On Nov. 14, Mark Greenfield — a noted speaker and thinker on higher ed and director of web services at University of Buffalo – appeared on an episode of Higher Ed Live entitled “When the Axe Man Cometh,” talking about the future of higher ed – specifically what it means for those of us working in higher ed marketing. (Don’t have time to watch the show? Here is a great written recap by Deborah Edwards-Onoro.)

One of the topics discussed was which departments might be outsourced as universities look to cut costs, and the  outsourcing of marketing functions came up. The following Twitter conversation ensued in the show’s backchannel:

Patrick Powers: Higher ed is not in the IT business #higheredlive (It’s also not in the web/marketing business)

Me: Is higher ed in the business of telling its own story?

Patrick: sometimes… but not when someone can tell it better (and cheaper).

Me: Part of what helps me do my job well is my deep investment in the univ’s mission. You can’t buy that.

Patrick: You’re right, you cannot buy personal investment. But do you need it? Are U of Phoenix employees invested?

Me: It’s a qualitative argument. I have my ear to the track everyday. Does that help me tell stories better than John Doe?

Me: I think investment and immersion are vital.

Patrick: Are vital for quality or survival?

J.D. Ross: Can’t have survival w/o quality – have to be able to tell the stories & show the value to new students…

Me: I think for both quality and for success/survival. Call me an idealist

Patrick: it’s ok. i actually agree (i’m an idealist, too, but I play a curmudgeon on the web)

I recreate the conversation here in full because I think it touched on an important point: stories as a core business function, and who is best equipped to fulfill that function.

Content is Capital

Content marketing, as explored in Joe Pulizzi’s talk at Content Strategy New England a couple weeks ago, focuses on the concept of marketers as publishers, working to attract or retain customers through consistent creation of valuable content designed to maintain or change a behavior. This includes us. We create quality web content that we hope guides prospective students to apply or visit. We write compelling articles that we hope inspire alumni to donate or feel pride. Content is capital with which we grow our business.

One flavor of content marketing is brand storytelling, sometimes called brand journalism. David Meerman Scott defines it well:

the creation of Web content—videos, blog posts, photos, charts, graphs, essays, ebooks, white papers—that deliver value to your marketplace and serve to position your organization as one worthy of doing business with.

Ann Handley of MarketingProfs elaborates on what storytelling for business is all about:

It’s about how your business (or its products or services) exist in the real world: how people use your products—how they add value to people’s lives, ease their troubles, help shoulder their burdens, and meet their needs.

George Snell of Weber Shandwick sums up why it is important for organizations to invest in brand storytelling:

Given the climate – consumers flocking online for information and mass media transforming into multimedia platforms – smart brands are realizing the power of controlling and creating their own online storytelling.

Increasingly, more and more brands — from the U.S. military to Boeing to Moleskine to Imperial Sugar Company — are following suit and building their own, internal storytelling capacities across multiple platforms (also known as transmedia). So why would we in higher ed even consider outsourcing our own storytelling capacity?

When it comes to achieving business goals, a brand needs good stories like a website needs good usability. Both guide our audiences toward desired ends, supporting core objectives. And how do you craft an effective story? By knowing your audience. And in higher ed, we live and breathe with our audience every day. That is not easy to replicate externally. It’s part institutional knowledge, but also part investment in the institution and connection to its mission. Only so much of that can be communicated in a brand identity document. As I tweeted during the show, I feel like what helps me do my job well is that connection I feel to what the university is all about.

So how can we dull the axe blade, or spare it altogether? J.D. brought up a good word in the backchannel: value. Stories demonstrate value. Our future as higher ed marketing and communications professionals depends on how well we tell stories, both externally (to communicate the institution’s value and achieve business goals) and internally (to communicate our own value and make our own case). We need to be viewed as a core business function, a sort of Buildings and Grounds for our organization’s brand and reputation — trimming the hedges, unblocking the toilets and painting the walls.

Investing in content is investing in stories, which are the voice of your institution. And shouldn’t you always speak from the heart?