Request Denied: The True Story of How I Got My Start in Higher Ed Social Media

[This rather long blog post originally appeared at my work-life balance project All the Stuff Done, but I thought this was a better home for it, so I moved it here and recapped it there. Thanks for letting me talk that through.]

I found ‘my space’ in higher ed social media in 2006; ‘My ideas’ just weren’t taken seriously.

Let me say right from the beginning that my career took the path it was supposed to. Let me also just say that, while I don’t hold (too much) of a grudge—as it was hard, in 2006, for even the most marketing savvy of people to imagine the importance social media would play in our daily lives—I certainly still feel a bit of sting, hurt even, knowing that I was on to something. Something that would take years for most of the world to get behind, to accept as commonplace.

I often share bits of this story when I talk about how I got into social media, but today (the day I started to write this but not-yet finish it), Feb. 18, 2014, MySpace sent me an email asking me to look at my “classic photos.” Well played, MySpace. You got me. The once-king social network redesigned its interface, but transferred over photos from users’ original profiles. This email was genius; photos are a soft spot. I clicked. I spent some time looking at my photos—last updated on my 30^th birthday—and then realized, “Wait! Is that other profile I created still here?” Sure enough, I found it (I mean me). I logged out of donnatalarico and logged in as my alter ego, and ended up requesting that my “blog content” be transferred to the new profile. More on this later: first, more disclaimers.

This post is not meant to be an “I told you so.” OK. Maybe it kind of is. This post is not meant to claim I’m a genius. OK. Maybe, just maybe, I’d be pleased if you left thinking I was kinda smart back then, maybe a woman before her time. It’s not meant to be a vent—although it could come off that way. (Edited to add this about halfway through crafting post: As I write this draft and see this post grow in word count, I might have underestimated my bottled up feelings over this!)

Why I’m Sharing This Old Story

Seeing glimpses of your Internet past is fun. It’s like a virtual shoebox. My intention for sharing this story is three-fold. First, I think my higher ed web/social peers would get a real kick out of this. I’ve often talked about this “interrupted start”, but now that I have evidence in my hands, I can’t help but want to share this web history with like-minded pals.

But I also think that there’s a lesson here—not for the savvy, but for the skeptics. (They still exist!) So, second, for the general audience, I want to illustrate how important it is for leaders to be open to new ideas, to recognize the hunger in passionate employees, to give people the freedom to grow, to look for ideas from every corner of an organization, to respect input and feedback from everyone. Brilliance comes from everywhere and encouraging innovation company-wide is the standard at many successful companies and organizations of all shapes and sizes, in industries of all kinds. But it wasn’t always that way, and, in some cases, it still isn’t that way. A lot has changed since 2006, the setting for the story I’m about to share, but there are probably still businesses that are overcautious for no good reason. Maybe there also are still managers (notice I didn’t say leader) who are intimidated by the talent beneath them, structurally, on the org chart and hold ideas back simply because it did not come from them. Opportunities are missed when you don’t listen to or empower your people.

Third: I have to remind myself to believe in me, to be more confident. I didn’t intend for this rather long blog post to be part of All the Sh*t Done, but it does belong here because my own worst enemy is myself sometimes. I have to try harder to get the right ideas to the right places.

So – here’s the story. Thanks for staying with me while I cleared my throat.

It’s 2006. I just finished my bachelor’s degree at 27, and I returned to the same company, same position I had prior to leaving to go to school full-time: an admissions representative for a career school—a for-profit post-secondary institution that offered short-term career training for in-demand jobs like medical billing, etc. Today, many for-profit schools are under fire for a number of reasons. I can’t speak for my former employer now, but I still believe they are one of the “good eggs” in the industry. I felt, and still feel, proud to have worked there and to have helped people who maybe needed a new start later in life or who weren’t “traditional college material” but wanted to learn a skill and make a respectable living. It was my students there that, in fact, inspired me to complete my degree.

I had always dabbled in “Internet stuff” since high school (the mid 90s), so it was no surprise that I was drawn to MySpace. In the summer of 2006, I also tried and failed miserably at being a vegetarian. One day, I had bought a box of MorningStar Farms black bean burgers and saw a MySpace icon on the box — or it might have been on its website. Either way. Interesting, I thought. When I dialed up the Internet (because that’s what I did back then), I added the company as a friend. As I tried to fall asleep that night, I had a brainstorm. My thought process went something like this:

Our goal is to get a lower cost per lead. The best kind of lead is what we called “PDL”: personally developed lead. The most expensive leads were from the TV. Our school advertised on daytime TV because part of our target market was those who were unemployed or underemployed. This meant people were home. Watching TV.

Or, if you were someone like me, you’d escape boredom by going on MySpace. Aha! Our target audience—stay-at-home moms, under/unemployed, etc.—might just be online. Passing time. Looking for jobs. Working on a resume. Emailing friends.

OR, FILLING OUT SURVEYS ON MYSPACE!

It all made such perfect sense in my head. We could create a school profile! We could be where our prospective students were. Online! We could share links to articles and send invites to open houses. We could make friends with our current students to see who their friends were. And it was free! I couldn’t help but get excited about this notion, and I was so worried that I’d forget the idea, like people often do when waking from a dream, that I got out of bed and wrote down the idea. “Tell BOSS about MySpace idea.” (I wrote the person’s name; I’m just not writing it here.)

The Response

I can’t remember if I told her immediately, or if I waited for the right moment (whatever that means), but when I shared my marketing idea, I was NOT met with the enthusiasm I was expecting. I admit that sometimes I think big. Over the years, my “brilliant ideas” produced a lot of *smiles and nods* or “yes, dears” or, the vocal version of a headpat: “that’s just our little Donna.” It’s no wonder I recently got “Kramer” in one of those silly Buzzfeed surveys—the one for “Which Seinfeld character are you?”

I have a confession. When I retell this story, I exaggerate and say my former boss laughed in my face. She didn’t. But that’s exactly what it felt like. Maybe I didn’t realize how wacky the idea might have sounded at the time—remember: 2006. I felt a sense of defeat when she said something along the lines of, “I’ll share it with NAME at corporate.” It was true that we were part of a larger group; but I also knew we had some autonomy for our marketing and advertising efforts. And, again, my idea required a budget of $0.

The Meet in the Middle

I’m not sure how much time passed before I decided that, if there couldn’t be a school account, I would start a second MySpace profile for myself as an admissions rep—the profile was SCHOOLNAMEdonna and the profile picture was one I took of the sign out front. (The current view is above, and I blurred out the identifying details.)

I fully disclosed the intention of the account. At the time, I do not think there was an option to have a business account—if I did this today, I’d violate TOS for sure. I made some friend requests—I can’t recall exactly how MySpace’s search worked at the time, but I think I looked by zip code and browsed profiles to find people that didn’t have a college or employer listed. In 2006, that was probably total creeper activity; today—it’s called targeting, or perhaps just bonafide research.

I started to post information using the “blog” feature, which did allow for photos and links, and, if I remember correctly, showed up in inboxes of your friends.

And THAT is the very content that was salvaged from the MySpace download I was able to access today, although there were no images included. I had not thought about the actual content in years and years. I never thought to look up this profile until today—I had only recalled the rejection of social media (did not really even know that term yet—not sure if it was commonly used) as a marketing tool.

What I Discovered in My Old Content

While the preferred mediums of social networking have changed over the years, the type of information that is valuable to our key audiences does not really change. Looking back at these downloads of old content, one thing is for sure. I was pretty spot-on back then, and in line with how I manage social media today. There’s personality, there are calls to action, there’s story telling, and there’s sharing of external information relevant to the industry.

Let’s take a look. Now, keep in mind that this was not part of my job; this was me “playing on the Internet” at home. So, please, please: don’t take the writing/formatting into account!

THE TOPICAL POST

This was a timely “blog” post to play off the season—it’s fun and has some updates about the school and its programs, too:

THE ‘WE WERE IN THE PAPER, DID YOU SEE IT?’ POST (OR, REPURPOSING CONTENT)

This was a link to a magazine article about our campus (in full disclosure, I actually wrote the article because I was a contributor to the magazine and pitched the idea—so I was an early adopter of repurposing content, too!):

 

THE PERSONAL ANECDOTE

Here’s a little personal anecdote: a sincere message of how I love the stories behind the people I help:

(I should add that we didn’t have email addresses or computers at work; I had created a gmail account just for this MySpace page.)

 

This was another personal anecdote I shared to show the success of one of our graduates:

 

THE CURRENT EVENT AS IT PERTAINS TO YOU POST

This was a post that took advantage of the irony of an article published on Labor Day that talked about layoffs that I spun into a message that a career in the medial field could be stable:

 

These examples are not perfect—there might be some grammar issues and overuse of punctuation and poor use of color, but the concept sure as heck came naturally to me; this demonstrates that social media really is about being human and being authentic. I did what my heart thought; I went with my gut. I talked as me, not as the school. I took the types of approaches we did in in-person admissions interviews and applied them to social media – such as what we called “third party sources”, such as articles or Department of Labor statistics to reinforce what we said. This is the kind of stuff that keeps admissions reps honest.

It All Worked Out in the End

I’ve made strides in my career and for the institution at which I work because of supportive leaders and a culture that embraces creativity and champions innovation from all corners, while making sure we adhere to our brand promise and strategic goals. I could not be happier with where I am today, and, for that reason, I totally accept the fate of my first attempt at getting a school on board with social media.

I look back at this and first feel uneasy, queasy even. That butterfly feeling—that pang in your stomach. It’s a physiological reaction and I can’t help it. Then I reflect more and realize that, although I was onto something with social media for a school, maybe I wasn’t ready to dive in. Maybe “it” wasn’t ready for me. After all, MySpace, at the time, was not built for companies—social media needed to evolve a bit more.

After I left my position at the school in 2007, I worked in eCommerce/Internet marketing for three years alongside absolutely brilliant people and supportive leaders—this was a HUGE learning experience and was the type of company that did encourage creativity—and a company whose leaders believed in me so much, a new position was created, tailored for the skills and talents I brought to the table, as well as newly acquired ones. I gained an immense amount of knowledge about best practices of all things digital. (I should add that, before and during all of this, I had been a regular contributor to local publications, where smart editors helped me hone my story-telling skills and gave me freedom to pitch my own stories.)

Three years later, in 2010, I found my way back to higher education armed with the experience and theory behind why social works, why content matters, why the end-user rules. So, like I said, things worked out for the best. I needed to learn a lot more; but I was on to something.

Still, there’s part of me that wonders where I’d be today, or where the education group that owns the school would be today had they trusted me, had they took a risk, had they been an early adopter of social media.

Then again, I’m not sure if my idea was actually passed on to corporate.

(Edited: I added a few more screenshots since I originally posted this.)