Krywosa, IMC

Here’s where my work in College Access and parental involvement kicks in. I just finished reading ‘Millennial Muddle: How Stereotyping Students Became an Industry’. I couldn’t help but feel a little vindicated. The following quote really resonated with me:

“Over the last decade, commentators have tended to slap the Millennial label on white, affluent teenagers who accomplish great things as they grow up in the suburbs, who confront anxiety when applying into super-selective colleges, and who multitask with ease as their helicopter parents hover reassuringly above them. The label tends not to appear in renderings of teenagers who happen to be minorities, or poor, or who have never won a spelling bee. Nor does the term often refer to students from big cities and small towns that are nothing like Fairfax County, Va {Where ‘Millennial’ research was conducted}. Or who lack technological know-how. Or who struggle to complete high school. Or who never even consider college. Or who commit crimes. Or who suffer from too little parent support. Or who drop out of college. Aren’t they Millennials, too?’

Seriously. Marketing to a Millennial is like marketing to a Virgo. How many students – strike that – how many of YOUR students fit this profile? Should any more effort be applied to a stereotype than to an individual? What ever happened to just communicating with the best possible content for your audience in the best way for that audience? Personally, I feel lumping a generation into one name sake is the opposite of good marketing – do your research. Find out about your target audience. Specifically. I’m all for segmentation, and the few insights into ‘kids today’ but not all of these attributes apply to all – or most – of ‘our’ students.

What about yours?

In another installment of ‘getting to know Jess’ and after many great Twitter conversations created around @rachelreuben’s conference Tweeting, I’m attaching links to a few choice publications that I authored in my previous position. I think they are still relevant in the conversation of ‘is social media worth it’, especially for low income families.

Achieving College Access Goals: The Relevance of New Media in Reaching First-Generation and Low-Income Teens

How College Access Marketing Campaigns Can Utilize Social Networking Web Sites

Creating a Strategy for Community Engagement

With my VP recently forwarding the Pew Generations Online 2009 memo, I was asked what my takeaways were. The only two items I could come up with were:

1. Gen Y and Gen X (18-44) generally use the internet the most as a daily part of their lives.

2. This is and will continue to expand to both ends of the age spectrum.

It reminded me of the research I did outlining if using the internet was applicable to low-income or first generation college students.  The answer to that question was ‘yes. of course.’

What these two items say to me are that people are still wondering about the use of the internet. Is it worth it? Does it reach everyone? Can I use that instead of print?

The point is most people DO use the internet. It IS worth your time to invest in doing this right, not just doing it flashy. Learn about how your target audience uses the web. Are they social? Do they use it primarily for news and research? Do they make purchases?

Remember, not all research includes everyone. There will always be your pocket of ‘millenials’ who arent familiar with Twitter and who dont have Facebook profiles. But, there will also be those grandma’s and grandpa’s who regularly video chat with their grandkids. Its all relative.

Its no surprise research tells us that people are on the ‘net. What is more surprising, is that this question is still asked.

What are your thoughts? What research do you find most useful?

I just tried to do a search for college access blogs through Google and found a few – much to my happy surprise! But, I was quickly denied any further gratification by realizing that none of them had (working) RSS feeds! A few had feeds, but those didn’t work, but the majority had none at all. If college access practitioners want to spread the word about the work that they are doing – very helpful to those trying to recreate this work from scratch – then adding RSS is a must. Without it, you rely on your audience to be engaged enough to run back and check for updates.

Do them a favor and offer working RSS feeds! They’ll love you for it.

I recently attended a national summit for College Planning Centers to discuss ways in which they could incorporate new media into their strategies. As questions rose regarding using social bookmarking sites (Delicious, Digg, Technorati, etc.) I began to get uneasy. How will the college access arena rally around this new technology if they cannot agree on terms to tag?

While I may be doing a great job tagging articles ‘education’ and ‘college access’ and ‘financial aid’, others may be doing something different. It was brought up that much more education is needed regarding new and social media in this industry to enable us to really harness the power that social bookmarking offers. Add to this, that much content of interest to college access practitioners does not allow users to socially bookmark it.

I will be working on definitions of prevalent new media and its uses for college access organizations as well as pitching groups of key words for their use. Also, if people aren’t sharing their bookmarks or funnelling them into one shared site, then much of our collective efforts could be wasted. If you would like more information, to be involved or have ideas, please email me at jessicakrywosa@gmail.com.

More to come…

I never wanted to be a marketer. As a child, I wanted to be a ballerina. A singer. A MTV video director. Never the ever hated marketer. Never.

Now, I find myself in that role. Having never considered the career of marketing, I also never knew about the hatred people have for marketing and those who are a part of it. As I encounter it in conversations at work, with new people I meet and fellow marketers, I realize this hatred comes from the fact that many so called ‘marketers’ are practicing (sales) marketing in a very traditional, boring and wasteful way. Obviously, people in this new media world of web 2.0 and prevalent viral marketing hate them. But they are not me and my fellow marketers.

You see, I am in a world of a clean version of marketing. Call it social marketing. Call it college access marketing. Basically any form of non-profit awareness, buzz building and behavior changes (for the common good!) is where my people fall in the marketing world. We don’t ’sell’ – per se. We bring to light ideas that people already have within them. Barriers that they don’t know there are ways to overcome. We provide this insight and help find ways to go beyond what people have typecast themselves into believing is achievable for them. We do this in a variety of ways that reach people where they already are. We provide information in a way that people use, that is easy, and that is different.

But, isn’t that what marketing really is? Someone should tell those other guys.