know that it can work both ways – a good relationship with ones admissions counselor can make the difference in being accepted.

Application

The prospective student has applied and you’ve admitted him or her. That’s a good start, but now the goal is to get the student to Yield: accept the invitation to come to your school. Now you’re competing against their other choices; you might be their first choice or you could be the backup.

You do this by first developing trust. Consumers (and prospective students) have a sense that there’s a difference between the recruitment and fulfillment. It’s great being recruited – there are dinners and tours and a lot of feeling like you’re the center of the universe. But now you have to show there’s something to all that.

Next, you have to show your competitive advantages. What sets you apart from your competitors? And not necessarily your peer institutions, but the schools to which your prospect has also applied and been accepted. What relevant programs do you offer that they can’t? Better financial aid? More attractive intangibles?

Yield

Great! Your student has applied and been accepted. She has agreed to attend, possibly sending a deposit and filling out additional forms. At this point, some schools assume their jobs are done. But this is also a tough stage for your most competitive students. If their dream school calls, you might not stand a chance. You have to combat buyer’s remorse. Your goal is to get the student to enroll for classes.

In customer or client relations, it’s absolutely critical that you communicate the next steps to your customer. It’s a safe bet that your students have never gone through this process, so they’re likely overwhelmed and intimidated. If they are still considering other schools, you can stand out by helping provide assurance and comfort in a pretty stressful time. This communication helps set expectations.

The only thing more important at this stage than setting expectations is that you deliver on your promises. It takes months to earn a student’s trust, but only minutes to lose it. Communicate when you say will, provide those great services you promoted, and help them achieve those goals that got them to apply and yield in the first place.

Finally, you need to pass the relationship on to those responsible for current students. It might be student affairs or various colleges. At Notre Dame, we have a school dedicated to helping first year students with all the challenges of the transition into college life. But it can’t be a “toss it over the wall” approach – you have to make this experience consistent. When you hand the relationship off, the students still have expectations (that you set) and you want to ensure that someone delivers on those promises.

The Right Tactics at the Right Time

It’s mighty tempting to think tactically throughout all of this. How can blogs or Twitter or Facebook pages or email or direct mail or whatever help you accomplish these goals? Hopefully, you’ll see the real value of such a model: you can think about your tactics (and measure them) in parts: different tactics for different stages. Here’s the full admissions funnel:

In real life, I tell a lot of jokes. I make a lot of faces. I do weird voices. Sometimes, I screech and do my best impression of a velociraptor.

I rarely do this on my blog. I’m only a little better about showing my personality on Twitter.

And I’m not sure why this is.

A personality is a powerful thing. There are a lot of smart, funny, passionate people out there. But not all of them translate into a vibrant online persona. The problem is that not all of us are great writers, and getting your real-life personality across in text can be a challenge.

Enter podcasts and video blogs. Go check out Gary Vaynerchuk or DiggNation to see what I’m talking about.

And have you noticed? The rough edges are ok: fumbling over some words, going off on tangents, and mediocre production value are authentic. Like your personality.