A presentation that I gave to the Wayne State University presidents cabinet about new communication tools and how we are using them at the university.

1. New Communication Tools
Nick DeNardis
Associate Director of Web Communications
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

2. Overview
• Not just about talking at consumers
• Give consumers a reason to participate
• Listening to and joining the conversation
• Resisting the temptation to sell, sell, sell
• Don't control, let it go
• Embrace experimentation
• Patience
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

3. Don't just talk at consumers
• Work with them throughout the marketing
process
• Its about caring to know your current and
prospective students
• Its about wanting your current and
prospective students to know you
• Participation
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

4. Degrees of Participation
• Observing
• Searching
3.Conversing
• Connecting
• Creating
6.Controlling
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

5. Give consumers a reason to participate
• Putting up a splash page is not enough
• Pushing out news updates (or sports) is not
enough
• Every community takes nurturing
• Content must add value
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

6. The conversation is not on your pages
• Facebook (600,000 new sign ups per day)
• Twitter (Growth Chart)
• LinkedIn
• Social Media Firehose (Link)
• Listen in, you might be surprised, people
don’t hold back. This is THEIR platform.
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

7. Trust is what you are selling
• Transparency is key
• When asked who is the one behind the
mask, we tell them.
• Word spreads fast. Very Fast.
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

8. Don’t control, let it go
The story of
http://twitter.com/waynestateuniv
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

9. Embrace experimentation
• No “right” or “wrong” way
• If anyone claims to have figured it out they
are wrong
• It’s about keeping a head of the pack
• Every day there is a new tool
• Remember Facebook at one time had less
than 1000 users.
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

10. Patience
• Not every effort is going to result in a huge
amount of success, you cannot expect it
• Every effort does build momentum
• Success will come in time
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

11. What we learned
• Listen in
• Talk and respond to customers
• Content is king, always give value
• Let real users add real content
• Experiment
• Did I mention the only cost for all of this
has been time?
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009

12. Sites
• http://twitter.com/waynestate
• http://twitter.com/wordwarriors
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Detroit-MI/Wayne-State-University/25794202967
• http://wcs.wayne.edu/blog/
• http://digg.com/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/WayneStateUniversity
• http://delicious.com/waynestate
• http://flickr.com/photos/waynestateuniversity
• http://friendfeed.com/waynestate
mac.wayne.edu
January, 15, 2009