Farewell to 2011—A banner year for mStoner

All told, 2011 was quite a year for mStoner. Here’s what I mean:

• The tenth anniversary of our founding.


• Our most successful year financially, ever.


• Exciting new projects that allowed us to expand the range of services we provide.


• New staff members who brought new energy and experience to our team.


• Major initiatives toward our ongoing commitment to share what we learn with our colleagues on campuses around the world.

I want to bid farewell to this banner year by calling out some highlights.

Happy birthday to us

I’m still a bit stunned by the fact that we celebrated our first decade in business in November.

Ten years: it’s hard to believe! We’ve grown a lot since early November 2001 when Voltaire and I stared at each other across the office we’d rented in an old factory not far from Wrigley Field and wondered what came next.

Here’s what happened, in brief: mStoner grew; we acquired our long-time technical partner, Global Image; we recruited an amazingly talented team; and we’ve worked for some of the best clients any agency could wish for.

I’d like to thank our smart, hardworking, and dedicated staff who are key to our success. I’m constantly amazed by my talented colleagues and the insights and energy they bring to our work. While it’s always bittersweet when valued colleagues leave, we added some new staff members last year—and they bring some exciting new talent and experience to us and our clients.

An institution’s website is its virtual campus—one of the most important representations of institutional life. As I look back over our first decade, I’m humbled by the number of institutions who have invited us to work with them on this most important element of their marketing, recruiting, advancement, business and learning/teaching presence. We’re often told by clients (and prospective clients) that we’re the best in the country at what we do. I don’t believe that it’s arrogant to say that I pretty much agree. Still, we learn a great deal from our clients and I want to thank the many great people we’ve worked with over the last decade: far too many to list in this post.

Clients and client work in 2011

This year, we launched websites for eleven institutions: Clarkson University, Elizabethtown College, Mount Mercy University, Alverno College, Middlesex School, Waubonsee Community College, Connecticut College, Trinity College, Loyola University Chicago Undergrad Admissions, and The University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. And we implemented these sites on an interesting mix of content management tools, including HannonHill Cascade Server, OmniUpdate, Drupal, Terminal 4, and WordPress.

Of course, it’s no longer good enough to have a great website (though that’s more essential than ever). With the advent of Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels, the web is a lot bigger than it used to be. You may know that we work with CASE and Slover Linett Strategies on a survey of social media in advancement, which explores how institutions around the world use and manage these essential engagement channels. This was the second year of our survey (here’s where you can learn about our findings).

Not surprisingly, our clients recognize that social media should be tightly integrated into their advancement activities and other aspects of campus life. In 2011, we developed social media strategies for New Mexico State University, Kenyon College, the Ensworth School, and Alverno College.

Another big theme this year was mobile: we designed mobile sites for ten institutions. Three of them are live (at Trinity College, UIC, and Loyola University). The rest are in production or nearly ready to launch.

Although we’ve built our reputation on our websites and online work, we work in other media, too:

• We worked on a branding strategy and a visual identity system for the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University (the Hofstra Law website will launch in 2012);


• We created videos and two beautiful viewbooks for The Ensworth School;


• We collaborated with the College of William & Mary on development of the innovative Ampersandbox (print and web) student recruitment campaign.

New colleagues
As some of our team members moved on to other opportunities, we were able to bring a number of talented newcomers to our team. Note that while these folks are new to mStoner, they have extensive experience in their fields:

• We got to know Susan Evans first as our client at the College of William & Mary and when a position opened up for a senior strategist, it was a no-brainer to hire her. Susan brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to mStoner—and to the clients she serves.


• Anne Glista joined us in October as a designer. She’s worked on projects for Widener University and Oakton Community College and has contributed a lot to the design of our new initiative, EDUniverse (see below for more).


• Kate Smith joined us in September as our controller. Already she’s made a huge difference to us by helping us rethink how we manage our business. Internally, we call her “Dr. No” because it’s her job to keep us running efficiently and profitably, which means saying no to everyone at some point. (In a good way, though.)


• Finally, Mallory Wood came aboard as our marketing manager in August. She’s responsible for our external presence, managing our blog and website, reviving our Intelligence email newsletter (you can subscribe here) and helping us to connect more effectively with the community we serve. We’ve already seen Mallory’s talents in action in many situations, but perhaps most memorably (so far) in planning the announcement and launch of EDUniverse.

Community service
Early in 2011, we began developing a major initiative that we announced at our anniversary celebration in Chicago. If you haven’t heard about EDuniverse, here’s the short version:

Find inspiration, learn how others have solved problems, and network with other .edu professionals at EDUniverse, the hub for education’s freshest ideas and latest content. Anyone can easily access and contribute resources like presentations, white papers, blog posts, and more. Create a profile to share your content and generate dialog by liking and adding to the discussion. EDUniverse strengthens education and provides resources to anyone who wants to learn more about marketing, web development, social media, and related topics.

You can learn more and and join the nearly 600 others who’ve signed up for notification when EDUniverse launches. And if you’re in Cambridge and don’t have plans for 24 February, join us at SCVNGR headquarters for our launch party (but please let us know you’re coming first!).

EDUniverse is a larger and more complex manifestation of our long-term commitment to contribute knowledge and share what we learn in our consulting practice with our colleagues in higher ed. We celebrated eight years of blogging at mStonerblog in 2011. And Susan, Mallory, Kevin Zink, Doug Gapinski, Mark Sheehy, and I presented at various conferences: HighEdWeb, CASE Social Media, CASE Summit, AMA’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, and others.

The year ahead
In bidding farewell to 2011, I also want to welcome 2012. We’re starting the year with a plethora of fascinating new projects for some new clients. Here are just a few glimpses of what lies ahead for us:

• relaunching mStoner.com and mStonerblog.com;


• Working with the Office of the President at Columbia University on a new initiative;


• developing new websites for Whittier College, Widener University, Webster University, Drake University, Miami University, UC Hastings College of the Law, and the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management;


• creating a social media strategy for The Pingry School;


• working with the communications staff at Georgia Tech do develop a strategy for recreating GaTech.edu;


• welcoming new staff members Monica-Lisa Mills and Fran Zablocki.

We’re excited about these projects—and others to come! And very pleased to welcome our new colleagues. Best wishes to you for a great 2012: and if mStoner can help your institution be more effective at recruiting students, engaging alumni, highlighting research, or achieving other institutional goals, please let us know.

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Welcome (and Farewell)

If you’re sitting there at your desk thinking that it would be really cool to be a consultant—like, say, me or one of my mStoner colleagues—I suggest respectfully that you take a moment to think about what it takes for us to do our job well. It’s a lot harder than most people think.

Most of the people on our team have worked at a college or university at some point in their careers, but being a great consultant is about more than being smart and having insights into institutional life and culture. That’s essential, of course (and the more the better).

One needs experience and a broad perspective on the web, marketing, analytics, social media, technology, and the other challenges and issues we deal with every work day (and, let’s be honest, nights and weekends, too). Consultants need to be able to pay attention to detail—and to the big picture. And have a certain level of maturity: we take pride in the fact that none of our team members is a prima donna. We understand that our work isn’t about us, it’s about solving problems for our clients and delivering solutions that help institutions deal with seemingly intractable situations. So many times we have to check our egos, really listen to people, and revise recommendations we’ve made that aren’t exactly right. And I haven’t even mentioned the marketing/sales and everything else we have to do to keep mStoner working.

In short: it’s very hard to find someone who has the right skill set and fit for our small, tightly knit team.

This was all running through my mind when I got one of those calls that everyone hates to get. A valued and important team member telling me he’s moved on. That was Patrick DiMichele informing me he was leaving after six and a half years. My first reaction was, ” Oh [many words redacted], not Patrick! He’s going to be really hard to replace.” My second thought was, “I wonder if Susan Evans would be interested in joining mStoner?”

I’ll make a long story short: she said YES!

So on 12 September, Susan will join us as senior strategist. That means that she’ll lead one of our consulting teams, developing the overall strategy and working with her colleagues to implement it. [Here’s her own announcement].

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to announce this news. We’ve known Susan (and she’s known us) for years through our work at William & Mary, where she’s led teams that have done some awesome work (and garnered a slew of awards in the process). In her 22 years at William & Mary, she’s worked in IT and communications and led major campus-wide initiatives with many moving parts and multiple political agendas, demonstrating her ability to plan and to build consensus time and again.

We all know Susan well enough to know that she’ll fit right in. Personally, I’m eager for her to join us because I believe she’ll be able to offer insights that will help us do our work even better than we do it now.

I don’t want to close without mad props to Patrick DiMichele. Patrick joined mStoner as a designer and left six and a half years later as senior strategist. The dedication and insights he brought to his projects have made a big difference to many of our clients. I’m glad to see Patrick find new challenges (though I’ll really miss working with him!).

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What Do You Want to Know About How Institutions are Using Social Media in Advancement?

If you have thoughts about what you’d like to know about how schools, colleges, and universities are using social media in their advancement activities, now’s the time to let us know.

That’s because we’re designing the questionnaire for the 2011 CASE/mStoner/Slover Linett survey of social media in advancement. We’ll review the first draft this week and launch the survey in early February. Share your thoughts as a comment below, or send an email to me (Michael.Stoner(at)mStoner.com).

Last year’s survey results provided a benchmark for how schools, colleges, and universities were using social media in marketing, fundraising, alumni relations and other advancement activities—essentially those that involve interactions with external constituents. We’ll survey the same group this year.

While we want to see what’s changed since 2010, we also wanted to fine-tune some of the questions we asked. We fine-tuned “current position” titles and categories (e.g. added titles like “coordinator”), revisited the list of “motivators” and “barriers” to implementing social media, and tried to provide more fine-grained explanation of how the survey categorizes divisions and departments (for example, a communications unit within an alumni office).

We also will explore how (or whether) respondents are using social media to conduct research on their audiences and how they are marketing social media activities.

We weren’t very happy with the data we collected about staffing last year; this year, we revised questions on staffing committed to social media to capture both “dedicated” staff and staff who have multiple responsibilities but who spend at least one-quarter of their time on social media.

Finally, this year we’re planning to contact enrollment management/admission staff and invite them to respond to the survey. They were underrepresented in last year’s survey. See this post for a sense of what we learned about how social media was used by admission/enrollment offices last year.

But what did we miss that you want to know? Again, Share your thoughts as a comment, or send me an email (Michael.Stoner(at)mStoner.com).

We’re planning to unveil the results of the survey at the CASE Social Media & Community conference, to be held in San Francisco on 13-15 April.

And in case you missed them, here are the topline results from last year’s survey and a white paper discussing the implications of the survey.

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Using Mobile to Share Content en Route to Social Media Metrics & Privacy

In writing about key trends for 2011, I realized that I could jam many of the keywords for this post into its headline. So you won’t be surprised when you learn that I’m paying attention to mobile, content strategy, social media, metrics, and privacy.

I believe these issues have the potential to stir up a lot of discussion in education this year—at very least, among those of us who focus on marketing, branding, and online experience.

The economy isn’t on my list. It’s a huge issue for everyone—a constant reality of life these days that factors into every decision everyone is making. I don’t expect things to get better soon, given what’s happening in states like Texas. The economy is all the more reason to be clear and careful about how your institution approaches the important issues of the day.

1. The mobile web

OK, I know: some early adopters (@markgr and @dmolsen, I’m thinking of you here) will probably say that mobile was SO last year. I’ll agree, to the extent that there was a lot of buzz about mobile, especially apps, in 2010.

But an app is a niche strategy. You build an app to allow people who’ve already invested in you in some way (alumni, students, prospects) to do something that’s cool. But why would someone who doesn’t have a relationship with you download and install an app to use features on your website? And why would someone who has a relationship with you continue to use an app that doesn’t make their life easier in some way?

No, building an app isn’t the same as turning your attention to building a mobile website that really works. That’s not an easy thing to do, which is why it hasn’t happened to any large extent in education. It requires a website that’s already functioning well, not to mention vision, strategy, and budget to realize a highly functional mobile site.

I think that 2011 is the year when institutions will begin to take mobile sites seriously—and start to do something about them. [And, apparently, so does the Chronicle.]

2. Content is king, but won’t reign without strategy

I’ve always been proud of the fact that since our earliest days, mStoner has advocated (and practiced) strong web content embedded in an IA that makes it findable and with a backend that makes it easy to manage. Here’s one example of what I mean, from a blog post by my partner Voltaire Santos Miran from June 2003. Entitled “A different approach to content,” Voltaire wrote:

“During a project evaluation meeting, one of our clients commented that the most significant benefit of our engagement was not so much the new site—with its clean interface and fresh content—but the process and workflow that we enabled them to put in place.”

As early advocates of developing strong content, we’re gratified to see the “content strategy” meme developing in .edu. Is it too early to proclaim 2011 the year of content strategy in .edu? Maybe.

But I do believe we’ll see institutions focus on developing and sharing great content as never before. Which means that they’re going to have to take content strategy, information architecture, and content management seriously: that means planning for it, funding it, and developing processes that enable staff members to sustain it.

3. Social media, meet reality

Is it just me, or are you already sick of social spam—being asked to “like” this or that by your friends, not to mention being targeted by brands you care about only marginally to accept their crappy content in your Facebook stream? I wonder if this isn’t the year that consumers generally will start to get tired of all that friending, sharing, and (especially) liking, because they’re going to see a whole lot more of it as marketers jump on the social media bandwagon. [Read this post to see what teens think about being asked to “like” everything. And it’s only starting to happen!]

This is weirdly reminiscent of the days after everyone (finally) had email. And everyone tired of getting emails with earnest warnings about fake computer viruses. Now, maybe we’ll see consumers—regular users—start to exhibit engagement fatigue as social spam becomes as annoying and as easy to ignore as an email funds appeal is now.

A change in consumer perception and/or behavior will mean changes in the way that institutions engage constituents through social media. Many of a college’s constituents already have an emotional connection to their institution. Therefore, because they feel closer, connecting on Facebook may seem more comfortable than “liking” a brand like PriceChopper or Walmart.

Still, it’s time for institutions to take their friends and followers seriously and nurture them. That means focus, relevant content, and more staff attention. In this context, the approach that the Emory Alumni Association is taking to social media makes so much sense: they’re training staff to weave social channels into alumni outreach broadly and making sure that the content they offer alumni is something they really want.

And social media advocates: I’m a huge fan of SM (especially Twitter: you are following @mstonerblog, aren’t you????) but it’s time to be advocates for real, measurable outcomes for social media. It’s quality, not quantity, that should matter. And that’s a general theme anyway because in 2011:

4. Outcomes become really important. Really.

Why are we doing all the stuff we’re doing? Building websites, redeploying content, implementing content management systems, paying attention to Facebook pages, tweeting about the chancellor’s speech? Because we expect our efforts to contribute to some kind of outcome.

Well, it’s (past) time to be clear about the outcomes we’re working toward and then to focus our tactics and everything else we’re doing on making them reality. Maybe during a time of relative affluence, clear goals aren’t important. Maybe at one time it was acceptable not to develop success metrics and analytics programs to track them. That’s all changed. While I don’t buy into (all) the hype about edupocalypse, there isn’t an institution I know of that isn’t looking at cost cutting and saving money. So every initiative should have goals and measurable outcomes.

5. Real people start paying attention to privacy

Last year we witnessed a number of privacy gaffes widely covered by the tech press and blogged about by privacy nerds. And just last week, Facebook announced its decision to share phone numbers & home addresses of members with third-party app developers. And then rescinded it until it can be “better communicated.”

It’s not a question of whether Zuck & crew will ever learn. They’ve shown themselves to be extremely smart businesspeople who continually push members as far as they possibly can in pursuit of profits. The question is whether Facebook’s members are willing to accept this continuing abuse of their trust.

More and more people I know have stopped accepting “friend” requests from people they know only vaguely, have tinkered with their privacy settings to restrict access to their content and profiles, and, even then, still carefully consider what they share. Let’s see if this becomes a trend; I’m betting (make that: hoping) that it will.

And in case you’re wondering what Facebook’s reputed “power users”—teens and young adults—are doing, danah boyd speaks and writes about the ways in which teens manage their privacy on social sites like Facebook. Check out this blog post in which she describes innovative strategies that teens use to game Facebook’s (lack of) privacy controls. Let’s hope that more and more adults follow that lead.

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mStoner changes—and stays the same

Have you ever had the experience of something being simultaneously extraordinary and routine? That’s how I feel about mStoner’s recent big news. Last month we completed the acquisition of our long-time technical partner, Global Image.

This acquisition is extraordinary for us because it’s a big change in terms of mStoner’s corporate structure. In essence, our company just doubled in size. OTOH, it doesn’t seem as if anything has changed. To understand why I’m feeling so bipolar at the moment, some history might help.

I first met Rob Cima, Global Image’s (now-former!) CEO, in 1997 when GI acquired ArachNet, the company that had provided technical support on some of my first web projects. Shortly after that acquisition, ArachNet’s principals moved on to other things, leaving Rob and me to figure things out. We have worked together ever since, with his team providing software development and a variety of technical services for every web project I’ve done, either in my former practice or at mStoner.

For me, one of the interesting aspects of our partnership was that Global worked in businesses outside of education, giving me exposure to new horizons. For instance, they launched an inventory system for a startup that used PalmPilots and the web to sync orders for small retail stores: at the time, a very innovative project.

Also, GI’s work with banks, health care institutions, and other kinds of businesses brought them into contact with tools that hadn’t yet come on the radar of our .edu clients. Excited about what we were learning in these other venues, we attempted to bring some of those advancements to our clients in education. Some of these attempts didn’t stick, but, happily, our early experiments introducing content management systems hit the mark. Even though today most education websites use a content management system of some kind, a decade ago—when we built the first .edu websites using CMSs—that was unheard of.

In 2001, Rob joined Voltaire and me in founding mStoner, signing on as a partner but running Global Image as a separate business. He even financed our launch until we could bring in enough work to support ourselves (for a little while, Voltaire and I were actually Global Image employees).

As mStoner grew, our ties with Global Image became broader and deeper. More and more of Global’s work became focused on education as the needs of our clients expanded. Our companies worked together so well that some clients didn’t know we were actually two companies. Yet, over time, we realized that we could improve client service through even better coordination of processes across the two companies and even stronger collaboration between our teams. Finally, at some point, it became apparent to all of us that it just made sense to integrate mStoner and Global Image in fact, as well as operationally.

To be clear, this change isn’t really about corporate structure. Incorporating technology and software development as a core function within mStoner allows us to be more strategic and responsive in serving client needs. As a company, we’ve always emphasized that sound strategy precedes technology (or, for that matter, design or implementation of any kind). But today, great websites need sophisticated technology. We believe that our new configuration can provide that kind of integration for our clients—whether we’re building a website, an iPhone app, a marketing campaign, or something we haven’t yet dreamed up.

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Perspectives on mStoner and Our Business

[Note: this is the first of three posts sharing some perspective on mStoner’s business. Read about our experience in 2009 and what we’re looking forward to in 2010.]

Since we launched this blog in 2003, we’ve focused on sharing our perspectives on trends as they affect our industry, our practice, and our clients. We’ve tried to be transparent about some of the insights we’ve gained from our work on many different kinds of projects for a wide range of institutions.

But we’ve shied away from talking about the business side of mStoner, mostly because I don’t think anybody cares that much aside from our team and our families. Except maybe prospective clients who want to know that mStoner is a well-managed business that will deliver on its promises.

That kind of thinking was understandable in 2003 or 2005 or even 2008. But today is different. We live in difficult economic times. I believe it’s important to make a clear statement about where we are as a company in these times when there’s no certainty that even well-known institutions and companies will survive.

I’m reflecting on this because we heard some shocking news about one of our competitors. As a result, I wanted to share some perspectives on 2009 and how mStoner responded to the downturn. Then, I want to focus on 2010. And, finally, bid farewell to BigBad, one of the companies that didn’t make it.

I’m posting this in three parts to avoid a really huge post: this introduction, a report on how mStoner fared in 2009, and a brief look ahead at 2010.

If you want the short version, though, here it is:

After some worrisome months in 2009, mStoner emerged stronger than ever at year-end. We look forward to launching some great websites in 2010—and to launching some new products and services of our own. We remain committed to realizing our vision of being the smartest and most strategic integrated marketing, branding, and technology firm serving education. Period.

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Buh bye to 2009

[Note: this is the second of three posts sharing some perspective on mStoner’s business. Read the introduction to this series and what learn what we’re looking forward to in 2010.]

From a business perspective, I’m not sorry to see 2009 end. Ultimately, mStoner was fortunate: we didn’t suffer as much as other companies in our peer set. But that’s largely because we had a wake-up call in 2008, when we realized that we needed to tighten up our business practices and the way we managed projects. Or else.

So we entered 2009 much leaner and more disciplined. We also had a backlog of projects from 2008. It was a good thing, too: by March 2009, we looked ahead and worried about what we’d face for the rest of the year.

It will come as no surprise to you that schools, colleges, and universities faced major challenges in 2009. More than ever before, our clients were expected to do more with less. We’ve always been willing to tailor our services to a client’s needs, but several projects in 2009 required a new level of flexibility, with clients encouraging us to explore how to balance our own resources with theirs. We’ve always considered our clients to be our partners, but some of these collaborations have taken partnership to new levels in order to help make the most of available budgets.

By year’s end, the RFP flow picked up and some of our clients signed off on additional projects. We had managed to eke out a tiny profit. Mind you, no one on our team got a bonus. But, when many companies had to reduce size considerably or fold, we were fortunate to have wonderful clients who completed their projects with us and, in many cases, engaged us for additional work. To all of you: thank you. We’re very grateful!

Thriving creative and new projects

But 2009 wasn’t all gloom and doom. mStoner had an incredible year from a creative standpoint. The George School website won a Grand Gold in the national CASE Awards of Excellence competition, and William & Mary’s website) won EduStyle Awards for Best Website Redesign and Best Use of Photography.

We launched a number of great sites last year, and several of them exemplify how our work is taking significant new directions:

Progressive branding: In the age of authenticity, branding is a two-way street shaped by the dialogue between an institution and its constituencies. Storytelling and social media are the new pillars of branding because they allow real people and their stories to create and reinforce a brand’s meaning. In particular, four of our clients’ sites exemplify this approach: Boston College School of Social Work, Fashion Institute of Technology, College of Charleston, and the Northfield Mount Hermon School.

Social media: Most of our projects now incorporate social media in significant ways. For example, Northfield Mount Hermon’s website integrates social media feeds so that visitors can move back and forth between NMHSchool.org and various social media sites. We spoke and wrote about social media: our blog last year includes a half-dozen case studies relating to campaigns that integrate social media with other channels. (I presented on this topic at the CASE Summit, CASE VII, and CASE V.) Also, a whole series of posts focused on how independent schools are using (and excelling at) social media for an article published in CASE Currents. Doug Gapinski, one of our creative directors, developed a two-day workshop on social media that he presented at Kenyon College.

Collaboration: We developed a new model for an immersive, collaborative web strategy with Bethel University. Two of our client partners there, Michael Vedders and Mark Erickson, spent a couple of days in our Chicago office to work out information architecture, wireframes, sitemaps, and other significant aspects of Bethel’s new site, which will launch this year. [Read more about that process.]

Public Square: In another example of collaboration, we helped researchers at the Pennsylvania State University conceive, name, design, and build an interactive collection of research projects currently underway across campus. We named it “Public Square” to make it as clear as possible to the public that the work showcased is ongoing and participatory. The site’s tagline is “Public Square provides a place for the public to learn about and get involved in University projects that aim to make the community-and the world-a better place.” The site will launch in 2010.

Community Colleges: Institutions offering customized, flexible two- and four-year programs are experiencing rapid growth. Last year, we worked with several community colleges. We launched sites and provided training for Oakton Community College and many of the colleges in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. And we worked with Nevada State College, a nimble four-year institution located in a suburb of Las Vegas.

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2010: A Renewed Focus on Values

[Note: this is the third of three posts sharing some perspective on mStoner’s business. Read the introduction to the series and learn about our experience in 2009.]

We began 2010 excited about the future of mStoner. Not just because it’s clear that business is picking up, but because we took some major steps last year to invest in our growth and stability.

First, we developed a two-year process to prepare one of our valued team members, Patrick DiMichele, to join Rob Cima, Voltaire Santos Miran, and me as an equity partner in mStoner. Patrick is not only a smart and dedicated consultant—as anyone who has worked with him knows—but he always asks how he, and we, could do better. We’re excited about his future as a leader in the firm.

In December 2009, we invested a good deal of time in soul-searching and asking ourselves and our clients how we could be create an even stronger, more focused, more service-oriented company.

Our first big decision was to strengthen our focus on education even more. So what, you might ask, considering that more than 90 percent of our work has been for schools, colleges, and universities? The big change is that we’re committing to serving the education market exclusively. We’ve always done some work for non-education nonprofits, foundations, associations, and even businesses. No longer: from now on, we’ll serve education institutions.

Simply put, we get feedback from our clients that a big part of the reason they engage us is that our broad and deep experience offers enormous value. We understand how to operate within a complex and sometimes challenging culture. We know how to get things done. And we want to leverage our experience even more than we have, offering even greater value to our clients. Focusing our practice on education—and just education—allows us to do this to an even greater extent.

Plus, this isn’t just about business for us. Playing some small role in strengthening education institutions that provide opportunities and do research that better the lives of many people is really important to each member of our team.

New products and services to come

We also talked about the services we offer. Though mStoner is renowned for our websites, we’ve always considered our company a full-service marketing consulting firm. Later this year, we’ll announce new products and services that expand and enhance our ability to provide institutions with smart, sustainable solutions.

We also clarified our values. mStoner has always been a values-driven company, but we wanted to be explicit about what those values are. Simply:

• We’re committed to partnership: We treat each other, and our client partners, with respect. We communicate clearly. We’re collaborators with a can-do attitude who can give up the need to be right.


• We are committed to doing great work.


• We are focused on innovation and creativity—but not just for the sake of being innovative or creative.


• We’re committed to learning about how to do our work better—and to teaching others about what we’ve learned.


• We conduct ourselves with the utmost integrity. We tell our clients the truth and avoid apparent (and real) conflicts of interest. We keep confidential data and strategic information confidential. We avoid working for direct competitors of current clients.

I don’t believe that people who’ve worked with us will be surprised by any of this. But it was important to us to spell out more clearly and explicitly exactly what we stand for.

Looking ahead to 2010

We’ve seen lots of signs in the first quarter of the year that the economy is picking up—not least of which is the number of RFPs we’ve received so far. We’re expecting a better (and more profitable!) year. Some of the highlights of the year to come:

Acquisition of Global Image: Last year, we set in motion a plan to acquire our long-time technical partner and sister company Global Image. We’ve been working together since 1997 and operating as one company since last year, when we began to integrate our teams even more closely. We’ll complete this acquisition within the next quarter.

A significant partnership: We’ve developed a close partnership with Slover Linett Strategies, a Chicago-base research firm with significant experience in education. This relationship will allow our clients to take advantage of experienced, professional researchers. In addition to working with several mStoner clients, Slover Linett is partnering with mStoner on a significant research project to benchmark institutional investment in social media and explore outcomes from that investment. You’ll hear more about this later in the year.

Branding: We’ve taken on a significant branding project with Hofstra Law School to conduct in-depth research followed by creative and technical work. We know this project will involve a new website and implementation of a content management system—and other elements determined by what we learn from our focus groups and surveys.

Video: Our work increasingly involves video. Last year, we teamed up with Sean Presley in the Kenyon College communications office and a faculty member to help students develop videos that support a sense of place. This year, we’re working on a series of videos for Hofstra Law School that will help prospective students understand how their degrees can prepare them for a range of career options.

We bid farewell to BigBad

Last week, I heard from a colleague who was in the midst of a project with the Boston-based interactive firm BigBad that BigBad’s staff had received termination notices and that the firm was closing. For good. I was shocked at the news. I’d like to say farewell to a tough competitor whom we first encountered when they entered the education market in a big way in 2004.

You’ve probably heard about the Apple/Microsoft rivalry. Since we at mStoner humbly compare ourselves to Apple, we often viewed BigBad as our Microsoft.

As Microsoft did for Apple, BigBad served as a foil for us—and they inspired us to be better. We thought more carefully about how we marketed mStoner. A lot of what we actually did didn’t change, but we were more intentional about doing it. And BigBad inspired us to enhance our design practice.

I’m reminded of the Dalai Lama’s words: “If we truly wish to learn, we should consider enemies to be our best teacher.” Thanks for the lessons—and best wishes to Ty Glasgow, BigBad’s (former) CEO, and the rest of the staff.

If you’ve read this far, I appreciate your patience! And I’d like to close by thanking our incredible, dedicated, and hardworking team—I’m blessed to work with such outstanding professionals—and our clients, who consistently challenge us to expand our thinking in unexpected ways as we create, together, smart, sustainable solutions.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Human RSS

Need another reason to work with smart, interesting people? They act as a living feed reader. Hook your coworkers up to a quick-communication tool like Yammer and Hello! A human filter for your Internet. That’s pretty much the setup here. Below is some of what the mStoner hive mind fed itself recently:

From Volt: Harvard professor and staff writer for The New Yorker, Louis Menand has a new book out titled The Marketplace of Ideas. In it he argues that the intellectual sanctuary currently occupied by the American liberal arts professoriate has turned their main task into one of increasingly pointless self-replication (e.g. English Literature professors are best at making more English Literature professors). Oh snap!

From Rob: Tech evangelist Robert Scoble interviews George Revutsky and Dustin Kittelson of ROI.works on how search engines like Google and Bing are getting wise to the tricks of SEO hacks and giving content its throne back bit by bit.

From Jeremiah: PDF My URL. Aside from sounding oddly inappropriate, it does what it says and turns a webpage into a handy PDF.

From Kevin Z.: The New Rubik’s Cube is now weirder to use and more expensive! If the ability to retain the mental list of algorithms required to solve the original cube wasn’t alienating enough, you can now own a version of the puzzle intended for use in a dark room by rich people!

From Doug: How much did your iPod cost…the planet? Sourcemap, a collaboration-based online tool can feed your guilt the facts about where the things you carry came from and how much carbon it took to put it in your hands. (You’re welcome.)

From Patrick: Disney/Pixar’s Up plus some Australian guy’s genius for mixing samples = a convincing argument for easing up on copyright restrictions. The seemingly sanctioned “Upular” borders on magical.

From Kevin R.: “Here we are now, entertain us…” Through submitted photos and short quotes, Jason Lazarus’s Nirvana documents the moment people were introduced to the iconic Seattle band. It’s a great look at the less broadcasted side of pop culture—the side of the receptors.

From Beth: Lastly, a WikiHow on “Deskercise”. Self-explanatory, I believe. You probably don’t even have to consult your physician. As a bonus, the video at the end can be viewed on its own as a scathing dissection of what it means to be a 21st century office worker.

Posted by Laurel Hechanova
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Learning from Teens About Social Media

Not surprisingly, teens are pretty smart about the way they use social media. Tim Nekritz wrote about this in a smart blog post on 22 October:what 15 freshmen taught me about social media. Here’s one of the most telling lines of Tim’s post:

I asked if they would feel different joining a group started by an institution vs. one started by a student. The enlightening response: We don’t even look for that or care. We just want to meet other students. Some even said they would prefer the groups be created by the college because they would trust the information more.

For these teens, it’s pretty clear: Facebook is a social experience. Tim’s small sample confirms what lots of other researchers, including danah boyd have to say. Karlyn Morrisette made a similar point:

Teenagers have always made a really clear distinction between things they use for their social lives and things they use for “business”. Friends are for social media. Colleges are “business.”

Disentangling professional and personal

So I’ve decided that I need to emulate those teens and straighten out my social networks. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to avoid engagement fatigue, or just organize my online life more effectively. Or maybe because my inner introvert nature is asserting itself.

But, whatever. Here are some of the changes I’ll be making.

Facebook: I resisted Facebook for a long time. Now that I’m using it regularly, I’ve become aware that its value is for me to communicate with friends and family. I really like the fact that a lot of people from my local, physical community are on Facebook. It’s a reality of my life that I can’t be as involved as I’d like to be with some of my neighbors in FTF relationships and Facebook offers a way for us to keep in touch: it’s better for me than the telephone. Same with family and more far-flung friends.

Some of my Facebook friends are people I’ve met professionally—folks with whom I have a relationship that goes well beyond what LinkedIn can offer. I’ve learned about their spouses and kids and it’s nice to have the glimpse of their lives that Facebook affords.

But the truth is that I’ve also friended a lot of folks I barely know, for the vaguest of reasons. So in the next week or so, I’m going to unfriend a slew of people and resign from a mess of fan pages. No offense to anyone: but I need to keep Facebook as a place where I stay in touch with people that I know fairly well.

LinkedIn: Yeah, I agree: LinkedIn has some deficiencies, but it’s the best we’ve got right now for professional networking. And it’s what I’m going to rely on for business relationships. If you are primarily a business friend/acquaintance, I’d welcome the opportunity to connect with you LinkedIn if we aren’t already connected. But not on Facebook.

Twitter: If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably guessed that I’ve grown to like it. [Thank you once again for the incentive to join, @KarineJoly!] It’s amazing to see how much you can communicate in 140 characters. I work alone some of the time, so Twitter provides a bit of a watercooler experience for me. And I really like the fact that Twitter provides the opportunity to segment one’s identity.

I have three Twitter IDs; most people reading this blog post will be interested in following either mStonerblog, which I use for business-related tweeting, or, for the next few months, CASE5sm. We set this up to communicate around the pre-conference workshop on social media at CASE V. I’m going to do some selective pruning of the people I follow on @mStonerblog: nothing drastic, but shedding some people whose insights are less valuable to me than others.

Making choices
I’m focused on these three tools because I’ve already found them personally valuable and, for now, they’re where I want to focus my activity. I am well aware that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other communities in which I can participate if I choose to do so. I’m not much of a photographer, for example, so I’m really not into Flickr, and though I watch videos on YouTube like any netizen, I don’t spend a whole lot of time commenting on them. So Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter offer the best possible options for connecting with the other people I value in my personal and professional life.

Others are making similar choices. For example, I was interested to see last week that even Mr. .Edu Social Networking himself, Brad J. Ward, pruned his Twitter account. The blog post explaining the how and why makes fascinating reading.

One of my continuing realizations is that I just don’t have enough time to have a healthy marriage, do my work, stay connected with my mStoner colleagues, our clients, and the people I value in my personal life, and try every new tool or social networking trend that surfaces.

And, you know what? As social networking mania fades, people will make the same kinds of choices I’m making. Our audiences, members, supporters, alumni, donors, prospective students, etc.: they will also experience their own “a ha” moment, if they haven’t already, and start to think a lot more carefully about how they manage their online social life.

Can they really follow every fan page for every group they’ve had a tangential association with? How many updates from people they barely know are they willing to read when they open their Facebook page? How many Facebook games can they play? How many tweets from how many sporting events can they stomach on a Sunday morning when they log into TweetDeck or Nambu?

It all comes down to relevance. How relevant the content we’re consuming-in the form of tweets, blog posts, YouTube videos, Flickr images-is to our personal needs and interests. Time and attention are my most precious resources and I want to use them as wisely as possible.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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