I read this post last night on Techcrunch about Best Buy’s twitter campaign and thought it was a fantastic idea.

I think this would be a phenomenal way to improve customer service and live our brand promise. I understand that not everyone is on twitter but getting an account is so simple and there are so many ways to access it (a new user is bound to find one they are comfortable with).

Training
Obviously, the first step would be to make sure employees understand how twitter works and what the do’s and don’ts would be. (identifying oneself as an employee, not asking for any personal info, etc).

It is also important to offer training to new twitter users.  An easy solution to this might be to aggregate the best training videos (for the various twitter applications) from the web.

Sign-up
Best Buy created a custom web application that includes an employee number for sign-up.  The legal information is also a great template.

How it works
It is actually a rather simple solution for the users. By signing in, employees add their tweets to the best buy stream and also have the ability to tweet under the collective twitter account.  They do this by adding a keyword to their tweet.

Alternates
I know there are solutions out there to have multiple users share an account (co-tweet, hootsuite) but I really think that this is a better enterprise wide solution that does away with the scheduling aspects and makes it easy for all to get involved quickly.

Imagine if your university could have at least 1-2 employees from each department/school/program using this system.

best buy, brand, marketing, social media, twitter, web 2.0 Hide

Just came across this slideshow on on slideshare.net and thought it was incredibly informative.

In short: It describes the importance and the process of creating a community of brand ambassadors and/or users.

I think this is yet another great take away for higher ed from the corporate sector.  While there are many great examples of social media and communities being used by universities, I have not seen any take on the subject of creating a brand community.

Perhaps the closest example I know of may be @rachelreuben’s cafe new paltz ning network but then again I believe that is more about connecting new admits.

I would envision a university brand community including students, alumni and faculty who love the institution and want to contribute on all levels.

If anyone has other examples, please post in the comments.  I would love to see some.

brand, community, marketing, social media Hide

Its been quite a while since my last post so I figured that I better come back with some interesting news to share.  We went through a logo change and I survived it. Hows that?

The task was simple enough, lets launch a new logo before football season and the inauguration of the new stadium. I won’t go into details here but that was essentially the goal which culminated with these logo and style guide pages.

I believe our largest success with this endeavor lies in the system we call “labels”.  Our designer made a system of logos which incorporate the university’s new mark yet maintain a sense of identity for our colleges, schools, centers, institutes and other externally focused units.

New Institution Logo

‘Label’ samples for Colleges, Schools, Centers, Institutes

(The left shows all the variations we currently have and the right side show what this new system will allow us to accomplish in terms of brand recognition and increased awareness.)

We created vector art for these labels, taking into account nearly every possible application and then made all the art files accessible via the website.  Our leadership is behind this and although not all faculty agree, nearly all schools and colleges as well as centers and museums have begun using the new system.

Here is a brief overview PDF that we prepared to inform our internal audiences of the process.

brand, logo guide, marketing Hide