Gillian Richard is a student at The University of Alabama and a member of their PRSSA chapter. She is also a member of Platform Magazine, an online, student-run publication at UA.

Last but not least, she is incredibly patient and has fantastic professional communication skills.

Gillian pitched me a story in late February. She wanted to write a guest post for this blog. I usually don’t publish guest posts – especially because they are often used for search engine optimization purposes by lead generation websites, not interested in your eye balls my dear readers but only by the Google juice this blog can deliver.

Yet, I decided to make an exception and accept Gillian’s offer, because I knew she could write something interesting for YOU.

Who doesn’t want to hear from a member of our top target audience?

Gillian submitted her piece very promptly and even added a few more examples at my request. She prepared the screenshots and followed up diligently with me. Unfortunately, the craziness that my work is today has prevented me from publishing this piece until today (my apologies again, Gillian!).

With students today, it’s all about (public) relations!

Life at a university or college offers much more independence to students, and because there is not as much structure, effective communication can be difficult. The University of Alabama has 33,602 students. Reaching out to that big of an audience can prove challenging, but there are certain techniques college PR departments can use to reach out to their target audiences.

Growing your enrollment through PR

One of the best ways that colleges and universities can implement PR strategies is marketing to potential students. Before we worry about how to talk to students, we must have students to talk to. So what’s the best way?

I can’t tell you, unfortunately.

However, I can tell you that it’s important to make sure your platform is appropriate and timely.

The world has changed significantly even in the three years since I applied to college. I had one college send me multiple letters a week. While keeping contact is key, don’t go overboard.

Also, your platform needs to match the audience.

Letters can be effective, because you do have to take into consideration that you are appealing to your student’s parents as well; however, today’s students are tech-savvy, so the Internet and social media are great ways to build a relationship with them.

I also had colleges sending me letters after most of their scholarship deadlines had passed. That’s not helpful at all. Start your relationship-building tactics early, and give plenty of time for students to make their decision and still have time to meet any deadlines.

Higher ed strategies

One of the keys in communicating with college students is to stay relaxed.

Where I think so many administrative departments go wrong is in taking themselves too seriously. Your job is serious, but at the same time, college is a time to have fun, enjoy and learn, and we want that laid-back attitude when it comes to administration as much as possible.

During crisis situations, that relaxed attitude obviously has to change a little bit. However, keeping calm in times like this is more important than ever.

While I can only vouch for UA, our media relations department does it right in times of trouble. The tornado that came through Tuscaloosa almost two years ago is a prime example. We were constantly updated with emails, text alerts and even phone calls to keep us informed on what was happening on campus and in town. It’s important to remember while communicating in a crisis in the higher ed world, you’re responsible for keeping students informed, as well as their families.

Keeping open channels of communication, even just for day-to-day news, is imperative to having a successful communications program.

“The University of Alabama is always on top of their social media strategies. More often than not, I learn about campus events on Twitter before ever receiving a formal email,” said Haley Clemons, a student at the university. “Information is constantly being shared between students and faculty. It also makes it easy to sign up for events because links are easily accessible on my Twitter feed.”

Obviously social media is one of the best ways to reach out to students, not only because it’s quick and convenient, but also because it’s the most popular channel for news among that target audience.

“I’ve never felt disconnected from the University in terms of social media,” said Kaitlyn Honnold, public relations major at the University of Alabama. “If there’s even a bad thunderstorm, the university warns me about it through phone calls, Twitter, Facebook, emails and text messages.”

Being involved with social media means staying updated on current trends. I’m not saying that you should download Snapchat, but if it’s an outlet that you can use to effectively communicate with your student body and help you form positive relationships, it might be worth checking out.

It all boils down to this: When you’re working in higher education, students and parents need to know what’s going on quickly, and in a manner appealing to them.

I have to admit: I do.

And, chances are you do too according to “The enemy of clarity,” a post Andrew Careaga wrote earlier this week.

We live in a world of possibilities – and while it’s fantastic, it is definitely more challenging to make decisions, the right decisions. That’s the reason I was really excited when I heard about the Heath brothers new book: Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. And, while I was searching to order it it on Amazon, I got sidetracked after looking at the related books listed on the page and seeing the bright yellow cover (my brain is a sucker for anything in the neighborhood of orange) of the “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz.

Then, when I read the subtitle: “Why More is Less – How the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction,” I was totally sold. I had to read this book that promised to answer the big question that had bothered me for a few months. Published in 2004, the book was apparently a classic I’ve had managed to miss – until last month – in my reading quest.

So, here’s my 1-1-1 Express Book Review of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz, Professor at Swarthmore College.

1 thing I liked

While this book resonated 10 years ago when it was first published, it definitely hits even more the target in our social media world where everybody has become a publisher. Without the financial barrier of entry, tons of content is written, published and shared every day. Breaking through the noise is the real challenge today for college marketers and universities communicators. And, it has become tougher and tougher. By analyzing the plethora of choices available today, this book offers some solace to the burnt-out-by-too-many-choices brains.

In the book, Prof Schwartz makes a few higher ed references and illustrates the burden of choice by discussing the challenges faced by students and their families when it comes to choosing the best (and often not the right) college or academic path. As he explained, it’s no wonder they are paralyzed in a world where social comparison is at its highest with the always-on life broadcasting empowered by facebook, twitter and the likes. But, beyond the diagnostic of the issue, this book also offers a roadmap to help us survive and thrive in this world of choices.

1 thing I didn’t like too much

I love this book, because reading it really felt like chicken soup for the overburden-by-choices soul. But, as you know, if you read a few of my book reviews, I’m always going for a balanced view. So, I would say that the first part of the book, “When we choose,” detailing all the different parts of our lives where we are presented with a choice was a bit too long to my taste. The context has changed a lot in the past decade and I believe that the explosion of choices has intensified exponentially. As a result, it is probably an easier case to make than it was a decade ago.

1 big take-away from the book

At the end of the book, in Part 4, Barry Schwartz offers 11 action-oriented strategies to cope with the burden of choice. I’m not going to share all of them, but the 3 ones I found the most useful:

• Choose when to choose:
  It’s not because we can spend our day choosing among many options every single detail of our life that we should. You need to find out when a choice really matters to you. A simple illustration of this principle is Steve Job’s or Mark Zuckenberger’s wardrobe choices. Both have spent a great deal of time making important choices in their successful careers, but the way they dressed wasn’t important for what they set to achieve. So, they choose an outfit that worked for them once and sticked with it.
• Satisfice more, maximize less:
  Both terms are explained in the book, but what it comes down to is to aim for good enough in as many areas of your life as possible when the ultimate best is not a requirement. This one is a struggle for “recovering perfectionist” me. But, you got to face it: not every task accomplished needs to be a work-of-art. The facebook motto I’ve heard about while reading “Lean In” written by its COO, Sheryl Sandberg, has become a new favorite of mine: “done is better than perfect.”
• Learn to love constraints:
  As a painter focusing his attention and creativity on a given canvas, you have to limit the options to a more friendly number to accomplish anything. Prof Schwartz advises to create your own set of rules and standards for helping in the case of mundane decisions. This will allow you to let your autopilot deal with these small choices and your brain focus on what really matters.

Check out the TED Talk!

It’s 20-minute long and really focuses on the 1st part of the book, but it will give you an idea about what the paradox of choice is.

Sometimes it’s the case.
Sometimes it isn’t.

Higher ed has always had a love-hate relationship with email marketing. We use and abuse it without always understanding its core strengths, limits and associated risks.

Greg Rubenstein, Web Properties Director at A.T. University used to work for WestStar TalkRadio Network where he sent millions of email marketing messages.

A few weeks ago Greg took the 8-week online course on Social Media Marketing for Higher Ed I teach at Higher Ed Experts. While the focus of my course is social media marketing, we have a class discussion about the social media vs. email issue at some point in the course.

Greg shared with his classmates the few following very good tips on how to adjust email marketing best practices to a higher ed audience (shared again today with his permission):

The 1st issue is audience: faculty/staff versus students

Our student population is entirely graduate level. A fairly substantial percentage is seeking post-professional degrees, and another large segment are pursuing a master – or doctorate-level degree via online education.

These students do not open email.

Even communication that’s highly-targeted and of particular importance, such as commencement instructions sent only to a particular class, will have open rates indicating universal disinterest.

Faculty and staff are better about reading email, with open and click-through rates (CTR) being fairly predictable.

A message from the President’s Office, or a call-to-action (CTA) that’s easy or very focused, will produce acceptable results. Generic monthly “newsletters,” such as mass email sent from one department to everyone, returns about the same results as sending to students.

The 2nd issue is content

Don’t send an email because you haven’t done so in “a while.”

Don’t assume someone’s interested in what you have to say.

Don’t assume that just because you hit delete on all those other messages, recipients of your emails won’t do the same.

Everyone is busy. That’s the universal truth in all walks of life. People will only pay attention when doing so is either required or it’s in their personal interest. For communication via email to be successful, the content has to be relevant, written to a professional standard and be presented in a layout that makes comprehension easy.

The last issue is context

To get an email message read, it first has to make it to the recipient’s inbox. It then has to be opened. Once opened, it must be inviting enough to warrant further reading. Finally, CTAs must work as expected—links must be where the reader expects, and function as anticipated.

The university environment is somewhat of a captured audience, and email delivery inside the institution hopefully isn’t ever a problem. Getting messages to external audiences (not using the university’s .edu domain) faces the same hurdles as all other commercial email delivery. Whether sending internally or externally, making sure of Can-Spam compliance is a basic requirement.

Email subject line selection is both art and science. Writing good subject lines is critical not only for enticing the recipient to open the email, but in making sure the message arrives at all. There are many resources on the subject — do a Google search, and MailChimp has some good rules-of-thumb.

Message format, along with the look and feel, will make the difference between opened and deleted or obtaining a click-through. If any text in your message is in, or part of, an image, you are losing clicks. The only exception is wordmarks/text used as design elements. Making best-practice email messages requires more work than just sending an image, but the difference in results is worth the effort.

Test before you send

My final suggestion is to test before you hit send button.

This time.
Next time.
Every time.

Best practice testing is minimally viewing the message as a test sent in the major freemail clients—gmail, yahoo, hotmail/live, icloud, etc., as well as in the “big four” browsers: Chrome, Firefox, IE and Safari.

However, some of you might work for institutions where the pros and cons of responsive websites are still debated.

Well, fire up your email client or printer, because my latest Internet Technologies column is just for you :-)

Published in the May 2013 issue of University Business, “To Go or Not to Go … Responsive,” explains why institutions should go responsive by discussing 3 top reasons:

1. We live in a multi-device world!
2. Mobile and tablet web traffic on university websites is on the rise.
3. More and more institutions have chosen to go responsive.

In this article, I’m also sharing in a short “online extra”, “Planning a Responsive Redesign: Mind your Content!”, why content (and not code) is the most challenging and important part for any responsive web project including shout-outs to Haverford College, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Lynn University.

Haverford College made sure new content would work with their new Admissions responsive website launched in February 2013 (fabulous screeshot courtesy of Am I Responsive?)

4-week online course: Mobile & Responsive Web Design for Higher Ed
(asynchronous with weekly lessons and assignments)
ONLY 10 seats per session

As I mentioned a month ago just before the High Ed Web New England conference, Higher Ed Experts has chosen to support the 5 regional conferences this year and help them bring great keynote speakers.

Whether or not you get got a chance to attend the High Ed Web Florida conference next week in Gainsville, I also wanted to make sure that you would learn a bit from the conference keynote speaker, Daniel Ryan who was Director of Front-end Development at Obama for America 2012.

That’s why I asked him to tell us more about him, some amazing tips to raise online donations and his keynote.

1) You worked for the Obama Campaign. Can you tell us how you manage to get the job in the first place and what you did?

My journey with the campaign started back in 08. I was working at an agency in Chattanooga, Tennessee, managing the front-end developers there when I got an email blast from the Obama campaign looking for web developers. I applied and had a few interviews, but apparently got lost in the shuffle. There’s been a lot of press about how well we targeted folks with our emails during the 2012 cycle; that’s how they got me the second time around. Late one evening I received an email from the campaign looking for developers once again. The next morning I uploaded my résumé. About 30 minutes later I got a reply back from Kyle Rush, who later became my deputy. Kyle and I set up an interview later that week. A few weeks after that I had moved to Chicago and started working at the campaign.

I started as a Senior Developer but it didn’t take long before I was promoted to Director of Front-end Development. Kyle, Jeff Louden, Michael Renehan, Jason Rico and I formed the leadership of our team as we built up to two dozen staff. Our team was divided along the lines of the main functions of a campaign: fundraising, persuasion and turning out voters.

2) Obviously, the campaign managed to raise a lot of money online. Any lessons learned on the web development front that universities and colleges could use in their fundraising efforts?

Totally. I don’t think we had any secret sauce at the campaign, we just combined lots of smart smaller decisions together. Members of the development team, along with project managers, email writers, designers and advertising experts, formed a working group around optimizing our donation experience. We ran hundreds of A/B tests (using Optimizely.com) comparing various layouts, imagery and language.

If there’s one major takeaway I could give to folks, it is always follow the data. Never make assumptions without something to back them up with. I think the number of times we predicted a testing outcome accurately was far lower than when we got it wrong. We took that to heart and tested everything.

A few specific lessons we learned that I think are applicable everywhere are:

• Speed matters.
  We switched our donate pages from a PHP/MySQL backed solution to static HTML hosted on Amazon’s S3. The exact same pages served up 2 seconds faster and we saw a 10% overall increase in revenue. Milliseconds can mean millions.
• When your audience changes, run your tests again.
  Many things that we tried early on with no significant difference turned out to be major conversion increases as we neared the election and our visitor base broadened. We tested the color of our buttons quite often and found that no color really outperformed another. Until one day in the late summer of 2012 when we did find a difference. If we’d not kept trying that basic test, we would have lost thousands and thousands of dollars.
• Photography really sells.
  We’d always had a photo of the President on our donate pages, but through testing we found that larger images performed better. Images of the President looking towards the donate form outperformed those where he was looking away. The biggest breakthrough we found was using a photo of the President speaking to a crowd of supporters.
  
  
  It’s impossible for us to know exactly why this one worked better, but our best theory is that it spoke to our campaign’s ethos of being about our supporters and not just one man.
• Don’t give the user choices.
  Every time we presented multiple options for the user to choose from, the overall level of engagement went down. In other words, if we had three calls to action, they would get less click throughs combined than a single call to action. The same holds true to the number of inputs on forms. For every field we added, we would measure about a 10% decrease in conversions. There should be no optional fields on your donate form. If there’s a need for additional data (like why a person donated) ask it in a follow up after they’ve made their donation.

3) You’re going to present the keynote talk at the High Ed Web Florida conference. Can you tell us a bit more about your talk and what attendees will be able to learn?

I’m really looking forward to the High Ed Web conference. I’m giving a brand new talk there called “Human-first Web Design” that focuses on getting balancing organizational needs with the needs of your visitors. This was a real struggle at the campaign and I think a lot of the lessons we learned directly apply to academic websites. Specifically I’ll be discussing navigational structures, responsive design techniques and audience targeting. I think it’s going to be really great.

Updated on April 23, 2013: Human-First Web Design

According to the 2013 State of Mobile & Responsive Web in Higher Ed report, 51% of surveyed institutions have already embraced responsive web design techniques as a mobile solution.

While responsive websites offer a flexible device-independent solution, they do come with their own set of content challenges.

Developing content to be consumed on tiny and big screens (and anything in between) is probably the most important challenge for universities and colleges. That’s why I asked Sara Wachter-Boettcher, editor in chief at A List Apart and author of “Content Everywhere” to prepare an online class on the content pre-requisites for responsive web design in higher education.

Next week, as part of the Higher Ed Responsive Websites Summit (April 23-25, 2013), Sara will provide a roadmap to get content ready for higher ed responsive websites.

The summit is a unique opportunity for you to rally everybody on your team (or your campus) around this important topic. Sara’s session will follow a presentation from Stewart Foss on the top 10 challenges of higher ed responsive websites and 2 case studies from smaller teams (University of Vermont and LeMoyne College).

Whether or not you plan to attend the online summit next week (there are only a few seats left, so make sure you register as soon as possible to reserve your spot), you need to be aware of what Sara Wachter-Boettcher has to say. That’s why I asked her to answer a few questions about content, higher education and web trends.

1) Your book “Content Everywhere” was published last December. Would you say that content is more ubiquitous today than it was 10 years ago? What happened?

Blogs happened. Social media happened. Content management tools happened. This was just beginning 10 years ago: Blogging was starting to take off, Myspace had launched. But today, it’s so easy to publish online that we’re all doing it, constantly. So not only is it incredibly easy for the average person to publish content, but the way people find and consume content has changed as well.

Many organizations have attempted to keep up with all these developments by producing more content: new blogs, social media accounts, news sections, infographics, press releases, etc. As they have, their templates, content management systems, governance practices, and information architecture haven’t been able to keep up.

The result is that many organizations are trying to produce as much content as they can, without necessarily focusing on what’s sustainable, and what’s most important for their audiences.

2) What could the higher ed industry do better when it comes to content?

In some ways, higher ed has the same challenges as any big organization: lots of people producing lots of different kinds of content for lots of different audiences. You can’t do that without a plan, some oversight, and ongoing efforts to stay aligned. But higher has the additional challenge of typically being very decentralized, without a firm hierarchy. This makes it difficult to force new systems, policies, and practices on people operating in diverse, disconnected groups.

But the solution isn’t a centralized, hierarchical structure. Not only would that have its own problems, but it would also be antithetical to higher ed, where encouraging dissent and diverging views is critical to furthering knowledge. What higher ed can do, though, is get better about sharing new ideas with different groups, rolling things out in waves, creating extensible systems rather than rigid ones, and generally taking a less divisive, siloed approach. It’s OK that the humanities department has different needs than the health center, and that both have very different goals than centralized groups like university marketing or admissions. What’s important for content is that there are discussions about the goals the institution has as a whole, and how those should extend and be translated across all content.

Rather than top-down initiatives, higher ed can be the most successful when it uses centralized teams to facilitate better content practices across the different departments and entities. Another big area to focus on is training content-producing staff to think externally, not internally; often, higher education institutions spend more time talking about themselves than about their students. Getting people to think about the content as being “for” their users—be they prospects, students, faculty, staff, parents, or anyone else—rather than “for” their department can go a long way.

3) What role does content play in higher ed responsive web projects?

Responsive design often gets talked about as an implementation question, but it takes so much more than that to prepare for responsiveness. Responsive design relies on content that can be moved around the page—content that lives in modules and chunks that can be combined and reflowed and stacked however you need them. Otherwise, it’s difficult to make a page reflow effectively as screen size narrows or widens.

This means that your content needs to be ready for responsive design: It must be broken down into logical pieces and parts, with trim copy and useful headings. You need to know what’s the most important message, and what can be secondary or tertiary. You need to think about what a user should do after visiting the page. In short, it’s all about understanding your content, your priorities, and your goals, and ensuring the way that content breaks into modules and then displays on differently sized devices keeps those messages, priorities, and goals intact.

4) As the editor-in-chief of A List Apart, you are in a unique position to spot current and upcoming trends in the web industry at large. Anything we should keep an eye on?

Tons of people are working hard on the challenges of designing for multiple devices with varying capabilities. We’re seeing a ton of people interested in improving performance—making sites that load fast, even on a slow connection. We’re seeing advancements in dealing with tricky issues like responsive images. We’re seeing impressive new JavaScript and jQuery approaches.

But I think amid all that, we’re also seeing a call for a return to simplicity and humanness in our work: About designing so that people can comfortably slow down and read, rather than be bombarded by distractions. About bringing focus and purpose to our projects. About not doing all the latest and greatest just because we can. Overall, I see people from all disciplines taking a strong interest in understanding their users—and not just understanding them, but caring about them and respecting them, too. I think this isn’t so much a trend as a realization that the web is now so intertwined with people’s lives, we need to think about what we do there as long-term, not just tactics to promote or market.

Looking for real solutions to challenges with responsive web design?
Higher ed Responsive Websites Summit
Expert solutions, lessons learned and content strategy roadmap to go responsive in higher education
higheredexperts.com/rwdsummit

This is the question that the 3rd edition of the State of the Mobile and Responsive Web in Higher Ed survey report answers in a 12-page document – including results and charts.

This open and independent research work is supported by Higher Ed Experts . When you buy a pass to our online events like the upcoming Higher Ed Responsive Websites Summit or you sign up for our Responsive Web Design online course, you also help fund this kind of work. So, thank you! :-).

Share to help spread the word about the report – and get your copy!

In higher education, decisions are often based on traditions, opinions or hunches. Benchmarking data is not easy to collect, but everybody wins if it’s spread widely.

This is why I’m asking you to share this research with your professional network.
A like, a tweet, a +1 or LinkedIn share will automatically give you access to the 12-page report (PDF) so you can download or print it. You can preview a selection of findings below as well (even if you don’t feel like sharing today)

A total of 174 professionals working mainly in the marketing, communication (43%) and web offices (40%) at universities and colleges completed the third online survey about the state of the mobile and responsive web in higher education from January 8, 2013 to February 15, 2013.

This survey was completed online on a voluntary basis and thus doesn’t rely on a scientifically determined dataset. The resulting survey sample was smaller by 107 replies than the 2012 sample. However, it still seems fairly representative of the Carnegie Classification breakdown.

Mobile and tablet traffic share on the rise in higher ed

• The average reported share of traffic via mobile phones on institutional websites doubled in a year from 4.6% in 2011 to 9.3% in 2012.
• 71% of the surveyed institutions reported mobile traffic shares between 6% and 11%
• The average reported share of traffic via tablets on college websites went from 0.5% in 2011 to 3% in 2012.

Serving mobile users in higher ed? Getting there!

• 68% (59% in 2012) of the survey respondents provide a solution (mobile website, responsive website, native mobile device applications etc.) targeting and serving owners of mobile and other connected devices. They have implemented this solution within the last year in 40% (72% in 2012) of the cases.
• 95% (vs. 74% in 2012) of the survey respondents without a mobile solution have plans to implement one in the future, in less than a year in 85% (vs. 59%) of the cases.

Target audiences for mobile solutions: students first, faculty & staff second

• 85% (88% in 2012) of the survey respondents identify current students as a target audience for their existing mobile solution, 78% (73% in 2012) for prospective students
• 93% (90% in 2012) of the survey respondents planning a solution will target prospective students.
• Two thirds of the survey respondents with an existing solution serve faculty and staff.

On-the-go Goals: supporting campus life, information & recruiting students

• 73% (31% in 2012) of the existing and 60% (70% in 2012) planned mobile solutions have the goal of supporting campus life by providing a calendar of events, bus schedules or maps among others.
• 68% of the surveyed institutions identify information/communication as a goal for their mobile web solution.
• 65% of the current mobile solutions and 75% of the planned ones have student recruitment as an identified goal.

Mobile strategy: institutions are going responsive!

• 51% of the survey respondents with an existing solution have already adopted the responsive web design approach. In 2012 only 15% mentioned using responsive techniques.
• 45% (56% in 2012) of the survey respondents with an existing solution have chosen to serve their mobile web users through a dedicated mobile website, 31% (26% in 2012) with native applications for specific devices.

More but still few mobile web budgets

• 78% of the solutions were developed by staff/faculty, 24% by a higher ed vendor.
• 56% (65% in 2012) of the survey respondents with a mobile solution report no budget.

Looking for real solutions to challenges with responsive web design?
Higher ed Responsive Websites Summit
Expert solutions, lessons learned and content strategy roadmap to go responsive in higher education
higheredexperts.com/rwdsummit

As I explained in my post about mobile and web traffic increasing shares on university and college websites last week, the analysis of the survey results on the 2013 State of Web and Responsive Web in Higher Ed is now completed.

The 12-page report of the 3rd edition of this yearly survey (n=174) will be published on Wednesday, but I’ve decided to share a couple of insights before its official release in an attempt to increase the reach of these important findings.

Mobile has reached a tipping point in higher education

68% of the surveyed institutions have already implemented a mobile solution (mobile website, responsive website, native app, etc.) targeting and serving owners of mobile and other connected devices.

This represents a 10-point increase in a year. And, this proportion has almost doubled since 2011 when only 37% of the surveyed institutions had already implemented a mobile solution.

Responsive websites now the most popular mobile solution in higher ed

What do institutions use as their mobile solutions? More and more have chosen to go responsive!

• 51% of the surveyed institutions have already adopted the responsive web design approach.
• Last year, only 15% mentioned using responsive techniques.
• 45% use a dedicated mobile solution(s)/framework designed and developed for mobile users only and supporting a family of mobile devices.

Looking for real solutions to challenges with responsive web design?
Higher ed Responsive Websites Summit
Expert solutions, lessons learned and content strategy roadmap to go responsive in higher education
higheredexperts.com/rwdsummit

But, it’s been impossible to ignore Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, since its launch a few weeks ago.

As the COO of Facebook and a high-profile leader in Silicon Valley, Ms. Sandberg doesn’t blend very well in the very male world of technology companies. Her critics (or “nemeses” by the type of comments written about her book) also point out she is coming from a world of privileges and didn’t have to struggle too hard in her life, which should have prevented her, according to them, from writing anything of value for other women.

Having rarely seen a non-fiction book surrounded by so much controversy for the past couple of years, I had to read it for myself. So, I did last weekend while relaxing after some serious museum hopping during the day with my 7- & 4-year old sons and their dad.

So, here’s my 1-1-1 Express Book Review of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg.

1 thing I liked

While I’m no Sheryl Sandberg by any standard (professional success, celebrity status, net worth, location, clothes, hair style and hopefully enemies), this book really talked to me. Despite all the critics saying Ms. Sandberg was out of touch, the arguments, pieces of advice and stories she and her writing partner, Nell Scovell, included in the book really struck a chord. From the quasi-denial of the changing world the first few months after the birth of her first child to the unpredictable situations kids can put you in, I was surprised that such a high-profile woman would be faced with the same issues and doubts I often deal with.

I also liked the fact that Sheryl Sandberg chose to get out of the “working-mother closet” to help start conversations about important issues in the workplace (and made me realized it was ok to mention my kids in a blog post ;-).

1 thing I didn’t like too much

I really like this book as it has already had a noticeable effect on how I look at things as a mom, an entrepreneur, an educator and an individual. But, as you might know if you’ve read a few of my book reviews, they are short but try to offer a balanced view. So, here it is: I would have loved to read a few more personal stories.

1 big take-away from the book

There are a few strong messages for women in this book, but my big takeaway was to realize how women are rarely successful and liked at the same time.

While successful men can be liked, there is a strong bias toward successful women based on the perception that they can only be successful by being mean. It seems that harsh criticism comes with the job description for successful women. This bias toward women in leadership positions exists among men and women alike (as demonstrated in academic research studies).

On a personal level, I would say that my favorite piece of advice was to try to find where perfection matters first, and then strive to do things 100% right only where it matters – at work and at home. For anything else, “done is better than perfect.”

If you want a better idea of what the book has to offer to women (and men alike as Sandberg is advocating for them to have the right to choose a more balanced life between work and family as well), take 10 minutes to watch her TED Talk that started it all in December 2010.

BONUS: My big “Lean In” moment

In the spirit of getting out of the “working-mother closet,” here’s the story of my big “Lean In” moment.
Please share yours (at work or at home if you’re a man) by posting a comment below!

In the summer of 2006, Andrew Careaga from Missouri S&T offered me to present about Web 2.0 (yeah, that’s how we called social media in 2006) and crisis communication in a networked world at the CASE Annual Conference for Senior Communication and Marketing Professionals in mid-September that year.

Andy told me I had been recommended by David Jarmul, AVP at Duke University, and offered me to co-present the sessions with Joe Hice, AVP at the University of Florida at that time. I was really thrilled and frankly scared that these 3 recognized higher ed leaders had invited me to “sit at the table” as Sandberg would put it.

I had never presented at a conference before, let alone been invited to do so. And, if you’ve met me, you know that I have a very noticeable accent that made me feel very self-conscious back then (I still have the accent, but I’ve learned it doesn’t have to define me as a speaker ;-).

This was a great opportunity, but there was a catch. If I accepted the invitation to present, I would have to leave my breastfed 6-month old baby boy for 4 days for the first time ever, thus automatically earning my bad “mother of the year” card by current parenting standards.

I had all the right excuses to decline this speaking offer.
And, I would have if my husband hadn’t told me I HAD to go and that he would take care of our baby son while I was away.

I went to the conference, and this opportunity has led to many more.

Without the 5 men (Andy, David, Joe, my husband and my son) in this story who let me (or helped me) lean in, I’m not sure things would have been the same professionally for me.
And, that’s why I’m very thankful to them.

This was my big “LEAN IN” moment, what’s yours?

I’ve finally analyzed the results of the 2013 State of Web and Responsive Web in Higher Ed Survey.

The 3rd edition of this yearly survey was completed from January 8, 2013 to February 15, 2013 by 174 professionals working mainly in the marketing, communication (43%) and web offices (40%) at universities and colleges. The survey sample of institutions is fairly representative of the Carnegie Classification breakdown.

But, the participation was 30% lower than a year ago.

I wonder if the interest of professionals for this kind of benchmarking surveys has decreased because mobile adoption has been achieved in the majority of insittutions or if this can be explained by the intensified fight for attention on the web.

The full survey report will be published next Wednesday, but I’ll share until then a few interesting insights in a series of short blog posts to increase the reach of these findings in our very noisy and busy online world.

Mobile and tablet traffic shares more than doubled in 2012

Surveyed participants were asked to share their data of mobile and tablet web traffic for the full year of 2011 and 2012, data expressed as a percentage of total web traffic as reported by both mobile and tablet traffic segments in Google Analytics.

Data was submitted by 148 institutions for this optional section of the survey, a section introduced this year.

• The average reported share of traffic via mobile phones on institutional websites doubled in a year from 4.6% in 2011 to 9.3% in 2012.
• The average reported share of traffic via tablets on college websites went from 0.5% in 2011 to 3% in 2012.
• 71% of the surveyed institutions reported mobile traffic shares ranging from 6% to 11%

I had many exchanges with professionals working in universities and colleges about the evolution of both data points since the beginning of the year. And, in all the cases, the 2013 monthly data has confirmed the steady rise of traffic from mobile and tablet devices on higher ed websites.

Want to benchmark your data?

You will need to have access to your Google Analytics account to be able to retrieve this data using the default segments for mobile and tablet traffic.

In this 2-min screencast, I’m showing you how to do this if you’ve never done it.

4-week online course: Mobile & Responsive Web Design for Higher Ed
(asynchronous with weekly lessons and assignments)
ONLY 10 seats per session