By Brian Muys
Online Career Tips Contributor
In an increasingly competitive higher education marketplace, the strategic relationship between industry influencers and your college or university is more critical than ever. It’s essential to establish market credibility and build mindshare for your academic reputation and faculty with current and prospective students, peer institutions, legislators and regulators, among other key stakeholders.
When used effectively, industry influencers – i.e., analysts and bloggers – can reinforce media campaigns, increase industry visibility, drive thought leadership and provide objective, third-party validation of your institution’s or organization’s mission, market vision and ability to effectively fulfill them.
If your organization doesn’t already have such a program in place, how do you proceed? Let’s start with the so-called “blogosphere” which, along with several other new and evolving social networking channels, has played a significant role in the wholesale transformation of the traditional media environment. Today’s blogger defies simple categorization, from reporters and consumer advocates to “mommy bloggers.” While it’s commonplace to proactively contact them directly, you’re just as likely to find and engage them via LinkedIn, Facebook and a variety of other social media communities of relevant interest to your organization.
From a marketing standpoint, the goal in establishing a blogger relations program is to engage such individuals in meaningful conversations that ultimately position them to speak favorably about – i.e., influence – your school’s reputation and help drive related awareness among key education and consumer audiences. Unlike the mainstream media, bloggers are less typically driven by “breaking news” or your relevant “product,” than by compelling perspective from a credible subject matter expert. This means that they are far less likely to be interested in a static press release or traditional interview than they are in hearing about your recognized faculty member’s contrarian view on things like healthcare reform or their latest research on the implications of artificial intelligence.
The other way to go about enlisting industry influencers in support of your organization, albeit usually a more expensive option, is to seek out more formal conversations with specialized analysts or consultants. In most cases, you can secure a retained client relationship with “boutique” firms catering to specific education market segments like K-12 or online. One good example is Eduventures, which annually forecasts growth projections for the online higher education segment, and sizes up both existing and emerging competitors.
Alternatively, you can pay considerably more to engage larger firms like the Gartner Group, which covers a fuller spectrum of education-related topics, i.e. supporting technology platforms and emerging trends like Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Such firms typically provide access to all primary research and the opportunity to consult with key analysts covering your segment. Such in-depth discussions typically focus on such key business drivers as market strategy, positioning and the optimum demographics of student prospects, for example.
Once you’ve determined which bloggers, or which type of consulting firms, are likely to be most influential in validating and enhancing awareness of your school’s academic reputation, be sure to include your provost, your president and other key faculty or staff subject matter experts in the subsequent conversations. And don’t expect a blogger or analyst to talk or write about your organization immediately. In most cases, it’s an ongoing, incremental process to build key relationships and nurture them consistently over time, even when there may be no new compelling developments to share. Many publications routinely reach out to well-known influencers to better gauge in what direction segments like higher education are moving, and which institutions are faring well.
Ultimately, favorable commentary from key influencers educated in your organization’s value proposition therefore will help validate market strategy, building a solid case for your ability to execute on your core mission and vision and grow segment leadership. Through such ongoing communications, developing a strategic industry influencer program will better enable your organization to truly differentiate itself in the higher education marketplace.
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