In August, Vicky (our MD) and I spent an afternoon at the CASE Europe Annual Conference in Brighton. The conference was attended by Alumni, Communications, Development and Marketing professionals in the Higher Education sector across Europe, although mostly the UK.

CASE, which stands for Council for Advancement and Support of Education, is an international network of professionals leading the advancement of education. CASE runs a number of conferences, seminars and workshops, and the CASE Europe Annual Conference dealt with some of the big issues as well as the smaller, day-to-day matters that occupy those immersed in the Higher Education sector.

The first session I attended was titled Crisis vs. "No Comment", where a panel of speakers explored a number of situations where they talked about whether to consider the issue a crisis and do something about it, or simply state "No Comment" and let it slide. It was encouraging to see that Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) generally respected other HEIs and would be more interested in supporting each other rather than make the others look bad. The sector as a whole seems to really appreciate the karmic philosophy of "what goes around comes around".

This first session allowed for a large amount of audience participation where representatives from various universities were able to either share their own experiences of how they handled situations, or ask questions to the panel. One situation I had read about before attending the conference was about a university student who created a video that slated the course she was studying on and posted it up on YouTube. This student was subsequently suspended from the course, and I was curious about how other universities may have treated this situation...

From the response given by the panel that I posed the question to, it appeared that most universities would rather sweep such a situation under the carpet and 'let it go away' rather than engage in an online conversation to resolve the friction created on the web. It turns out that although most universities have grievance procedures in place to handle complaints offline, many universities are simply not yet prepared to deal with issues that arise in the digital landscape. This tends to 'lettings things slide' which unfortunately snowballs into prospective students wanting to back out of courses that they are just about to start. More on online reputation management at the article "How To Manage Your Online Reputation".

The panellists of the Crisis vs. "No Comment" included Tara Brabazon, Professor of Media Studies at University of Brighton, Ann Mroz, Editor of the Times Higher Education magazine, Peter Slee, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Student and Staff Affairs) at Northumbria University, and the panel was chaired by Ian Rowley, Director of Communication and Strategy at University of Warwick.

The second and final session that both Vicky and I attended (remember, we were only there for the afternoon!) titled "Buzz, brand and budget" was presented by Helen Aspell, Head of Digital Marketing Communications, at the University of Southampton. As we are the official digital marketing partner of the University of Southampton, it was only right that we attended the session to support Helen, and I'm glad I was there as it was really very well presented. Helen talked about why social media technologies such as Facebook, Second Life and Twitter are crucial to your brand, how to choose what to get involved in, and how the effects can be measured.

One area that Helen touched upon was the use of video to promote your university, which certainly peaked my attention. From the informal research I've been doing recently, there are many universities at the moment who are putting their promotional glossy 'corporate videos' up on YouTube, and clearly these videos are taking a lot of heat from the universities' own student - see comments to the following promotional video at University of Coventry's YouTube channel.

This video attracted a mix of comments such as "Just graduated from there, that video makes it look so much better than it is." and "Cov Uni should be knocked down and replaced with a duck pond.", to "Im a student there and i love it. great place. quiet city. perfect for students." It also attracted comments from Coventry University's own reputation management team such as "just to let you know that a lot of the campus is being knocked down and rebuilt over the next few years, so expect things to look a lot better"

What Helen Aspell at the University of Southampton pointed out is that YouTube is NOT the place for 'corporate videos' of your university. YouTube is the place for 'authentic' videos that portray student life as it really is, ideally filmed by the students themselves. There was one incident that Helen mentioned during her talk, where one of their freshers posted a video about how hard she was finding her first week at the university, and that she really didn't like her halls where she was staying at, and was considering leaving her course and the university. The following week she posted a second video that shared about how actually the course isn't so bad, and she's making friends, and she now will stay on the course. This is the kind of video that is better to have on YouTube, as it gives a genuine account of university life. I wonder how other universities are using YouTube and other video social networks as part of their digital marketing strategy...?

Attending this conference in Brighton was certainly worth the trek from London down to Brighton, and I intend to be there next year. The next CASE Europe annual conference is 24-28 August 2009 in Liverpool (England) and you can register to attend at www.case.org. If you're attending, be sure to come over to our stall (yes, we intend to have a stall there) and say hi!

Also, if you are in a strategic role within Higher Education and want to know more of our thoughts on Online Reputation Management and other HE-related topics, you may want to take a look at a summary of our free seminar: Quick Web Wins for HEIs, which took place on Tuesday 25th November at London Chamber of Commerce, EC4.