Over the summer, each member of the president's staff will take over this Wednesday Message to share his or her response on change, learning, students and community colleges. They will reflect on how swirling changes in higher education impact their work, their offices/division, and their focus on student success. This week's message comes from Cynthia Cooper, Assistant to the President for College, Community and Government Relations.
Google “Change is hard.”
My search turned up 130,000,000 results in .17 seconds. Your search may turn up more or less, in a different order, and in a different format. Try it again in 30 days and the results are likely to be different still.
(Some of you, like me, are still reflecting on the verb—Google—and how quickly and pervasively it has entered our language. Let it go for now and meet me for that conversation over coffee later.)
Now try to make your story heard in this hyper-communicative world with a multitude of communication channels, each changing regularly, waxing and waning in popularity, and carrying information at lightning speed. Impossible? No. Challenging? Yes.
For many years, public relations practitioners focused intently on telling stories via the news media. After all, most people got their news from newspapers and the 6 p.m. television newscast. Today, when people get their news and information in so many different ways, we find ourselves shifting and stretching to share MCC’s story through multiple channels. We look at a story—read messaging opportunity—and ask ourselves how to tell it through the news media, social media, presentations, direct written communications, conversation, video and many other vehicles. (When the news media is the chosen channel, how we engage them has changed dramatically. That’s a story for another day.)
The proliferation of communication channels has created a near steady din that is challenging to break through. Getting through requires creativity. Our messages may be important, but if they are not memorable, they may never be heard or retained. Increasingly, professional communicators are talking about the art of storytelling as a communication strategy. Strong, well-crafted stories of students, graduates, faculty, programs and new initiatives are effective whether the communication channel is cave drawings or YouTube.
So many communication channels! Where do we focus our efforts? Is Facebook fading? What opportunities are in Pinterest or Scavenger? Whichever we pursue, what are the implications for our human resources, in time and skill sets? Like most communication choices these days, it’s not a matter of rejecting the ineffective channel. There’s value in so many, but with limited resources we must choose the most effective tool and accept that we’re leaving good options on the table.
With limited resources, we do need to focus on the most impactful communication opportunities. As Terry O'Banion's list of "change challenges" infers, it is hard to let go of projects and ways of doing things, especially when some of the projects we leave behind have value—just not as much value as something else. Certainly, that’s true in all fields, not just in communications. With the merging of MCC’s Marketing Communications department and College and Community Relations department on Sept. 1, we hope to achieve synergies that will strengthen our ability to tell the stories that will bring students to our door and help them succeed.
I look forward to your thoughts on the blog.
Cynthia Cooper
College and Community Relations
07/11/2012 |