Category: Education, Technology and Nonprofits Blog

When Twitter started to implode at the end of last year, I made the decision that I was going to check out Mastodon as an alternative and go through and delete my history of tweets and likes. I had a lot so I needed to find some kind of tool that could delete everything in batch, rather than scroll through a 10-year timeline and delete this activity one at a time.

Naturally, I went to Google to search for a solution. The top two SERP results were a mixture of blogs and videos with instructions on how to delete my tweets, structured in a way to show the most unpleasant ways (manual deletion, using a script hosted on GitHub), and finally suggesting a service called Circleboom. No disrespect to the marketers at Circleboom, they had completely boxed out the SEO competition for batch Tweet delete. The first two pages of search results were blog posts and “forums” explaining that this service was the best way to do this. Maybe so, but at a cost of several hundred dollars annually seemed a bit overkill for an old Twitter account with less than 500 followers. More importantly, I could not find any search result to answer my question that wasn’t a page built to drive traffic to this service. Clearly, this is great SEO work but not so great for me getting an answer to my question.

I’m going to say something that may be considered heresy in some circles of digital marketing.

The state of search is bad and we’re a big reason why. We are building websites that put so much friction between query = answer. Search engines, like any platform, are not immune to an eventual enshittification (as coined so eloquently by Cory Doctorow).

Let me explain.

In isolation, many digital strategy tactics are effective and achieve results:

• Forcing log-ins to websites push users further into a sales funnel
• A modal offering to join your mailing lists can drastically increase your list size
• Pop-ups asking to download your app increase app downloads
• Autoplay video ads deliver more impressions to advertisers
• Browser notifications drive more traffic to your site
• Forced product tutorials increase feature adoption
• Interrupting the user flow with a request to fill out a survey produces more survey results
• Hiding product pricing until the user arrives in a checkout stage increases subscriptions.
• etc. etc. etc.

Yes, these tactics achieve results but the sum of this taken at once also achieves an exhausting experience across the web for the user.

It’s no surprise that younger generations are turning to TikTok as a search engine. There’s less friction between query = answer AND the results are more authentic.

By the way, while a lot of these digital marketing tactics are making the web harder to use, the search engines themselves deserve a fair amount of blame for their existence. Search algorithms explicitly reward web pages that engage in these practices. A different vision for the web from the search engines would produce a different web experience, but alas, we’re all here more or less getting what we’ve asked for.

The recent announcements of Bard and Bing (2.0?) and the effect of ChatGPT on the internet may change all of this, because they offer an opportunity for search to return to their clean and direct experience and take away all the friction that makes it hard to find information on the web.

What does that mean for digital marketing and all that we know about web strategy? I don’t know and I’m not sure if anyone truly knows yet either. I do know that we will need to be prepared to rethink everything we know about this work and we’ll need to figure out what “feeds these beasts” and give them the information they need in the format they prefer. More or less like we always have.

In the meantime, I’m going to sit in awe during this critical juncture in technology. I don’t think I’ve experienced anything so profound since the introduction of the smartphone.

Buckle up. It’s going to be a wild ride.

I mentioned in my latest newsletter that this study EAB released on job descriptions in higher education really resonated with me. I’ve been on a bunch of search committees and of course, applied for several along the way and the EAB study is spot on with my experiences. Too often we assume that candidates would be ready to move heaven and earth for an opportunity to work for a school while we don’t offer competitive pay, paths for promotion and growth, and have removed (or are in the process of removing) benefits like really good health insurance, pensions, tuition reimbursement for children and more. And this applies to both faculty AND administrators/professional staff.

We need to do better.

In any case, this study got me thinking about my own experience and I’d add a few notes for things we can do to make the hiring process better for everyone. In no particular order.

1. Post the salary range. Post the salary range. PoSt ThE sAlArY rAnGe!!1!1

If you live in a handful of states (CA, MD, NV, NY, RI, WA, PA) you have to do this anyway. More statehouses across the country are weighing putting this into law because it is a good practice. Even if your institution isn’t in one of these states, you should post the salary range. After all, it’s not a secret. Every institution knows exactly how much they plan to pay for every role they post. Posting the range has two direct benefits in my opinion.

First, it signals to the candidate exactly how senior a role this is and lets them determine if they are qualified or not, especially in higher ed where titles tend to be made up and can vary drastically from one institution to another. One school’s director of something is an associate director of another thing is a VP for something else. This will help the school narrow the field of candidates to the most qualified since candidates will self-select when applying for a role.

Second, it eliminates the need for the back and forth dance that happens in an initial screening call. Applicants know the script now, you cannot scroll through a handful of posts on LinkedIn without seeing advice on salary negotiation and what you say when a recruiter asks, “what’s your salary range?” Just post the range and keep everyone’s expectations in check. Eliminate the needless back-and-forth game of poker at this stage which makes everyone feel icky.

2. Updates about the search process should be consistent with how invested a candidate is in the interview process.

It’s fine to use the boilerplate auto-email to candidates who apply for a role but aren’t selected for an interview (provided a few other things have happened…more on this below).

However, if a candidate has made it to any interview stage don’t send them the automatic email if they aren’t selected. It’s unprofessional and tacky. It makes you and your institution look bad. Look, sometimes the HR system that you have to work in has this setup by default and often these things can be immovable. But someone from the committee should be established as the “designed news-teller” (probably the chair) and must own this step. Unless something went completely off the rails during the interview, a candidate who isn’t selected should expect at the very least a personalized, polite email explaining that they were not selected for the role. You don’t have to explain to the candidate your exact reasoning for moving on, but you should thank them for their time. Every person who talked to you about this job likely spent some time preparing for the conversation and took time out of their busy schedule to be considered. Interviewing takes courage. We need to respect candidates who put themselves out there. You might find yourself working with these people again (or FOR them). You never know.

Ghosting a candidate after they have interviewed with you at any stage? Unacceptable.

3. Extra “asks” such as long-form questions or essays, presentations, or creative exercises are okay in opinion with the following guardrails.

I’ve had to do a few presentations as a candidate and I actually appreciate having the opportunity if it’s for a job I want. For a candidate, it can be a rare moment in the process where you’re in the driver’s seat.

But there are few rules here. First, don’t ever ask for this on the application itself. You’re not going to review every single essay or long-form answer that comes in at this stage so don’t waste the candidate’s time. You’re looking at a lot of candidates for the job and guess what, they are probably applying for a lot of other jobs too. Don’t slow them down by asking them to do an exercise that someone might not even look at.

Second, the exercise shouldn’t take the candidate more than a few hours and you absolutely cannot use anything produced out of this exercise after the interview. Delete or destroy any artifacts from this stage from candidates that aren’t selected. Their work was on loan.

Also, it goes without saying that if a candidate has made it to this stage you better follow up with them directly when you’ve made your hiring decision.

Again, ghosting after this stage is totally and completely unacceptable.

4. Review the job description before publishing.

Strictly speaking from a marketing and communications perspective, this doesn’t happen often enough. I can’t speak for other disciplines but in this world, things change pretty fast and our tech stack has a very short lifespan. For example, are you asking applicants for a web position if they are competent in Flash and Dreamweaver? Google Universal Analytics (It’s GA4 now)? Social media experience on Google+ or Vine? Be mindful of the fact that your job description is your best opportunity to sell the role to a qualified candidate. Good candidates will make assumptions about the job based on the language you use in the description and the job duties/skills you list.

5. We need to treat the digital experience of applying for a job with the same reverence that we treat an admissions application.

Applying for a job at most institutions sucks. It just does. Consider the frustrations involved in the process. You may have to re-register an account or go through a password reset. Then you upload your resume but the system doesn’t scrape the data in it correctly so you have to re-enter every item of your complete work history into the system. You try to enter your education background but the CEEB codes listed don’t have your school or major entered correctly. Then you have to fill out a bunch of other needless info — like your previous employer’s complete mailing addresses or reference contact info. And maybe some follow-up surprise essay questions at the end. I’d rather dance on a pile of legos than submit a job application.

Now, all that being said, there are certain immovable realities to improving this experience. There are silos between IT and HR with what can be changed in the system. Moving to a new ATS is only about as disruptive as getting a brain transplant. But can we make some changes around the edges?

Let’s look at the data we are collecting first. Do candidates really need to upload their resume and then type in their full work history? Do you need to know the mailing address of all of their previous employers? Why? Will you be mailing them or are you looking to save a step for the background check process?

Why are we asking for references already? References are only contacted if a candidate is a finalist or maybe a top three finalist. From a candidate’s perspective, I would want to know more about the job before I recommend a reference because some topics may emerge from the natural discussion of the role where I’d think, “I worked with XYZ on this similar project, she could really vouch for my project management skills.”

Why are we collecting sensitive info like social security numbers? Seriously, why do I see this?

Treat the application form like any other form. Ask if you really *need* this data?

Also, for my IT friends in the back — how are we securing this data and how long are we holding on to it? Would it be a problem if thousands of candidates’ complete educational and work history, SSN, and contact information were leaked in a hack? It certainly will be a problem for university counsel.

Hiring doesn’t have to be an unpleasant experience. Let’s treat our candidates with respect, communicate updates with them, and consider their perspectives when we do this important work.

At this time of the year, it’s natural to reflect on the previous 12 months and think about what the next 12 have in store for us. Adding a few thoughts to the round-up of previous year’s trends and next year’s predictions as I shared in my recent newsletter.

1. Economic factors are going to influence enrollment.

Right around the time I found myself buying cartons of milk for over $6, it was extraordinarily clear that inflation will affect everything. Especially admissions. Prospective students and their families are going to be looking for ways to cut costs and will be asking a lot of questions about the ROI of a degree as they make enrollment decisions.

The challenge is going to fall on admissions offices / marketing and communications. The effort here is going to have to increase (and so will the resources needed). Prospective students expect immediate, personalized communications. They live online across many social networks — including some that your institution might not be using regularly, like TikTok or Snapchat. The fracturing of social media is only growing with the upheaval of Twitter. Depending on who you are trying to reach, you might ask yourself if it makes sense to launch an account on Mastodon.

My advice is to (1) prioritize what’s in your control, particularly your owned media properties (your websites, your email list, your CRM data). This is a great time to do a website content audit and ask when the last time you did a refresh was. And (2) to find ways to meet the next generation where they are…and right now they are on TikTok.

2. Expect the battles of the culture wars to continue on campus.

I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted just thinking about this. While colleges and universities are no strangers to being the flash points for social movements in this country, it does seem like a lot is piling up at once, especially as we are all trying to do our work with fewer resources and keep our own sanity in an age of turmoil.

Institutions will be questioned about how they handle topics such as “free speech” (and facilitate certain speakers on campus), their policies around affirmative action, DEIB programming and any curriculum that might appear to be critical race theory. This is nothing new but what has been concerning as of late is legislative action to govern schools related to these topics, such as what’s happening in Florida. And Texas. And Florida (again).

There’s a real need to fix an incorrect perception of what a large slice of the public thinks is happening in an institution and what is actually happening. When at its best, higher education promotes healthy debate on complex topics and fosters equity through opportunity. DEIB programming is vital for every institution and academic programs around public policy, social work and law need to acknowledge and address the injustices in our systems rooted in racism.

To me, this feels like a communications challenge. We need to tell better stories about what we do and advocate for our cause. Higher education creates opportunities and new discoveries. Graduates have far better outcomes than non-graduates. Period. The industry needs to own these facts and get them in front of the critics.

3. Hang in there as more leadership crises unfold. It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.

This was a wild year for leadership in higher education. Consider all of the institutions with leadership turnover or crises:

• The turmoil at Michigan State University.
• Ben Sasse’s unusual contract and selection process at the University of Florida.
• And the proposed bill to make the search process secretive in Florida.
• Stanford University investigating its president over research misconduct allegations
• Ohio State University’s president stepped down less than three years into her term.
• The University of Wisconsin’s selection of an attorney with no experience in higher education to be their next president.
• The University of Michigan fires its president following an investigation.
• Sonoma State’s president resigns after a leadership crisis
• FIU’s former president returning to campus to teach after resigning due to a sexual harassment scandal.

Within these headlines, the trend is a growing disconnect between administrative leadership/boards and faculty and staff. From presidential searches to governance, stakeholders who aren’t in the leadership circle are becoming less and less included as the power dynamics on campus push more control to the top. And this is causing real frustration among those not included — consider that over half of higher ed employees are thinking about making a move. It certainly doesn’t help morale seeing this kind of turnover, especially when the pay gap is so large between leadership and everyone else. Unfortunately, the sector as a whole hasn’t started to reconsider approaches to governance (and executive searches), at least not in a way to increase accountability and build trust at an institution. I expect we’ll see more of these headlines in 2023.

4. Cybersecurity has to be a priority.

Ransomware attacks are spiking in higher education while institutions are struggling to keep up. A school is a pretty appetizing target for hackers because they manage loads of sensitive data, their networks and user access permissions are decentralized and fragmented, and are always under-resourced while sitting on large cash reserves. It’s a good time to remind everyone at your institution that cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility. For leadership, it’s critical to invest in cybersecurity, including outside audits, malware insurance, hiring experts, and upgrading systems. It is not a question of if but when your institution gets targeted. The long-term cost of a breach will always be much more than a ransom fee — though the FBI does not recommend paying.

5. The dawn of consumer AI has arrived. Act accordingly.

The hottest topic on Twitter this year (besides Twitter itself) has been the availability of consumer AI text and image generators such as ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Midjourney. If you haven’t explored them, it’s worth your time to do so. There is some concern that ChatGPT for example can do coursework on behalf of students. I don’t think these are quite there yet. In my casual use of ChatGPT and Jasper for various projects, the output is like getting work from a freelance writer that isn’t very good. Nothing that comes out of these tools should be public facing without some serious editing involved.

But that may change, and we should be mindful of what’s on the horizon as we know that higher education is not the most nimble of industries when faced with change. On the flip side, no other industry is better equipped to examine these tools, their applications and the ethics as higher ed. I hope this revolution doesn’t skip over us.

Thanks for reading.

Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover has been…eventful to say the least. Here are some of my key takeaways for brands and organizations wondering what this might mean for them on the bird app.

This is a good reminder to everyone that your organization’s chief executive officer is also your chief spokesperson

I’m concerned on multiple levels as I’ve been watching Elon’s tweets since taking over the company. It seems like he does not have communications staff who are advising him to be careful with his tweets OR he’s flatly rejecting their counsel. Either way, this should be a good case study for an organization to reflect on, and remember that a CEO of any company making public statements on social media is acting as that company’s spokesperson and those statements will be assumed to represent the company.

Great when your CEO issues a statement of positivity for people who celebrate Diwali…

This photo beautifully captures why Diwali is known as the Festival of Lights. Wishing all who celebrate a holiday full of joy and prosperity. #ShotoniPhone by Apeksha Maker. pic.twitter.com/BhUH1MkFfS

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) October 24, 2022

…but not so much when your CEO tells his 115 million followers to vote for a specific party in the midterms, retweets a misinformation article from a questionable source, or trashes the New York Times with a cheap joke.

I am concerned about Twitter’s political neutrality

Elon Musk is allowed to have political opinions. You have them, I have them, and it’s assumed everyone has preferences for specific parties and stances on polarizing issues. That’s not the problem here. The problem is that Twitter is many things but perhaps most importantly a news propagation network. As an individual user and as a marketer when I see the CEO of a social media network directly endorse a political party, I justifiably wonder if that means that he might put his thumb on the scale of the platform’s algorithm. Will more conservative viewpoints and accounts be given greater weight in the feed? It’s hard to believe Twitter will be politically neutral and algorithmic decisions will be unbiased at this point.

I’m also concerned about Twitter’s internal ability to evaluate fake news on the platform

After news of the attack on Paul Pelosi broke out, Elon tweeted a link to a story from a questionable source hinting that a greater conspiracy was at play. He then tweeted a joke that the New York Times is fake news after receiving backlash from the Santa Monica Observer post.

This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times! pic.twitter.com/d6V6m5ATW2

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022

The New York Times is certainly not above criticism but they absolutely practice legitimate journalism. There is a canyon of difference between the legitimacy of the NYT as a news source and the Santa Monica Observer. It goes beyond bias — it’s a literal question of real versus fake news. For a news-based social media network’s chief spokesperson to fail to see the difference between these two sources brings real questions into the platform’s ability to address misinformation and disinformation.

You should be concerned about brand safety

How closely do you want to be associated with all of this chaos? I would be very concerned about brand safety if you choose to advertise on this platform and I’d stay away from the “is Elon good for Twitter?” dialogues happening while the new ownership makes changes. Just this week Twitter rolled out an additional “verified” checkmark and then retracted it after being live for less than 24 hours. It’s hard to believe they have much of a game plan for brands right now.

Advertising may get better

While I would consider hitting pause on my Twitter ad buys in most circumstances, on a positive note, the advertising portfolio may improve in the future. I’ve always thought Twitter ads were some of the weakest among the big players in the digital space. The ad options have never been great and neither has the targeting. Relative to paid search and Facebook/Insta, I’ve had a hard time replicating good ad performance on the bird app. That being said, it sounds like all options are on the table for increasing revenue, including improving the advertiser experience. We’ll see.

Keep Tweeting but cautiously.

I’m not sure I’m ready to pull the plug on Twitter entirely just yet. Yes, it has been a very chaotic few weeks and while I have some serious concerns about brand safety and potential pushback for running ads right now, I don’t think it’s time to alter your communications plans. There haven’t been many core changes made that would make me reevaluate if I want Twitter to remain in my portfolio of communications channels, but that could change in the future. Particularly if Twitter fails to figure out how to balance its verification system while protecting the legitimacy of those accounts with their drive to collect more revenue from users. I’m still not sure I understand what the value of a verified account will be if anyone can get it if they pay $8.

Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.

We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022

I don’t think Twitter knows either.