Blogs Go To School

02/14/2006

College_graduation_capIn 2004, the divo of blogs, predicted 2006 would be the year business/marketing blogs became accepted as a mainstream strategy. One sign that Robert might be on target is college profs are not only using blogs for class communications, but are teaching students how to use blogs as...hold on to your boas divas, legit marketing tactics.
Sidebar: If you've read Diva Marketing for long, you know that I believe blogs will be an important piece of a marketing strategy. 

Alex Brown, University of Delaware: Info Tech Applications In Marketing and Robert French Auburn University, Marketing Communications/Public Relations have been innovators in bringing blogs to college curriculum. Recently, Susan Dobscha, Bentley College, included a blog assignment in her Honors Seminar in Marketing.

This is the 4th (I think..Alex correct me if I'm off) class that Prof Brown has conducted where blogs were the heart of the course. Heart is a good word for the way Alex structures his classes. He uses the blog to not only communicate about the class but to post assignments, resources and of course, student blogs. Students are required to read blogs in a news aggregator, build their own blog,  and in true blog fashion, comment on classmates' blogs.Curious about the "required blog list?"

ClickZ
Diva Marketing (Blog)
BlogSavant
Inside AdWords
John Battelle's Search Blog**
Modern Marketing
Naked Conversations**
Scobelizer
Slashdot
Tim Berners Lee's Blog
** Class Text Books ... got ta love it! No boring academic books for Prof Alex's class. He's using Naked Conversations and John Battelle's Search Book.

By the way, Info Tech Applications In Marketing has a pretty good resource link list. Need a refresher on the impact of internet technologies on marketing strategies? The class notes are alone are worth a visit.   

Prof Dobscha's students are required to analyze marketing blog posts. Although a bit unnerving, I'm  honored that Diva Marketing is among the blogs that the students chose to follow. Thanks Caitlin and KarinaKarina3!Other blogs include:

Emergence Marketing
The Brand Builder 
AdWeek
Duct Tape Marketing
Creating Passionate Users
Decent Marketing
B2Blog
Wonder Branding

Their critiques offer an interesting, objective perspective. For the most part, they're looking for bloggers to provide more details and examples. Taking my cue from the students of Honors Seminar in Marketing, I'd like to know  how and why they chose their blogs.

Let's toss the caps high and twirl a tassle or two to the profs who are teaching the next generation of marketers about consumer generated marketing.

Technorati Tags: , ,

| Comments (7) | AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Trackbacks

Trackback url:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b4b169e200d8347440c953ef

Comments

You rock! Wow... two lists with YOU on them... you must be smart or something.

Who do I have to sleep with to get on a list? I feel so small, so meaningless now...

Honestly that is awesome stuff. I am constantly amazed by how many visitors my blogs get from universities. I have no idea how many of them just happen to be bike geeks and how many are students doing work, but it still gives me goosebumps.

Blogging is a real and legitimate tool for marketing and anybody who disagrees is really misleading themselves. It won't be an immediate success for everybody, but it can be a major tool in developing a brand/ service or in simply connecting with people and evangelizing.

Posted by: Tim Jackson- Masiguy on Feb 15, 2006 2:42:52 PM

Hi T,

Believe it or not, I'll be doing a 3 week blogging seminar in the summer at the local community college--been asked back for the fall (hopefully) and to do some speaking to the business school...great info here...I'm going to have to check out what those other blogs are doing. :-)

Posted by: Tish Grier on Feb 15, 2006 10:52:47 PM

Those classes will probably prove to be some of the most useful classes those students will take!

Blogging really opens up the marketing field for everyone and the more these students study it, the more effective their marketing strategies will be!

Posted by: PRMama on Feb 16, 2006 3:37:54 AM

Hello,

I am one of the students in Susan Dobscha's marketing classes that has chosen your blog to follow for the semester. In answer to your question, to be completely honest, the first thing that caught my attention about the Diva Marketing Blog was its name; as an obvious diva, I was immediately intrigued. One click later, when I saw all of my favorite colors and icons scrolling the top of your page and I was ecstatic. And when I saw that it was actually a useful marketing blog with quality content, I was hooked.

Now that I've been following your blog for several weeks, can I make one suggestion? It seems like a lot of your blogs are about blogs themselves and how they pertain to marketing. I'm running out of things to say on this topic... do you think you could touch upon more varied marketing subjects? Just an idea!

Thanks a lot for everything, and keep on bloggin'!

Karina

Posted by: Karina on Feb 27, 2006 8:06:27 PM

Karina - Thanks for your kind words and thanks for your good advice. Professionally, my focus seems to be leaning towards "blogs themselves and how they pertain to marketing." However, Diva's focus was/is (?) a catholic approach towards marketing and branding.

Blogs morph, as the blogger's interests change. You raise a great point...after almost 2-years, what is Diva's direction? Is this blog still about general marketing or is it about marketing as it pertains to 2.0 web marketing and social networking? Can it be about both? And if so what percentage of posts should be within each topic?

I don't have the answers right now. But it is something that I will definately be evaluating over the next weeks. In, the meantime, I'll take my cue from you and from Diva's tag line "...an approach to marketing ..." Marketing post to be up later today!

In the blogosphere (as in life), the role of "student" and "teacher"/"subject expert" times blurs. And the roles swing back and forth. It seems I've learned a lot from your class! Kara, you should get extra points for your comments.

Posted by: Toby on Feb 28, 2006 8:22:42 AM

Above all, to thine own diva be true.

Posted by: Rick Short on Mar 9, 2006 10:07:42 PM

The blogs are becoming increasingly popular with teachers as a forum for expression for students as young as the second-grade level and in almost any subject. In the blogs, students write about how they attacked a tough math problem, post observations about their science experiments or display their latest art projects.
"For teachers, blogs are attractive because they require little effort to maintain, unlike more elaborate classroom Web sites, which were once heralded as a boon for teaching. teachers can build a blog or start a new topic in an existing blog by simply typing text into a box and clicking a button. Such ease of use is the primary reason will eventually become a more successful teaching tool than Web sites
I have done a lot of researches for my dissertation http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmedi6.htm ,but your article give me some more ideas for my next project. Thank you.

Posted by: Mariana on May 25, 2006 9:39:14 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.