a new fan-driven musical economy?

In 2006, the Damnwells became an unfortunate music-industry cliche. Despite a knack for crafting smart and catchy songs, critical acclaim and a building fan base, they were cut adrift by Epic Records, which also shelved their sophomore album.

And while they would eventually get that disc, Air Stereo, released by Zoe Records, they found themselves at a real crossroads. Their solution? Turn to the Web, social media and innovative measures.

They made their third album, One Last Century, available free to all on the Internet in exchange for an email address. They used those email addresses, and social media, to let fans know they are assembling their fourth album in a novel way: Via donations and fan feedback.

Through a service called Pledge Music, the Damnwells look to raise $20,000.30 to record the new album. This weekend, they passed the 75 percent mark and continue to steam forward. Donors can start as low as $12 to just get a copy of the album, go higher for a variety of public broadcasting type premiums (for $25, I’m getting a signed CD and T-shirt) or even things like Skyping into a recording session ($55), introducing the band at a show ($125) or admission into a sound check ($150). The band will provide a public performance wherever you want them at the high end; for $5,000, someone in Tokyo, Turin or Tahiti can even have The Damnwells play in their house (it’s $1,500 in the U.S., $500 in NYC).

Just as valuable is that any supporter gets a password-driven code to download demos and outtakes (all of which are pretty good), read Alex Dezen’s blog about the record and gain other inside information. Fans can provide feedback on posted demos on the blog to play an even greater part in making the record. On top of all that, part of the funds raised will aid a number of worthy causes.

Or is this totally new? During the Renaissance, artists and musicians were funded by wealthy patrons who enjoyed their creations. But this more democratic system makes even modest donors part of the team. And taking the future of music out of the hands of a closed, shortsighted music industry and into a forward-thinking community of music lovers definitely represents an improvement.

learning about social media goes both ways.

Feels like I’ve been on a social media barnstorming tour of campus, leading four sessions in the past two weeks. There’s no one reason for this — I was asked to do two, while the other two were my initiative — but just as with social media itself, the conversations in this sessions always teach me something as well.

I’ve talked to freshmen about social media and learned their habits. I gave a session titled Everybody Has A Mic: The Brave New World of Web 2.0 to people in the room and scattered across the world on Second Life. I presented Social Media 101 to staff members. And I imparted thoughts on social media and marketing to an Advanced Public Relations class. My own presentations notwithstanding, and with my observations on freshmen listed in another entry, here’s some of what I’ve learned back:

1) Social Media 101, as an hour topic, is too big for a wide audience. While most came to learn practical applications of social media, one attendee didn’t seem know what Facebook or blogs were. So maybe something so catch-all is too ambitious and unfocused. But then I saw a college running a whole course on how to use Twitter, which is excessive too. At some point, we’ll find a happy medium for a range of audiences and applicable topics.

2) Students’ use of social media changes during their time on campus. While sample sizes so far are small, what I’ve found backs up what I’d heard anecdotally. For the upperclass Advanced PR class, 20 of 20 were on Facebook (no surprise), 18 of 20 checked daily, 8 of 20 had MySpace accounts and 3 of 20 used Twitter. Recall for freshmen, all 15 had Facebook accounts they checked daily, 10 were on MySpace (though barely used it), none on Twitter. This slim sampling reflects what I’ve heard about college students abandoning MySpace and picking up Twitter in modest amounts, but I aim to do more surveying.

3) I may have given up on Second Life too quickly. Maybe it took viewing several avatars hearing my presentation virtually, but I finally see that Second Life does have untapped collaborative and communication potential. Maybe I’m just flattered someone from NASA would show up in SL to hear what I have to say. Maybe I still think the economics of outfitting an avatar seem too much like Dungeons and Dragons. But clearly my dismissing Second Life out of hand without learning more is as ill-informed as those who’ve never been on Twitter scoffing it’s all about people tweeting what they had for lunch.

This all also reflects what I’ve long believed: presenting is a two-way street. Just like in social media, every interaction and every conversation is an opportunity for enlightenment.

what 15 freshmen taught me about social media.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to visit the GST 120: Leadership in Action class, which consists of 15 of our more engaged freshman. It seemed a decent place to learn more about the social media and Web habits of our students. It’s a small sample size, but the students were bright, articulate and painfully honest … and the findings interesting. (View original Google document.)

What do they use and how often?
- All 15 use Facebook. They all check it daily. (Some would check it hourly if they could.)
- 10 use MySpace, but not much. One checks daily; most hardly ever visit any more.
- None are on Twitter. In retrospect, I should have asked why.

How do they form community on Facebook?
- 11 joined the Class of 2013 Facebook group (created by an incoming student)
- 7 joined our Official SUNY Oswego Fans page (others said they would join had they known it existed)
- They joined other campus-related Facebook groups because they were members of real-life groups (Scuba Club, field hockey team, WTOP, Oswegonian, club rugby, floor of Johnson Hall, Del Sarte dance)

I asked them if they thought joining a group was different than becoming a Fan of a page, and they admitted they didn’t even know the difference. Since we set up a Class of 2014 group, I asked if they would feel different joining a group started by an institution vs. one started by a student. The enlightening response: We don’t even look for that or care. We just want to meet other students. Some even said they would prefer the groups be created by the college because they would trust the information more.

As for our college Web site, 12 said they found it the best place for information. Others didn’t express a preference. None thought of social media as the destination for information because they see it more as a place to connect. For our Web site, their main concerns involved usability: forms that didn’t work, non-functional links, difficulty finding specialized information. A few admitted they used they mainly used the search box to navigate, although this isn’t totally atypical of the Web in general (that’s how I navigate Amazon, for example).

In terms of what we can do better, they mentioned it would be great if we had an AIM name or more available chat. One student mentioned a competing college had an AIM presence but disliked that they used it to contact him instead of vice versa. This is a cohort that likes to use communication on demand but isn’t necessarily keen on unwanted contact from institutions. This is the 21st century equivalent of don’t call us, we’ll call you. Other than that, they seemed to find our social media presence appropriate.

I want to jump back to the group/page, institution/student finding. We, as Web communicators, debate all kinds of things we find more important than our users. These students don’t care if it’s a 2014 group or 2014 page. They don’t really care if it’s launched by an institution or a student. They just want to connect. We see and think about tools. They just see an action, an outcome they want.

It’s also worth noting (as Karlyn Morissette points out in this fine blog entry) that students think of social media as social first and foremost. If they find information they can use on Facebook, that’s a bonus. But when they want information, they’ll go to your Web site. A reminder that while we can be distracted by all the shiny objects that are social media platforms, investing in your institutional Web site — and making sure it’s easy to use and functioning — remains as important as ever.

truth in satire: how to make an unusable web site.

Over the centuries, writers have demonstrated you can tell more truth with satire than non-fiction. So when I recently had an opportunity to do a fake presentation for FakeHEWeb09, a satirical non-event for those unable to attend this year’s real HEWeb09, I picked the topic of Web Site Unusability. And in the process, came up with an all-too-real formula of how NOT to make a user-friendly Web site.

I scrawled the presentation in about 5 minutes and gave it via Twitter. The key points included:

Intro:
* Welcome to the session on Web Site Unusability! Click here to continue!
* Web sites are all about you! Users are overrated.
* Who should your Web site please? Look in the mirror. That guy! (Or girl!)

Multimedia inconsiderations:
* Always use an animated musical splash page people have to sit through. Preferably on an old version of Flash.
* A splash page says: “Wanna attend our college? Then you’ll have to sit through crappy gif animation and music composed on a Casio keyboard!”
* Seek a CMS that’s as hard to update as possible so your minions won’t use it. Don’t they have better things to do?
* Put all important information in pdfs. Again, make people *really want* your information!
* In addition to pdfs, inaccessible/slow-loading videos are a great way to share critical information.

Putting users last:
* Use your organizational chart as your guide for Web architecture. Who cares if it makes no sense to rest of the world?
* When writing for the Web, use as much dense academic jargon and obscure acronyms as possible.
* If prospects easily find what they want in 2 clicks, you’ve failed. You want more hits. Go work in sales.
* Make sure no two department pages look alike in colors, structure, organization, navigation, anything.
* Actually, why bother even putting the name of your college on your pages? You know where you work! Good enough!

Anyone who’s worked in Web content for any length of time realizes how absurd such recommendations are. And yet … how often do you see real estate spent welcoming people to a page, readers told to click here as if they’re a trained dog, splash pages and pdfs and videos making information as hard to get as possible, Web pages organized by unknowable institutional divisions, copy no one outside of academia would understand and a glaring lack of consistency. Many of these bugaboos are all too familiar.

Making the fake session all the more interactive, the audience added their own pet peeves about user-unfriendly Web design and not one but TWO people linked to this cringeworthy Appalachian State promo video. It almost makes me wonder if there’s a very real hour-long presentation one could give on this subject.

So what would be your tips for making a Web site hard to use?

return of the fake facebook class groups: are you ready?

They’re back! As of this writing, we’re not sure who’s behind them but fake Facebook Class of 2014 groups featuring fake students who have nothing to do with your institution are popping up at a college near you. And, for that matter, a college near me.

If you recall back to December, Brad J. Ward, now of BlueFuego, discovered and blogged about an alarming pattern where the same people kept showing up over and over as administrators of Class of 2013 groups at various colleges. A small dorky band of Web types — including this author — dug in and found 250+ fake class groups created by the same band of individuals. We feared the worst — identity theft, data harvesting — but eventually discovered that College Prowler, publishers of an alternative guide, were behind it. While less harmful than expected, that I researched colleges in New York and found the vast majority of Class of 2013 groups were College Prowler fakes was startling … and eye-opening.

Now, after sleuthing by New Paltz’s ever-alert Rachel Reuben, she and Brad are warning people once again about fake Class of 2014 groups. Many of the members are the same and contain the same boilerplate:

“This is THE best place for all the incoming freshmen/transfers of the Class of 2014. Just for those heading to ______ in 2010, this will be the group where we can talk about what’s going on and around campus.”

Proof? Check out this bogus Oswego Class of 2014 Facebook group:

And this one for the University at Buffalo (with bonus fight song):

And this one for Covenant College:

Sense a pattern? Just from what Rachel and I found, similar groups propagated at Swarthmore College, Widener University School of Law, University of the Arts, University of Pennsylvania, Ohio University, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, St. Andrew’s University, Muhlenberg College, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, California University of Pennsylvania, Middlebury College, Towson University and Marymount Manhattan College.

But one lesson I learned from last year was to create an Official SUNY Oswego Class of 2014 Group. Just today, as luck would have it, we started promoting the real group on our Facebook Fans page in concert with our first major admissions open house. If we use our current online resources and the communication avenues of the institution, we can make it clear this is a real community related to SUNY Oswego.

I won’t lie. I was a skeptic. I really wasn’t sure I wanted to add an official 2014 group to the fold … until I realized someone else is always out there looking for your valuable name. Yes, valuable! Your college (or company or not-for-profit) spends so much time and resources to get a good name, so do you really want someone else stealing it for nefarious (TBD) purposes? My full intention is to turn the official 2014 group over to some capable students I know so it is student-run, by real students from Oswego.

What about you? If you’re at another college, have you checked to see if someone else is using your name? And if so, are you prepared to ensure you have official spaces to build real communities with your future students?

wanted: a few great speakers.

Do you have something you would love to share with hundreds of higher education professionals? Would you like to attend an exciting conference with a range of interesting college types and other top presenters? Haven’t you always wanted to see Buffalo in June? (Really, it’s an underrated city.)

We’re looking for a few great speakers for the 2010 SUNYCUAD Conference, June 9 to 11 in Buffalo. Those who attended last year’s conference or just viewed the Twitter streams and takeaways know that this event — attended by professionals from 64 State University of New York campuses and SUNY system administration — continues to build a high level of speakers. We’re a friendly, down-to-earth bunch of public-college workers in such areas as alumni relations, communication, development, marketing and Web. And did you know that Buffalo was the birthplace of the chicken wing?

Our conference theme is integration — of strategies, of resources, of technologies, and we have subthemes on branding, social networking/digital strategies and ROI/seeking success amid budget stress. Can you speak on those topics, and help us hard-working, well-intended, conscientious workers better serve our students and other stakeholders? Can you appreciate a city with lots of surprising cultural activities (and bars open to 4 a.m.)?

If you answer our call for proposals and you’re selected, we’ll provide free conference registration for what’s always an interesting event, cover your travel expenses and pick up one night’s accommodations. And while President William McKinley was assassinated visiting the 1901 Pan-Am Exposition in Buffalo, most people who visit the city find it charming.

So … are you interested in speaking at SUNYCUAD 2010, of using your knowledge and insight and skills to help us make a difference? In meeting hundreds of very nice people? In seeing the splendor that is Buffalo in June? Then visit our Call for Proposals page, download a form and return it to us by Nov. 6. Or drop me a line if you have questions. We’d love to hear from you … and hear what you have to say!

doodling through meetings.

Recently when I tried to bring together 10 busy people for a meeting of our new cross-campus social-media team, one member suggested scheduling the meeting through Doodle. Had never heard of it, but after checking it out I figured, hey … why not use a social-media platform to schedule a meeting for a social-media team?

Doodle, it turns out, is a nice user-friendly service. You need to secure an account, but registration takes less than a minute. When trying to schedule a meeting, you can send out several different time slots (the more specific — i.e. one-hour segments instead of three-hour blocks — the better, I learned), and the recipients check which times will work for them and/or leave other comments. Here’s a look at the scheduling in progress:

Pleasing aesthetics and high marks for usability! So I’m giving Doodle a preliminary thumbs-up. Whether it makes for a good meeting, well, I’ll find out later, but anything that makes getting a bunch of busy people together easier is itself a benefit. Because, as I noted earlier this week, face-to-face interactions are still important.

is ’stuck in the office’ stuck in the office?

“You are out of tune with the times if you are in the office more than one-third of the time.” — Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos, 1987

When it comes to being in touch with workers and customers alike, the words of Peters, the management guru, ring true more than two decades later. But the world has changed too. With the rise of the Internet and, more recently, social media, we can have instant or quick feedback from co-workers, peers and clients at any time. The amount of work and connections achievable with an iPhone transcends anything imagined in the 1980s. So does his analysis still seem valid?

For years, I’ve viewed e-mail as one of the best things that ever happened to my line of work. But now I’ve learned that it’s almost always easier to reach students via Facebook than email. My intern and I communicate via Twitter, and through tweets I’ve virtually attended great conferences or shared information from my conferences. Via various social-media methods, I can take care of so much business without leaving my desk and the MacBook Pro that is my window on the world.

But can even real-time electronic communication replace face-to-face communication? I would argue it can’t. Whenever I walk through our Campus Center, I almost always seem to run into people and conduct business. Whether it’s someone pitching me a story, an idea to start a new project or a conversation that replaces an unreturned phone call or email, a few random encounters can achieve more than a raft of calls, e-mails or messages via social media.

So does stuck in the office still mean stuck in the office? What do you think?

networking and student bloggers.

I’m happy to say that our student bloggers are off to a flying start this year. I can barely keep up with them! But also of note to those in higher education is how the contributors came together. The old-fashioned way. Networking.

This year’s group includes:

- Sherrifa Bailey, a senior public justice and psychology major, McNair Scholar and all-around uber-involved person
- Christopher Cook, a sophomore English major, writer and devourer of pop culture
- Steven DiMarzo, a junior human development major, director of student affairs for Student Association and admissions intern
- Tiffany Duquette, a secondary education and French major studying in Paris, and member of the Laker women’s ice hockey team
- Tess Kaczorowski, a senior theatre major and dramaturg for the student honors production Blood Relations
- Leah Matthews, a senior elementary education major and co-captain of the women’s swimming and diving team
- Katherine Raymond, a junior journalism major, environmental writer for The Oswegonian, secretary of Students for Global Change
- Jose Terrero, a senior journalism and creative writing major, active fraternity member, writer, admissions tour guide
- Meghan Upson, a junior business administration major active with alumni relations and the business dean’s council
- Lizz Wetherby, a junior public relations major, Laker Leader orientation guide and my intern

Most of them I met at various times and identified as potential bloggers. I interviewed Sherrifa for a story and knew she’d be great. I know Tiffany from being a faculty mentor for the women’s ice hockey team. I saw Katherine give a presentation about her group’s activities and read her work in the campus paper. Worked with Meghan on a couple of projects related to her PR internships. Steven asked me about blogging after hearing me present at a student leadership conference. Lizz came to me as an intern because one of her best friends interned here after taking a class from me.

Others were recommended via canvassing my campus contacts. Tess came through a request to the box-office manager for someone who could address the performing arts. I contacted our swimming coach, a blogger himself, who recommended Leah. After a meeting of our social-media team, admissions recommended Jose (who I’d met before in his efforts to start an entertainment publication). As for Chris … he just wandered into our Web developer’s office as a freshman looking for a work-study job and we quickly learned he was a good writer.

So, for the most part, we obtained our bloggers through good old-fashioned networking … and, moreover, from having a genuine interest in getting to know our students. Like most colleges, we don’t pre-approve blog postings — just pre-approve the students who do them — so we need to know we can trust them with the Internet version of a live mic. Plus, recruiting good and interesting people more often than not leads to good and interesting blogs.

unsound opinions: how not to write a news release, vol ii.

The separation of fact from opinion — the objective from the subjective — is a major mark separating good news release writers from ones who, well, need to work on it.

A news release should be written like a news story, plain and simple: based on facts as they present themselves. Granted, the rise of columnists and commentators mean that you see a lot more opinion in what people falsely label reporting, but for the sake of the news release — or hard news story — this rule has not changed.

Facts: The sun came up this morning. SUNY Oswego is an institution of higher learning. Tim Nekritz is a writer.

Opinions: The sun came up this morning with the most brilliant hues of blue and orange and magenta the world has ever seen. SUNY Oswego is the bestest college in the history of mankind. Tim Nekritz is a writer who inspires legions of people to create better communication experiences. (OK, that last one is reeeeeeally a stretch.)

It’s that simple really. If you have something subjective, that’s fine as long as it can be attributed to someone or something. You can include opinions as quotes within the story.

Wrong: Random University just welcomed one of its most awesome groups of freshmen ever.

Right: Random University just welcomed “one of the most talented” freshman classes ever, President Norma L. Person said.

Attribution comes with choosing a good source. (Cf. the idea of credibility in Made to Stick.) Overarching declarations from your college president will, naturally, come with some bias but also note a source with some experience and insight. For some subjective areas, however, quoting a student on how great your college is can lend more credibility than the same words from an administrator. Outside praise or validation from renowned sources — experts, media outlets or others without a direct stake in the enterprise — can be even better.

If for some reason you’d really rather dot news releases with opinions and fluffy words, my advice is: Consider becoming a pundit or a poet. Otherwise, knowing the difference between the subjective and objective can help make releases shine.