The pros, the cons, and best practices of incorporating blogs into an alumni communications program

At a dozen years old, blogging is at least middle-aged by Internet standards—maybe even elderly. Its roots are in academia: one of the earliest bloggers, Justin Hall, launched his online journal in 1994, when he was a student at Swarthmore. Over the next 11 years, his life was on display, including a tearful 2005 video farewell that some dubbed "the breakdown." The term "weblog," was coined in 1997. By the time it was shortened to "blog" a couple of years later, the popular blogging sites LiveJournal and Blogger had launched, and the phenomenon was upon us. By April, 2007, Technorati was tracking 70 million active blogs, adding 1.4 million posts a day, with a new blog being created every 43 seconds. Despite those numbers, explosive growth of blogging has actually begun to ease a bit in the last year, suggesting that the technology is maturing.

Indeed, the traditional idea of the blog as an online diary is blurring quite a bit. Blogs, video-sharing sites like YouTube, and social networking sites like MySpace and The Facebook, are becoming more alike. Modular "widgets" make it easy to incorporate audio, video, photos, related links, keywords, and other bits of extra information into ones site. Today, the market advantage goes to the sites who make it easiest, which is why MySpace is so successful (and worth $580 million to Rupert Murdoch).

The nature of blogging in higher ed often depends on the blogger. College students and teenagers made Facebook and MySpace insanely popular. In ways that are sometimes puzzling to older generations, they thrive on the whizzing snippets of greeting, gossip, anecdote and opinion that are the life of social networking sites. MySpace pages, cluttered with "pics," flashing song players, videos, ads and lists of links, play the same virtual role as the jumbled drawer of treasured knick-knacks in the bedroom. (What many teenagers seem to forget, however, is that unlike the drawer, anyone may be able to look at their online mementos.)

Faculty blogs can span quite a range, but usually they are less about the flash and more about the substance. Academic blogs are great forums to informally present ideas and encourage discussion. When formed around a particularly popular and influential teacher, a blog can become a welcome point of contact, for alumni as well as students. (An example: Greg Mankiw's blog at Harvard.) On the Internet’s anonymous, flat playing field, students, dilettantes, acolytes, crackpots and scholars begin on an equal footing. The freewheeling discussions become incubators and testing ground for ideas that otherwise might lie beyond the pale.

Administrators should join the blogosphere. The audiences we are trying to reach—students, alumni, donors—are more selective about what sources they choose to monitor. Perversely, opinionated sources can be more trusted than the objective media; CNN, MSN and the New York Times are among the most popular web sites, but as the popularity curve tails away, you will find many more visitors going elsewhere for information. A comfortable online space, connected to pleasant memories of college, can be quite attractive.

Aside from simply being an atoll in the sea of blogs, administrators’ sites can celebrate what goes well, or talk about the challenges facing an institution, in ways that invite participation and sharing across a community. Following the massacre at Virginia Tech, the university set up a website with message boards, video tributes and bioographies about the victims, and links to support and counseling services.

Colleges, universities and schools have some important questions to consider, however:

Do you host blogs on your own website? Several popular blogging programs can be installed on your own servers. Doing so gives you the ability to control the look of your school's blogs. You can brand them with a logo or school colors, if you wish, or include standard links, say to your homepage.

This technical question quickly becomes an ethical one: If you host the blogs, what do you do if someone posts a photo that is offensive or illegal? What if a blog links to a site with that kind of content? Do you monitor comments, and censor profanity? Do you remove comments that are unflattering to the institution or its faculty and staff?

Who blogs? The short answer to this question is, whoever has a passion for it! The single most important part of a blog is updating it. A blog that withers after a few entries loses readers, credibility and impact.

Are any of your blogs the official voice of the institution? Good blogs (and good bloggers) are personal and opinionated. If the president blogs, many people will take it as the party line, and he or she should be aware of that. What about provosts, vice presidents, coaches?

At the same time, don’t become paralyzed by fear of making a mistake. Some universities are so worried about saying something a little wrong, they miss the opportunity to say a lot of things right. If you make a mistake, you can fix it. Listening to your online community and responding openly and collaboratively are signs of strength and confidence. They are also a fundamental expectation in the era of Web 2.0.

And just remember: if you don’t provide a place to talk about your institution, someone else will, and you might not know about it until it’s too late.