How to Encourage Faculty to Engage in External Communications

March 22, 2019 – Kevin Anselmo “Our school punches below its weight.” “Our school is not as visible at it should be.” “We need to strengthen partnerships and engage more broadly with the business community.” These are common refrains I hear from university presidents, deans, marketers and other school leaders. I would argue that it […]

Experts Beware: Practice What You Preach

Let’s say that there is a particular leadership expert whose work you have admired for many years. You have consumed this person’s content across various mediums and refer to it often for inspiration. Then one day, you find that the person that you so highly revered has actually been accused of abusing his power to […]

Researchers and Academic: Adopt a PR Mindset

By Kevin Anselmo Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, noted the following in a BBC story: “Truth is no longer dictated by authorities, but is networked by peers. For every fact there is a counterfact. All those counterfacts and facts look identical online, which is confusing to most people.” Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year […]

How Media Relations Can Support Integrated Marketing Communications Goals

Technological advances, the ever-changing communications landscape and the disruption in the higher education space necessitate that marketing and communications departments strategically work together towards common goals. This means that everyone is aligned on what the objectives are and how to achieve them through the collaborative effort of those responsible for earned media (media relations), shared […]

News Headlines and PR / Communications Implications

The following is a summary of some news stories from the past two weeks and the implications for PR professionals / communicators. Story 1: Live Streaming Summary: House GOP leadership shut off microphones and the video feed to C-SPAN leading to a sit-in by Democrats who started using Facebook Live and Periscope to film the protest. […]

Podcast Episode #56: Lessons from Ken Starr’s Media Interview Debacle

The media interview is not the right time to be reviewing answers and going over tactics! Ken Starr, the recently ousted president of Baylor University following an investigation into the mishandling of  sexual assault at the school, and his media adviser Merrie Spaeth, founder of Spaeth Communications, learned this first-hand. In a KWTX News 10 interview from […]

Podcast Episode #55: Steps to Conducting a Strategic Communications Review

Are you confident in your institution’s key messaging? Can you summarize it in a simple, clear and jargon free way to your different audiences? What about within your department? Do you know why the department for which you work exists? Do others know? Episode 55 of FIR on Higher Education will outline steps that you […]

Podcast Episode #45: Lessons for Communicators from the University of Missouri Protests

It has been a very difficult last couple of weeks for the University of Missouri as the school has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. African American students led protests because administrators were slow to respond to various safety issues raised. Things seemed to come to a culmination following negative student encounters […]