Swift Kick Central

The New Mexico State Fight Song: The Long History Of Drinking & College

Aggies, Oh Aggies

The hills send back the cry

We're here to do or die

Aggies, Oh Aggies

We'll win this game or know the reason why

And when we win this game

We'll buy a keg of booze

And drink it to the Aggies

Till we wobble in our shoes

A-G-G-I-E-S!

Aggies, Aggies, Go Aggies

Aggies, Oh Aggies

The hills send back the cry

We're here to do or die

Aggies, Oh Aggies

We'll win this game or know the reason why!

Their fight song is based on a popular turn of the century song titled "Oh Didn't He Ramble." The lyrics referencing drinking continue to be controversial, but as of yet, remain part of the song. With the recent uproar about Target marketing beer pong as essential college gear, maybe we have to first look back on our own traditions and see what needs some updating.

Target's Shameful College Marketing Fail [IMAGE]

Every year big box retails host large "back to school" marketing campaigns to drive sales. In a slap to the face of higher education goals, Target's using its national brand to promote "beer pong" equipment as essential college gear. We're joining Cindy Kane and Jeff Jackson in using this blog as a platform to protest this type of marketing by Target and other big box retailers. Please use the image below to repost to your blog or email list and help spread the word that this is not ok.

Making Them WANT To Do It (Apathy vs Engagement)

If you have ever attended a conference with us, you know we enjoy mixing stuff up through the use of Flashmobs and Blender Events, both of which stem from our Dance Floor Theory Leadership Training. The goals are to:

1. Have Fun
2. Increase Engagement
3. Build Relationships
4. Create Pattern Interrupts
5. Induce Positive Confusion (one reason why)
   

While some activities are repeated from conference to conference, others come from brainstorming sessions with the participants.

At a recent conference in New York, the associates (a.k.a. people/companies who pay money to attend with the intent of selling their product) were complaining to the conference organizer about the lack of conference attendees participating in the exhibit halls and showcases. As the grumbles of agreement erupted from the crowd, the conference organizer turned towards us and asked if we could send out a Flashmob txt about exhibit hall times and showcase times. Our reply? "No, that's not how it works."

It's not about making them HAVE to do it, it's about making them WANT to do it.

If we were to do what the conference organizer suggested, the Flashmob txt would have been something like this:

TXT A: @ 2:30pm the exhibit hall opens up, make sure you're there!

Instead our txt message was this:

TXT B: In the exhibit hall @ exactly 2:35pm howl to the moon for 10 secs like a pack of wolves. Then stop and walk on like nothing happened.

In TXT B we're making them WANT to do it, like they are missing out if they don't attend. TXT B achieves all five goals from above and, for the purposes of the conference, it also gets more attendees to participate in the exhibit hall.

TXT B also removes the marketing from the activity, which is a common mistake when attempting community engagement. If you're marketing, you're marketing, not relationship building.

The difference between them HAVING to do it and them WANTING to do it is the difference between apathy and engagement.

'Fun' can be the change behavior. If you're still not convinced, check out these ideas from The Fun Theory:

To implement change on your campus, start by creating an "I Wish List..."

• I wish more students would recycle
• I wish more students would walk to campus vs drive
• I wish more students would attend events
• I wish more students would smile
• I wish more students would wash their hands
• I wish more students would...

Next create a list of current solutions for each item:

• Post signs above recycle bins
• Don't do anything
• Flyers, posters, emails
• Don't do anything
• Post signs in every bathroom

Lastly, circle up with 2-4 other people and generate a brainstorming list of creative engaging ways to solve each problem that they will WANT to do. Then try it out and if you really want, you can collect quantitative data to determine effectiveness (e.g. Did more people wash their hands?).

It will take more time to implement some of these ideas, but, to repeat from above, it's the difference between apathy and engagement.

p.s. If your idea is really good, try submitting it to the Fun Theory Award for a chance to win $3,600.

Say Hello to the First Official Red Rover Newsletter

We've joked about making the tag line for Red Rover be, "Students Actually Use It!" The proof of course is in the pudding which we've already talked about.

We see the students as our "customer" first and the admin/staff as our "customer" second. Most higher ed software solutions seem to think the opposite. Just look at the complex user interfaces with "comprehensive solutions" and you'll know the student wasn't their primary focus. We think a bottom up approach is more effective.

One of the strengths of Red Rover is going to be in the connectedness of it's members to each other. Our goal is to help facilitate a strong Red Rover community that is in line with our bottom up approach.

We already have a Student Affairs Collaborative Blog, a Student Leader Collaborative Blog, a Collaborative Project Wiki Space, and a New Features Usersuggest Forum.

We have more ideas in the pipeline and today we just released our first official Red Rover Newsletter to help us better connect to our users and help them connect with each other. There is a separate monthly newsletter for the Admins, Student Leaders, and Regular Students. The goal is to give them tips on how to be more effective within their respective roles through the use of Red Rover.

If you're interested in signing up for the different newsletters, you can do so below:

THE ADMIN NEWSLETTER:
Email:

THE STUDENT LEADER NEWSLETTER:
Email:

THE REGULAR STUDENT NEWSLETTER:
Email:

Marketing Red Rover with a Facebook Note

The list of schools signing up to use Red Rover is growing daily, with UCLA being the newest. A great byproduct of so many active users navigating the system is seeing the new creative ways in which admins and group leaders are marketing Red Rover.

Nick Chapa, a group leader at UCLA, wrote this note about Red Rover on Facebook:

Nick's note explains the group leader value in using Red Rover for automatic recruitment and invites them to sign up with a link. I've seen schools use Facebook notes before, but Nick's unique approach of tagging all the group leaders in the note is genius, because when he posted it, they all received an email saying they've been tagged in the note, thus the click-through rate was much higher.

Going to where the students are and connecting with them through one of their favorite communication channels is just plain smart.

Nice work Nick!

Red Rover Milestones

Downloadable as a pretty .pdf here.

Or as a small picture:

The order of things might change. When we need money depends partially on how fast we develop, on how much we speak, or timing of key employees. We might decide it makes more sense to have a paid feature extension before we go open source.

In whatever order they get done, having these milestones helps us keep our focus on the right thing at the right time - which is the most important thing when your resources are limited.

Conference on the First Year Experience and the Genius of our Community

We often feel really dumb in our work when we repeat the same silly mistakes. This time we wasted four days of work thinking we could come up with the answer on our own instead of asking for advice from the rich pool of knowledge around us.

Last week we reached out to our community of academic professionals for help on what our booth banners for the upcoming FYE conference should say. We posted our current design on the Red Rover marketing wiki page and invited everyone to leave opinions. Their feedback was invaluable as they are in the same job roles as the conference attendees.

Musicians often get to say how they have the coolest and most supportive fans. We'll I'd like to say the same thing about our community of support. Your knowledge is deep, your passion is alive, and without you we would still be swimming in the shallow end. Some of you we just meet, some were there in the beginning and some of you even before that. You are the coolest fans and we appreciate every bit of your advice. Just be patient with us as we'll surely waste another four days before remembering that you probably already know the answer :)

The three main themes from the feedback were:

- Have a catchier center tag line
- Emphasize free
- Ditch the word 'generation' as it's too limiting

With the feedback fresh in our minds and a printing deadline for the conference, we reworked the banners and here's the 'final' (I use that word loosely) version of the banners.

 

We are actually at the conference right now and testing the banners in real time. So far the response has been fairly positive. I suspect much more so than had we went with our original design.

We are annoyed with our use of every buzz word possible because everyone is using them and our message gets lost. Also, the center banner with the black text on red is too hard to read without the correct lighting.

So we want to start the brainstorming session for the next round now and figure out how to be the anti buzz word, the anti 40K solution, the anti in house portal that no one uses, etc. Thoughts?

Bosie State Newspaper Article About Swift Kick Training

It's nice for us to connect with school newspaper reporters during our on site trainings. It allows the message of the training to go out beyond just those who attended.

Colby Stream of the Boise State Arbiter, wrote a follow up to our Myspace/Facebook training at their school. Colby did a great job in capturing many of the main points. We often forget to mention these articles, so here's a full reprint. Thanks Colby!

It's all about harnessing the power of the Internet. More specifically, the networking capabilities of the Internet.

Tom Krieglstein, co-founder of Swift Kick, gave a lecture last Tuesday sponsored by the Boise State Student Programs Board (SPB), which discussed how students can use MySpace, Facebook and other online resources to make job-seeking and money-making an easier task.

According to Krieglstein, the Internet creates a megaphone effect. This means that everything a person does on the Internet can be potentially spread everywhere, all over the world.

Krieglstein describes it as living in a glass house.

"Everyone's looking in to see what you're doing," he said.

This can be good or bad, depending on what you're showing the world.

Krieglstein pointed out that 60 percent of employers now search the Internet to find out more information about potential job candidates. Pictures, comments and blogs are up for grabs for these employers to see.

One mission of Swift Kick is to help students portray the image these people find desirable.

"The good behavior is what you want amplified out," Krieglstein said.

The company was co-founded about four years ago by Krieglstein and his partner, Kevin Prentiss. They were both in business at the time and felt like the businesses they were with only wanted to make money. After meeting each other, Krieglstein and Prentiss decided to start Swift Kick.

Today the company is totally virtual; it has no physical location. The team doesn't even live together. They are spread all over the United States in places like Chicago and San Francisco.

But why target college students?

"The strength of America depends on its educational system," Krieglstein said.

The mission of the company is not just to help students portray a positive image. It's also to help students increase their engagement on and off campus.

"College is the one time in your life when you should try as much as possible," Krieglstein said. Only then can a student fail and still have safeguards, he explained.

Krieglstein is the perfect model of an ambitious student. In college, he set up a text book selling business which generated around $1.5 million in sales in a single year. He also won a speaking competition, which opened up his eyes to the money-making opportunities in speaking.

Today, he travels all over the United States giving lectures. At other times, he goes to conferences for student leaders. It is at these conferences that schools hire the company.

One such conference is where Boise State SPB got wind of the company.

"We get a nice little taste of what they're about," Jill Krenecki, director of Student Programs Board, said about the conference.

SPB hoped that the lecture would help to "solve the problem of student apathy," Krenecki said.

The Myspace/Facebook lecture is just one of many events SPB brings to the Boise State campus. Other events include movies, shown every Thursday night at 7 p.m. in the Student Union Building, and the Rock Star 101 concerts. But SPB doesn't want to make up all the events by itself.

"We're always open for suggestions," Krenecki said, stressing that student involvement is critical to the success of SPB events.

Any students who wish to submit ideas can visit SPB's Myspace page by searching "BSU SPB."

Utlizing Facebook Flyers for Marketing Red Rover and Swift Kick

Last November, Facebook updated it's semi useful "Facebook Flyer" advertising system. The biggest updates were better target marketing by keyword and the ability to pay-per-click instead of impressions. What that meant was very little harm in setting up a flyer to test its effectiveness. And so we did...

We created ads for our Dance Floor Theory Leadership Training



our Secrets Behind Facebook and Myspace open campus lecture



and our Red Rover Orientation Software



The three ads have been running for just under 3 months and I thought it would be interesting to share some stats on their effectiveness.



So far we've spend $11.62 to have the flyers appear 177,835 times and be clicked on 97 times. That makes a click through rate (CTR) of .05%! I know it sounds really low, but when you take into account the average CTR of a Google Ad is around 1-2%, it's not too shabby for Facebook.

As far as I can tell, we've yet to turn any of those clicks into a new member of the Swift Kick community, but it's not easy to track unless they tell us. The depth of our community allows someone to come in at any angle and click around for a while, as Kevin commented about in a previous post. 

I think we could tweak the text, title, and picture of the ads to increase the CTR, but for now, we'll just let it keep running and see what happens.

P.S. - if you want to set up your own flyer system, here is a nice "how-to"

The Video of the interview about Red Rover with Peter Barnes of Fox Business TV