Social marketing really has become the new medium. If the Pope has joined Facebook, who hasn’t? Pope Benedict XVI not only has a Facebook, but a YouTube channel, a H2O news application for iPhone and iTouch, and his own website called Pope2You, which links his followers to all of his social WebPages. What a mouthful! To me, this is the pope reaching out to the people and trying to expand the belief in which he stands for past the doors of the church, and into people’s everyday life. Trying to become a daily highlight, just as exciting as following your favorite celebrities or even your best friends, now its just as easy to follow the Pope, and learn more about him. As Pope Benedict XVI expands his social marketing campaign, the more he becomes, and is viewed as, “just like one of us.” I think this is a great idea for the Pope to be viewed as more of an equal, a man that uses Facebook and YouTube on an everyday basis, just like most of us do. It makes more of a personal connection between him and us, instead of viewing him as more of a “God.” Overall, Kudos to the Pope for realizing that in this day and age you need to be where the people are to get anywhere and be heard, and to market yourself, your values, and your beliefs.

http://mashable.com/2009/05/22/pope-benedict-on-facebook/

In the past several years online education has literally exploded. It seems that there are new institutions entering the online education space on a monthly basis, and the demand from educational consumers is keeping pace. The economic down turn of the past 12 months has contributed in part to a record number of new potential students applying for federal aid and looking to retool their skills by returning to school. The average observer of this trend might conclude that the proverbial rising tide is raising all ships, but in fact this is not the case. The explosion in growth is being enjoyed by a relatively small pool of institutions (not withstanding technical schools and career colleges). The truth of the matter is that the degree seeking student market is dominated by the large for profit providers. These institutions are succeeding in spite of negative perceptions of quality, negative press and high tuition rates, which begs the question ‘how do they do it?’. More pointedly, why is it that traditional institutions with high quality programs, long standing traditions, positive consumer perceptions and affordable tuition rates, launch online programs online to dissolve them one or two years later?

Read the rest of this entry »