Friday Five: College Marketing Is All the Same edition

Friday Five's back, alright!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

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OK, let's get right to it!

1. College marketing: A whole lotta sameness

Lots of things to think about and consider after reading this article about the plague of sameness that infects college marketing by Ellen Wexler on Inside Higher Ed. And in what is sure to be a rare recommendation, be sure to read the comments section - I particularly love this gem: "Oddly, we encourage students to take risks but institutions themselves are risk averse which is why would could blank out the name on these materials and substitute 50 or more colleges. Being bold and creative and innovative and distinctive seems too hard for most places." Once your done with the comments, check out this thoughtful response from Eric Sickler, also on IHE.

2. Student social media use survey

Many thanks to the talented and brilliant Jason Boucher of University of New Hampshire for creating and sharing this great survey UNH did of their students' social media use. (Wow those Snapchat numbers!!!) Come for the great data and insights, stay for the awesome infographic!

3. Facebook video view numbers are a complete joke

After reading this diatribe from Gawker's Kevin Draper about the ludicrousness of Facebook's video view metrics, all I could say was PREACH!!!!!!!!!! Quick story - a few weeks ago, I had the chance to meet with the former video director of a large digital publisher. He was boasting pretty hard about getting 100 million video views a month, which I thought was super impressive. But then I asked how many of those views were of the Facebook 3-second variety. He equivocated a bit, but ultimately said about 90%. Yeesh. That type of vanity metric peacocking makes everyone working in social media look bad. Please - don't use FB's sham view stats. (The public number which counts 3-second views, that is. Their more in-depth metrics are OK.) 

4. Reaching the right people

Really, really enjoyed this article by Joshua Topolsky about "the Problem" of digital media. Super smart stuff. My favorite part: "The truth is that the best and most important things the media (let’s say specifically the news media) has ever made were not made to reach the most people — they were made to reach the right people. Because human beings exist, and we are not content consumption machines. What will save the media industry — or at least the part worth saving — is when we start making Real Things for people again, instead of programming for algorithms or New Things."

5. The failure of influencer marketing

Loved this Digiday interview about influencer marketing with an anonymous social media exec. This part rang particularly true to me: "...usually it’s a CEO or CMO or whoever saying, “Oh, my kid likes this guy.” At this major car brand I worked for, we paid $300,000 for a few photographs because the CEO’s kid liked someone."

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That's all I've got. Take it away, obscure shoe-gazery band from Detroit! (aka Slumber Party)