This is a presentation from an Introduction to Marketing class I gave at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Journalism, last week. I've taught at UNC every semester for the past few years. It's something that I really enjoy and have a great time doing. I remember when I first taught in 2009, there were 3/50 students in the class who were on Twitter. This week, 100% of students had a Twitter account. The speed at which students are learning and implementing digital lives is amazing.
The aim of the lecture was to educate students on how to build a digital strategy for clients and how that differs from traditional ad strategy. The lecture touches on the difference between tactics and strategy and looking at how to implement specific tactics to accomplish the overall strategy.
I've put the slide deck below. It may not be super helpful as just slides without context, but I still think you'll get the gist of the presentation and hopefully enjoy it!
Today, I had the opportunity to speak to a couple classes at the University of Texas - Arlington about entrepreneurship and digital marketing. The students were over a thousand miles away, but I was beamed right into their classroom through Skype. I’m obviously familiar with Skype (all too familiar, actually, after my girlfriend went to India for three months), but I had never used it as a tool to speak to a large group of students.
I’ve spoke to more than a dozen classes over the past few years, but this was probably the most nervous I’ve been. It wasn’t the topic or the students, but the setup. Being projected up on a wall in front of the class, while I am sitting in my office staring and speaking into my laptop didn’t seem like a recipe for success. In my time in undergrad, we never had a speaker in a class by Skype before -- is this really the way things are done, now?
Without being there in person, how would people be able to pick up on my mannerisms, be engaged with what I was saying, or see how excited I was about the topic? These things, along with a fear of looking like Big Brother, had me concerned about how this would play out.
In the end, I was really pleasantly surprised and had a phenomenal experience. I felt like students focused more on my actual words than my pacing or powerpoint, and they were ultimately more engaged than any group I had spoke to in-person (maybe it was because I actually did look like Big Brother). It was also an easy way for students to hear the perspective of someone close to their age and for me to get to encounter some great questions and thoughts.
I went in a skeptic and left a believer. I hope colleges around the country are using this tactic, because I thought it worked very well for the speaker and the students. It opens the doors for schools around the countries to bring in different lecturers and gives them the tools to still be effective and engaging in the classroom.
In the era of The Decision (this Clevelander will never forget), Brett Favre, and public trade demands, it's becoming increasingly rare to see a star athlete amicably split from their team. Peyton Manning and the Colts have been a stark contrast to that trend, and it has been incredibly refreshing.
While Peyton's teary-eyed press conference will be the enduring image, both parties deserve a lot of credit, in the end. After a tense offseason where Colts management let go of several key actors on the team, it seemed the writing was on the wall. Peyton and ownership fired off a couple of quips about the situation but it never escalated or got personal. After that initial flurry, both sides retreated and went through the process in private. In the end, they made the announcement together and were clear that they both had the utmost respect for the other.
This situation cost Peyton Manning $28 million and cost the Colts' a hugely valuable asset. However, those facts weren't invoked, and the sides kept it professional and cordial. It was really a sight for sore eyes in today's sports culture.
Thanks to both for all the memories over the past 14 years and for making sure that those memories are what endures in our minds and not some messy, petty breakup.
Instapaper is hands down one of my favorite iOS apps, if not my favorite. I downloaded the free version in September of 2010, upgraded to the free version about a year later, and have used it multiple time per week since then.
It's a great app that lets you store any article/column/blog post from the web locally on your phone or tablet and keeps those devices in sync. It's perfect for lazy weekends, laying in bed at night, or for long trips. Not only do I use it for the local storage when I'm in an increasingly rare location without WiFi, but I also use it as my primary reading list that I can turn to at anytime to find a good read.
With all of the app's positive attributes and the dividends it has paid by allowing me to consume scores of articles at my own pace, you would think I'd have no problems with it. However, I've lately noticed an alarming trend in my habits that I'll term the Instapaper Effect.
When I first started using the app, I would always scroll down to see how long a piece was and if it would take me more than 7-10 minutes to read (I'm a slow reader, too), then I would probably Instapaper it to read at a later date. If I was just laying around or not busy, I would just go ahead and read it at that moment. The longer I had Instapaper, the shorter my threshold became for read now vs. Instapaper. I started Instapapering 5 minute articles. Then, anything over a page. It's at the point now where I may scroll, but I don't really care what length I see, I'm going to Instapaper any article I find during the workday. It's not uncommon for me to Instapaper a mere four paragraph blog post.
While this tendency may ostensibly seem like it's bolstering my productivity by not allowing me to get distracted during the day, that's not true. Studies consistently show that breaks from work or studying boost ultimate productivity and I have to believe reading something interesting and/or relevant is one of the best ways to realize one of those pauses. Instead, I'm quietly getting more unproductive by refusing to give myself a break with an article.
On top of the productivity concerns, it's just making me plain lazy. There's no better word than lazy to describe putting off reading a four paragraph piece of writing that is relevant to your career or personally interesting to you. Instapaper has stoked this sloth-like behavior by reinforcing to me that it's OK to procrastinate these short reads and to hopefully come back to them later in my long queue. Obviously, though, when Instapaper becomes a chore of choking down a dozen four paragraph blog posts on a myriad of topics intermixed with longform writing, I'll absorb less information and start resisting the queue that I've loved for so long.
Finally, I've noticed the Instapaper Effect starting to manifest itself in other areas of my life other than just reading. Want to tell me a story, but it's going to take longer than a couple minutes? Can't I just Instapaper this for later? Do I really need to spend all this time focusing on content, right now?! It's getting harder for me to focus on any content that isn't 100% on my terms, and that's terrible.
Has anyone else experienced similar results from using Instapaper? I think it's easy to curb with focus -- the next time you're about to Instapaper something, force yourself to answer how long it would take to read and if that would really set your day back. I'm willing to bet we all have several five minute pockets in the day where we would be well-served to read something in the spur of the moment rather than saving it for later. I haven't been savoring those moments, but I'm going to make it a point to pushing back on Instapaper.
I have sucked at posting on this blog. Zero posts in the first couple months of this year. That's not good. That's why I'm kicking off a 60 day - 30 post blog challenge for myself. That means I have to average one post every two days for the next two months. Plenty of people busier than me manage to do that, and I think I should be able to, too. Some posts may be really short and sometimes they may come in a burst of several in a day, but I really want to do this.
It will be interesting to see how this affects traffic and engagement on the blog, but that's not what it's really about. I think it's important to thoughtfully write something everyday. Too often lately, the only thoughts I've put into my writing are around what's the most clever email greeting to a client. This challenge will force me into some more introspective and challenging writing.
I'm excited about the next 60 days and making the blog a priority. We'll see how it goes!