Ken Stadden\'s MacroBlog

Last year I was forced to learn to fend for myself again after the evaporation of a really good job, one of the most enjoyable of my life, working with good people.

It had been introduced as a temporary layoff, but it didn’t stay temporary… the sort of situation that gave rise to the expression “temporary by permanent” by the late, great Dick Rankin, a man with more aphorisms than an aphid, a man I was proud to call my father-in-law.

This picture has nothing to do with WordPress, Drupal or Joomla

So I went down to the shop to dust off my Web-site making tools, sharpen and adjust and oil them up and all that… but then thought better of it.  ”Best get on the Interweb thingy and see what the youngsters are up to before I get too far along,” I mumbled to myself, which I do often because it’s good to have someone to talk to.

To my mild peptic disturbance,  nobody was in the market for a hand-crafted, wooden, static site any more. While I was looking the other way, all the whippersnappers learned to use  Joomla and WordPress and Drupal because they are content management platforms and, did I mention, they’re open source and therefore FREE.

The content management feature of these platforms is big because who in his or her right mind wants to email changes to some developer every time there’s a new product or someone named Melvin from sales gets promoted to regional assistant manager of pre-owned paper clips? Back in the day, a content management system was a big deal and having Web pages pop out of a database like genies out of a bottle meant this was a site built for big bucks for some big company. But not anymore.

Long story short, old Rip Van Winkle here starts tinkering with WordPress, builds a site on top of it, staddendesign.com, in a kind of rickety way, learning as he goes, and now has done three paid jobs on WordPress. I now know enough PHP to be annoying at least, if not dangerous, and recently started using a  blank theme called Starkers that lets me easily end up with anything a client needs.

Joomla and Drupal each have their advantages, but I think it’s best to specialize, and I already picked my platform.  So it’s WordPress for now, until I conclude that it can’t do what needs to be done. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back down to the shop to put the hand tools away. Where’s that Pepto-Bismol?

In CUPRAP One, I promised some specifics from the speakers at their recent workshop . Millions are struggling with how to implement social media in business, and I found that– for the most part–  these expert communicators for academic institutions have a good handle on the transition. Here are some key points from remarks by Ray Betzner, assistant vice president for university relations, Temple University and vice president of CUPRAP:

• We’ve taken budget and staff cuts while having to do more.
• We used to be in charge of our own brands, our message. Now everyone has a worldwide platform to talk about our brand.
• A blog over which we have no control, www.cherryandwhat.blogspot.com, has about as much influence as the official online newsroom we run. More students get their news here, and we have no control over this, folks!
• How often do you look at your Wikipedia entry? We do every single day. (People change it.)
• Is Wikipedia important? Studies show that students go to Wikipedia first, not books.
• Increasingly, your bosses are looking over your shoulder, focusing on return on investment; therefore you need to align your results with the bottom line of the institution.
• Go back to basics. Evaluate why you’re doing what you’re doing. What does it cost? Is it working? How do you know?
• Reallocate dollars and resources to allow for new ventures.
• Get accustomed to the new normal. I don’t see us getting flush, as in 18 months ago before the bottom dropped out of the economy.
• Talk to your colleagues; attend workshops such as this; get ideas.
• Watch your competition.

Mr. Betzner’s remarks are a wake-up call that, unfortunately, not everyone will heed. At lunch I spoke with several college communicators whose bosses turn a deaf ear to their pleas for more social media openness, like starting academic blogs. It’s tough to do, but I think it’s imperative that anyone in a public relations department maintain pressure on the higher-ups to move into the twenty-first century.  In social media circles, it’s getting to be an old saw that people are already talking about you and you have to join the conversation.  But I doubt that it’s been said often enough or in the right ways to the right people.

Next time: remarks by Bill Keller, a sharp young guy recently hired as new media specialist at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pa. What does a new media specialist do with his day? Stay tuned for the scintillating report.

[I also promised poll results last time, but I'm still waiting for a statistically significant number of votes. If you're reading this, please see the poll at right.]

The Great Recession plucked me from a marketing position earlier this year and flung me back into the world of freelance. This unexpected change has had its good and bad aspects; one of the good is a more flexible schedule. Thus, last week I was able to attend the fall workshop of CUPRAP*, a statewide association for college and university communicators, in Bethlehem, PA.

It gave me the opportunity to see firsthand how public relations professionals are coping with the confluence of two major events—a severe recession and the rise of social media. A perfect storm has been brewing, one of tighter budgets, leaner staffs and a steep learning curve for new media.

When one speaker asked for a show of hands, it appeared that roughly two-thirds of workshop attendees have been on the receiving end of budget cuts, forcing reassessment of every nickel, dime, and Harry in their departments.

Bethlehem, Pa: Once steel, now meetings.

For readers who may not understand what’s being squeezed out, these folks typically produce publications such as magazines and brochures for alumni, donors and students; pitch stories to media; arrange programs and events for the public and news organizations; produce videos and podcasts; handle crises and negative news stories; and perform a thousand other tasks all springing from the need to manage the organization’s image and relationships with news media, students, teachers, staff, alumni, and the community at large.

Now that we’re almost a decade into the third millennium, most institutions of higher learning have fairly large, complex Web sites; a Facebook presence; one or more blogs; YouTube channels; Twitter accounts; and other online ventures, all of which must be maintained on shrinking budgets by dwindling staffs. That’s in addition to everything they did before social media hit critical mass and took off.

It seems impossible on the face of it, but this crazy-big workload is often managed by a mere handful of people, even at the largest schools.

Diane Rankin of Mind Over Media and Ray Betzner of Temple University

Speakers at the workshop ranged from a young social media whiz newly hired by a small-town college to an experienced communications VP at a major city university. Their insights and advice will be of interest to anyone involved in PR, marketing, and social media. I’ll get to them in Part II of this series.

I’ll also reveal the answer to the question, “What is the rate of Twitter adoption among communications professionals?” Enter your guess in comments below or answer the poll at right. The answer will be based on my highly unscientific observations from the 10/12 meeting.

* CUPRAP = College and University Public Relations Association of Pennsylvania