PS&L Blog

Build a Blog

On a recent run through the mall, I came by a Build a Bear store. These are the retail/interactive experience shops that sell you the raw materials to build your own stuffed animal: a fake-fur “suit”, stuffing, and even a tiny toy heart.  At the end, you get a plush bear to take home – you chose the parts, watched it being stitched together, stuffed and fluffed.

What is interesting is the stress involved on the child’s and adult’s parts throughout the process.  Will I get what I want?  Will it be stitched right?  I heard a little boy ask if it would hurt the bear to be stuffed.  As I have been talking with staff on campuses about student blogs, I see the same stress about building blogs. The fun, and the stress, are all rolled into one.

Whether it is a video blog, a photo, or text blog, you are essentially making a decision you have to live with for some time.  You carefully choose the parts, with some certainty of knowing what you will get, but what if you don’t like it in the end?  And what if, Dr. Frankenstein, you have created a monster, one with a heart?

Colleges and universities once allowed students to write blogs, but highly censored the material before publishing.  We discovered early on that prospective students did not like reading blogs that they called “advertising”, and counseled that the pendulum had to swing if student blogs were going to be effective.  Most student blogs are now ‘reviewed’ only to be sure that they don’t contain anything offensive or distasteful.  True student stories and emotions can pour out, and the students don’t always really understand the purpose of the blog when they are writing.  This is where the stress lies.

The intention of student blogs is to create an environment where prospects can not only understand what its like to be a student at Bear University, but also get a sense that there are people like me here.  ”If I come to this school I will have friends – I will fit in and be successful.”

Let’s talk about text blogs and keeping your student writers optimized.

Millennial Fun:   Start with a fun and interactive session on writing personal accounts for the web.  Use this session to get them excited about promoting the College through the student experience.  Remember: your current students are millennials, they not only are team oriented, but they are multi-taskers.  An interactive blog writing seminar is right up their alley.

Less Is More:   Short term engagements with student provide the best results.  Bring a group (somewhere between 6 and 10) on board for about 2 months.  Commit them to 4-5 blogs in that time.  Then start all over with a new group.  It keeps the blogs fresh and new for your target audience (very important ) and doesn’t turn blogging into a dreaded task for your students.

More to come at a later date on student blogs.  Stay tuned.