Archive for the ‘PR’ Category
SEOs will slaughter careless PRs – some thoughts
August 22nd, 2012
Chris Lee’s eConsultancy post – “SEOs will slaughter careless PRs†is a bit of a shocker. His Biblical reference is powerful and apposite. Old stories always work well.
We feel comfortable with these tales because they reinforce our collective sense of self and are very useful. But behind this agreed unity there is a less coherent argument.
Chris’s argument, as I understand it, centres on the fact that too many PR agencies do not see the point of integrating SEO into their campaigns. I’d take us out of that equation and would also expand Chris’s viewpoint. Believe it or not, there are many PR agencies that still don’t embrace social media, let alone SEO.
We’ve been integrating social media with ‘traditional’ PR and SEO at Liberate Media since 2006, working with partners and client agencies. That’s why colleague Lloyd Gofton founded the agency.
We’ve been doing what Chris suggests for six and more years:
· Link building from diverse and authoritative sites.
· Social media signals.
· Optimisation of on-page content.
· Optimisation of URLs.
· Universal search (pictures, video etc).
· Domain-level brand metrics (affinity towards the brand online).
But we’ve been doing much more than this – delivering integrated campaigns that mesh social with traditional PR so that the SEO element of marketing can maximise returns. We engage with media and influencers at every point, online and offline.
That said, my experience of SEO is that it is, at best, an inexact science. Measurement parameters are imprecise. This lack of detail is partly a function of the continual development of search engine algorithms, and the desire of Google to maximise its revenues.
But there is a certain easy acceptance of SEO data that does not push agencies to move forward. From my personal experience, there is only so far you can go with “secret sauceâ€.
Sure, we can deliver reports that have a range of good-looking figures but whether these correspond precisely to what is going on is not proven.
My intuition is that the current SEO play is under sustained pressure and is seeking partners who can add significant value, through knowledge, connections and expertise, to the proposition.
Partnership with PR agencies might be a way forward but the measurement tactics would need careful attention on both sides.
We’re neither smug nor careless about our business, which is growing rapidly against the grain. As Chris intimates, the skills and nous involved in successful SEO and PR are a rare commodity, one that we will continue to develop.
You can read Chris Lee’s post here.
Selling to the social customer – a sure way to fail
August 16th, 2012
I’ve been involved in a number of discussions recently about the value of a social approach to communications vs. a more traditional approach.
These discussions have focused on developing PR campaigns, digital campaigns and securing leads, but the overriding theme has been very similar.
Regular readers of this blog will know I have discussed/ranted about social and traditional approaches many times over the last 6 years, so this is nothing new, but every time the discussion comes up it makes me re-evaluate where we are coming from, which i believe is a positive thing.
The ongoing issue goes something like this: The majority of organisations: brands, agencies, charities, public sector, etc, have woken up to the opportunities of social media in recent years, but the tendency is to approach social with a traditional strategy. This for me is the route-cause for most of the discussions we have around ‘fixing failing campaigns’.
Unfortunately, a traditional approach to social rarely works, and when a traditional approach is developed for social customers, the results can be disappointing at best, and the fallout can be very messy and public at worst.
Fundamentally, communicating in a social environment is driven by listening to and understanding the target community, and then engaging with relevant content and conversation.
Traditional approaches tend to miss this vital element and jump straight into the conversation using broadcast messages to engage on what the organisation thinks the community needs to know, with little or no understanding of what has gone previously, or without understanding the debate.
This is not a new discovery, but it is a reflection of the mindset change necessary for those that wish to make the jump to communications online, where the target audience is made up of, or influenced by, ‘social customers’.
So let’s look at the changing customer base that we are dealing with. I have used this definition of the social customer before, but i think it’s worth re-visiting:
The social customer is dynamic, hyper-connected and can shape business and brand reputation by defining an organisation’s value, relevance and reputation. As a result, social customers have compelled organisations of all types to be more customer-centric and have transformed the way in which organisations need to communicate with and, most importantly, listen to their customers.
Put simply, the social customer now owns the relationship, and every organisation needs need to earn his/her trust.
The social customer is also a driving force in the development of the online economy, which is rapidly growing and currently contributes 8.3 per cent to the UK economy. This is more than the healthcare, construction or education sectors.
UK consumers also buy far more from online retail sources than any other major economy and this is expected to continue expanding by 11% per year for the next four years, reaching a total value of £221bn by 2016. Compare this to growth rates of 5.4% in the U.S. and 6.9% in China.
So, if we take this learning on the traditional vs. social approach and appreciate the ultimate audience, which revolves around the social customer, I believe the debate on how we develop campaigns can begin.
Let’s start with the obvious; hard sell in a social environment doesn’t work. We know that. But that doesn’t mean we’re not asked to take this approach in our campaigns, and specifically asked why it is necessary to build a campaign around listening and content / conversation development. Why don’t we just focus on the sell?
The beauty of social media is that it is ‘social’. It rewards a social attitude where brands listen and engage by being useful and relevant, and punishes a traditional broadcast or sales-based approach – i.e. we are the best so buy here.
The reality is that the web is a social tool, and it reflects the characteristics of human behaviour. We don’t tend to buy a service until we trust the provider and have been convinced that it is the right choice by those in our social circle and those that have influence on the subject.
Google ranks websites on relevancy, meaning relevancy of content and relevancy through links, so if we want to be part of that discussion we need to give the community, the brands and Google what they want: knowledge, community, and trust, which makes us relevant and leads to engagement.
If you are under the assumption that people use social media to engage with brands, you will fail, because this is simply not the case for the vast majority. If a brand is interesting or relevant to a specific conversation so be it, but this will not happen through traditional sales-based approaches.
Therefore, if you try selling in a social environment you’ll always be on the outside looking in, wondering why your approach isn’t working, while being blissfully unaware of the social conversations happening all around you.
August 2nd, 2012
This post was originally published on Monty’s Outlook.
As a social species, we should expect our habits and actions on social networks to reflect our natural priorities as humans… as a species we crave companionship and like to feel part of a community.
Our instinct is to learn from each other and share our experiences with like-minded individuals. That habit has served us well, but at some point in our conversations and relationships the number of contacts we have has been given a higher value than the quality of the connection we have with those individuals, groups and brands.
Likes, followers and friends remain the measurement of choice for many of us, even those that know better secretly keep an eye on the amount of people they are interacting with. So although the quality vs. quantity conversation has been going on for many years, something isn’t clicking.
The majority understand the basic concept, it’s better to have 10 meaningful relationships where information is exchanged than 100 empty links. Fine, but try telling a brand that when its closest competitor has two million more likes on Facebook. The digital guys probably get it, the marketing guys may get it, but tell that to the board and they will answer that ‘we need three million more, make it happen‘.
There are many factors that contribute to this misconception. The habit of using traditional media measurements on social media, the ROI debate, our natural propensity to believe more = better, the fact that social networks want you to have more friends and more likes because it means you are using the product more and they can sell more advertising.
This is not a new issue, and although slight movement has taken place, real change will not happen until the facts are revealed to everybody. The simple truth is if a brand has seven million likes on Facebook, it does not have seven million opportunities to sell. It’s highly unlikely that the percentage of people actually engaged with that brand even makes it into double figures, or single figures for that matter.
The practise of buying likes/followers/friends is widespread and the impact of this is only now beginning to be understood, after the rush for numbers is over and the engagement begins.
There are different levels of buying likes. For example if you advertise on Facebook using certain terms, you will get more likes even if they are not that useful. Rory Cellan-Jones did an experiment on Facebook in July that had some interesting results.
Fundamentally if your strategy is to build your number of likes, you will attract the wrong people as this is not the behaviour you want in return. If you want people to engage with, and ultimately sell to, more likes will not help.
Here are a few stats that I picked up from Jeremy Waite TBG Digital at the recent Facebook Marketing event….
- 66% of people follow less than five brands. If you’re an accountant, that’s the battle you need to fight
- 45% of people who follow a brand on Facebook never go back
- 98% of people who Like a brand only visit the page once
Jeremy also mentioned that only around 16% of people will see any of your posts on a Facebook page. We’re acquiring a lot of fans that we aren’t reaching. This means mass engagement probably isn’t even a reality, and that is one of the major issues, understanding the difference between an empty like and a real connection.
So perhaps we need to recognise this fact and move the assumption from ‘we have x million fans – well done us’ to ‘we have x million fans of which only x are engaged’. It seems obvious and many brands do this, but many more do not.
The assertion that social and digital is completely measureable, although true, has pushed us towards a false idol. Of course numbers are important, but if we forget that we are dealing with social beings, with conversations, with listening and understanding, then we are not being very social at all.
Just because we can measure something, does not mean we should. Just because we have the data does not mean it is useful. We need to take a step back from the data – move away from the numbers, people!
As a brand, you may only have a relatively small number of fans/likes, but if the percentage of engaged users is higher because you have built this number based on real engagement, you are ultimately more successful than a brand with a huge number of likes and no engagement.
The bottom line is, if you are under the assumption that people use social media to engage with brands, you had better wake up, and realise this is not the case for the vast majority. If a brand is interesting or relevant to a specific conversation or community so be it, but this will not happen through competitions and requests to ‘Like us’ alone.
Perhaps we should ask Facebook to add an engaged count next to the like count – that would be a useful number for everyone to understand.
The power of a Tweet helps J.C. Penney shares jump 10%
July 27th, 2012
We often talk about the power of social media and how reach is ever expanding, but stories like this one are a beautiful and simple example of this in action.
Reuters has announced that shares of J.C. Penney jumped almost 10% briefly on Wednesday this week after Nina Garcia, Marie Claire magazine fashion editor and judge on television show “Project Runway” tweeted about the department store’s revamp mentioning chief executive Ron Johnson.
“I’m @jcpenney’s HQ. Thank you Ron Johson (sic) for the walk through of JCP’s prototype. Get ready to shop! Its (sic) going to be a game changer!”
J.C. Penney shares rose to as much as $23.09. The stock was up 4.9 percent at $22.02 later on Wednesday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange.
Although the link between the tweet and the rise in stock cannot be clearly made, TD Ameritrade chief derivatives strategist J.J. Kinahan immediately referenced the tweet when explaining the share spike, and there did not seem to be any other obvious contributing factors.
J.J. Kinaham said:“With that we saw the stock go sharply higher, along with increased buying in call options, a bullish play.”
Interestingly Reuters also mentioned that Garcia recently became J.C. Penney’s “Style Voice” and fashion collection curator, so it’s up for debate whether the tweet was entirely unlinked, but the point remains that an influential tweet seems to have had a huge impact on share price, and helps to prove the influencer status that Twitter can now claim.
Facebook Marketing 2012 review #fbkm12
July 19th, 2012
On Wednesday we attended the Facebook Marketing 2012 event (#fbkm12) at the ICO Conference Centre in London organised by Our Social Times and Chinwag.
As you can see by the agenda the line up was impressive, kicking off with Andy Pang from Facebook, and including brands such as Manchester City FC, Nokia, BBC, Guardian, Yorkshire Tea, Kraft (Cadburys), agencies such as TBG Digital, Edelman, We are Social, Isobar Social and SiteVisibility, and technologies such as Agorapulse and Tempero, as well as many more in the crowd.
You can see the presentations here.
The event, which will also be running in New York and Singapore, was jam-packed with 18 sessions developed to uncover the latest strategies, tools and insights for running Facebook campaigns, including case studies on brands such as Dove, Heinz, and Kellogg’s.
The event also coincided with the launch of two pieces of research, which were quoted during the event:
1. comScore and Facebook: European Insights About Earned and Paid Media Reach and Effectiveness
2. Facebook Global Ad Report 2012. Sponsored Story ads are now 53% more engaging than standard FB ads by TBG Digital
This was backed up by a range of learning/stats and advice from the sessions, examples of which include:
- Facebook only holds 6 months worth of data
- 66% of people follow less than 5 brands
- People don’t share facts, they share emotions. Brands that don’t measure will fail
- Most antisocial thing brands could do on Facebook is turn off comments
- videos, photos & links are “weightier” than other updates, therefore more likely to appear in newsfeeds; likes & comments add weight
- Likes are meaningless
- Japan has the quickest growing Facebook penetration percentage in the world
- A high CTR (click through rate) doesn’t equal a good ROI (Return on investment)
Each of the sessions was live blogged by Adam Tinworth (@adders) via the Liberate Media blog. If you would like to read more about any of the presentations, feel free to choose from the list below:
Andy Pang, Facebook: Facebook State of the nation
Richard Ayers, Manchester City FC & British Film institute: Facebook Strategy: How Facebook fits into a social & Digital strategy
Tom Smith and Brett Petersen, GlobalWebIndex: Facebook – Beyond the Hype
Discussion – Facebook and traffic, localisation and devices
Kelvin Newman, SiteVisibility: an introduction to Edgerank
Dom Dwight, Yorkshire Tea: Little Urn, human voice and Facebook Tea
Jeremy Waite, TBG Digital: why brands are doing Facebook advertising wrong
Discussion: the worth of Likes and Ads – Facebook Marketing 2012
Sarah Lindley, Cadbury: drives Dairy Milk engagement with a giant, chocolate thumb
Nils Mork-Ulnes & Judith Lewis, Beyond Interactive: The Science of sharing
Russell Goldsmith, Markettiers4DC: driving engagement with interactive video
Voices, real people and Black Swans: 3 case studies: Dove, Kellogg’s, XBox
Martin Belam, Emblem: leveraging the Facebook platform – Guardian Reader
Tom Ollerton, We are Social: Selling FMCG on Facebook with Heinz
Paul Marsden, Social Commerce Today: Ringing the Tills: An introduction to Fcommerce
Thomas Messett, Nokia: Nokia and Fcommerce
According to Appozite Tweet reach the crowd stretched well beyond those at the event and expanded onto the social web, as you would expect. By the end of the event 142,756 people had been reached.
Many of the sessions were also reported on by titles such as Marketing Week and eConsultancy, examples of the stories can be seen below:
Econsultancy:
Man City’s social strategy is about engagement, not traffic
Cadbury’s shift to social means no more drumming gorillas
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F-commerce doesn’t work, according to Nokia and Heinz
Marketing Week:
Cadbury adopts ‘social first’ strategy
BFI to use digital to tap into film fans
The conversation didn’t finish at the end of the event either, as debate continued both online and in the pub.
Facebook Marketing 2012 was a huge success and Chinwag and Our Social Times should be congratulated for bringing together such an impressive line up and pulling it off.
Wi-Fi is the key to combined in-store and online retail experiences
June 22nd, 2012
A report out this week from Tradedoubler offers further evidence of the evolution in retail habits towards ‘try in-store – buy online’.
The study of 2000 smartphone users in UK, France, Germany and Sweden found that 42% of smartphone owners use their device to compare prices in-store , while 13% claim to have switched stores after finding a better offer elsewhere.
However, 50% of UK respondents said they become frustrated with the mobile shopping experience, which shows mobile site development and usability has some way to go before fully capturing the opportunity.
Further evidence from On Device Research (ODR) shows that 60% of mobile users have utilised the mobile internet while in store, 78% would use free Wi-Fi in stores if offered it and 74% of respondents would be happy for the retailer to send a text or email with promotions.
Retailers are waking up to the opportunity and we are seeing more introduce free Wi-Fi connections, including Debenhams, Tesco and John Lewis, each trying to capturing more in-store traffic and push relevant offers via a branded Wi-Fi signal, while hoping to discourage shoppers from using unbranded 3G connections.
According to the Tradedoubler survey, offering location-based services and relevant vouchers helps to secure the interest of a fifth of potential buyers.
The retailers will not have it all their own way though, as they find it harder to control the shopping experience of their customers who have access to many mobile apps and websites that enable the comparison of product prices, including Amazon’s successful app.
However, vouchers and offers can be a strong motivator, and with the full force of the retailer’s marketing machines behind the push, the opportunity to regain the upper hand in online and mobile experiences still exists. Even if retailers are a little late to the game, and are yet to fully roll out mobile sites to enable communication and real engagement on the move.
NFC (Near Field Communication) could be the ace that the retailers have yet to play, and by linking cashless payments to branded mobile shopping sites, those that want to take advantage of this type of payment are likely to be inserted into the retailer’s online assets.
Another blocker remains security, as around half of respondents of the Tradedoubler survey were concerned about the security of mobile as a payment platform, but 42% said they were interested in using their device as a mobile wallet.
Unfortunately, as with all web-based developments, the real barrier remains access to strong, secure and consistent broadband connectivity, and without this the opportunity for retailers falls flat.
This is why we can expect to see more investment in retailer Wi-Fi networks, alongside relevant mobile sites and offers, and it is the quality of these networks that could be the difference between success and failure.
Is your brand really engaging with humans on Twitter?
June 15th, 2012
A nice piece of relatively simple Twitter research was published last week from Milan’s IULM University. It shows that high levels of brands are talking to Twitter bots, and not customers, via brand Twitter profiles.
Professor of corporate communications and digital languages at IULM University, Marco Camisani Calzolari, found that in some cases nearly half a company’s Twitter followers were bots.
As you can see in the table above, @DellOutlet score highest for Twitter bots, or lowest for engagement, with 46% of its 1.5 million followers being identified as non-human users, with a further 13.2% unquantifiable.
EA, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Blackberry, Playstation, Samsung mobile and Starbucks also feature in the research, which focused on brand accounts with 10,000 followers or more.
Although some of the figures are particularly high, it did not come as a complete surprise that a large percentage of brand followers are bots. After all, the general obsession with follower numbers, rather than useful engagement, has long hindered any real measurement of a brand’s relevance on Twitter.
The ultimate result of this numbers approach is that there’s no need to actually listen or engage as long as you have many thousands of followers, which must mean you’re doing something right? Wrong!
The reality is that the vast majority of these brand profiles will be fully aware that they have bot followers, but are unlikely to cull these followers while numbers are still so important, which is both self-defeating in terms of customer engagement and irrelevant in terms of useful data collection and feedback.
Richard Binhammer, Dell’s Social Media Relations manager commented on the findings in MediaBistro:
“We don’t control who follows any of our Twitter accounts and we don’t artificially increase the number of followers. In fact, paying third parties to undertake such action is contrary to our policy. While there are some tools that claim to identify bots, they are not 100 percent accurate. The only action we could take is to ‘block’ a follower. We certainly would not want to risk ‘blocking’ a potential customer. Our focus is on relationships and engagements with customers.”
While I agree many tools do not pick up bots, some of those 46% must have been visible…just a little bit.
The final word goes to the author of the research, Professor Calzolari, who confirmed: “The research shows that the number of followers is no longer a valid indicator of the popularity of a Twitter user. Many of the companies included in the research have delegated their public relations activities on social networks to web agencies that in some cases have taken short cuts in order to demonstrate to companies, who are oblivious, that their activities have been successful by generating lots of new users.”
You can download the full report here.
The results were developed by awarding points for behaviour associated typically with humans, and points for behaviour typically associated with bots. These numbers were then crunched in an algorithm. Human behaviour included a profile containing a name, an image and a physical address, while bot behaviour included users only using APIs to tweet.
The report also states that “the algorithm allowing “human” and “bot” points to be assigned was defined with very conservative parameters.“
Content is a means to an end. The end – and media’s greatest asset – is audience
June 8th, 2012
After catching up on my reading following the Jubilee break in the UK, I was alerted to this excellent piece on Paid Content, titled: Forget about ‘content management’-and focus on ‘audience development’ by Ben Elowitz co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint.
The title pretty much says all you need to know about the subject matter. Elowitz has nailed the failing content management approach of too many media organisations with an insightful look at the over reliance on content itself, with little regard for the audience.
This is real ‘Stock and flow‘ stuff (the economic model that works equally well for media).
I used a direct quote from the piece as the title to my post: “Content is just a means to an end. The end – and media’s greatest asset – is audience”, and to expand, Elowitz went on to reflect on the common mistake that too many media companies have repeated: “Advertisers don’t pay to reach content – they pay to reach audience. And building an audience that will earn you advertising is only partly about content. In truth, just as much hinges on distribution. If your delightful content can’t find and catch the attention of your audience, the value of your content drops to zero. If a tree falls in a forest…
He continues:
“Media companies over the last 10 years have invested in an enormously expensive card catalogue, while spending only pennies to bring people into the library. The big opportunity with digital media is not to organise your content closet or have efficient workflow – it’s about driving demand and building an audience using digital channels and all of the rich data that comes with them. That’s the way to use systems to multiply the top line, not just streamline the expense line.”
The idea that if we simply focus on developing great content then the rest will just happen, is simply wrong. The build it and they will come approach is long since dead, and if you’re not focused on your audience (or flow) your content may well be the best, but no one will know about it.
In my opinion this situation has only been worsened by the legacy thinking from media organisations that has seen so many struggle to prosper in the digital age. The problems that large publishers have experienced in making a digital model relevant are well documented, or as Elowitz says: “it’s because these intricately designed systems have been based on one big misunderstanding: that a media company’s most valuable asset is content.” but this way of thinking has developed into a deeper problem in the psyche of content managers/developers.
In the past content lived or died on the strength of its quality. The channel was always there, you picked up a magazine, or a newspaper and there was the content, but now the channel isn’t clear. Many don’t understand the channel, or which channel to use or where to even start looking.
The content is lost in the channel. The channel is often lost in the channel. The channel has become value and conversation and sharing, but you need to be able to find the content to share it and grab attention as well as hold it.
These are very different focuses to content development alone, this is digital distribution. This means a change in thinking is necessary. Traditionally we may have resorted to building our own channel, but the focus should centre on being useful to existing communities to become part of the flow of conversation. We’re not reinventing the wheel, we’re getting on-board with the existing revolution.
So what can be done to rectify the situation? Well, Elowitz offers five steps that every content manager should follow, which you can read in full in the article, and I strongly recommend you do:
Taken from: Forget about ‘content management’-and focus on ‘audience development’ by Ben Elowitz
1. Manage across the many channels of distribution.
2. Adjust the focus from audience to individual.
3. Use abundant user data to know what works.
4. Make your systems look forward, not back.
5. Fully socialise your distribution.
When social customers reach out, brands need to respond
May 18th, 2012
Two interesting pieces of research came out this week, each focused on the change in customer behaviour online, and the ever-growing importance of social CRM and social customer experience.
The first piece from Fishburn Hedges, which we picked up via econsultancy, highlighted that more than a third of UK consumers (36%) have engaged with brands through social media, which has doubled from 19% since August 2011 and equates to 18million people.
The survey suggests that the increased interaction is driven by the widespread belief among respondents (40%) that social media improves customer service, compared to only 7% who feared it would harm service.
Furthermore, 68% of those who have engaged with brands through social media believe that it “allowed them to find their voice.”
More than two-thirds (65%) also believe that social media is a better way to communicate with companies than call centres, and interestingly, more than a quarter of the 55+ age group had dealt with a brand on social media, rising to 49% of 18-24 year olds. (A break down of age groupings can be seen in the image below.)
The second survey is from customer intelligence agency Indicia, which highlights the growing trend of what it calls BIOR or ‘brand in their own right’, which is apparently how 20% of consumers see themselves.
BIORS understand the value of using social media to communicate their preferences and data in the hope of attracting targeted offers from brands.
More men (23%) consider themselves a BIOR compared to just 16% of women, with almost a third of BIORs aged between 18 and 34. BIORS also have looser purse strings and out-perform non-BIORS in six of 11 spend brackets (e.g. £751-£1,000) particularly in the higher spend categories of over £1,000 per month.
These research pieces reflect the evolving nature of the consumer, which we have referred to on this blog previously as the social customer. (you can find out further information in our guide to social CRM here)
In brief, the social customer is dynamic, hyper-connected and can shape business and brand reputation by defining an organisation’s value, relevance and reputation. As a result, social customers have compelled organisations of all types to be more customer-centric and have transformed the way in which organisations need to communicate with and, most importantly, listen to their customers.
Put simply, the social customer now owns the relationship, and every organisation needs need to earn his/her trust.
The social customer is also a driving force in the development of the online economy, which is rapidly growing and currently contributes 8.3 per cent to the UK economy. This is more than the healthcare, construction or education sectors.
UK consumers also buy far more from online retail sources than any other major economy and this is expected to continue expanding by 11% per year for the next four years, reaching a total value of £221bn by 2016. Compare this to growth rates of 5.4% in the U.S. and 6.9% in China.
Taking these points into consideration, the question becomes: are brands ready and able to listen and engage with social customers? Those that have evolved their approach to offer an open and relevant response will gain advocates and prosper, those that have not will miss out on a growing opportunity at best, and risk damaging the brand’s reputation at worst.
MIT and Harvard offer a glimpse of future opportunities for higher education with edX
May 3rd, 2012
Earlier this week, Harvard and MIT joined forces to launch the edX platform, which will offer educational courses and content for free online.
The platform, which was originally developed by MIT, will include video lessons quizzes, immediate feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, online laboratories and student-paced learning.
EdX has also made the decision to release its learning platform as open-source software. As a result, MIT and Harvard expect that over time other universities will join them in offering courses on the edX platform and because the learning technology will be available as open-source software, other universities and individuals will also be able to help edX improve and add features to the technology.
This is a smart move as it encourages the knowledge base that is normally spread across numerous universities to come together in this single learning platform. This is not just a move to take learning online, but also a strategy to enhance the global reputation of these already respected learning centres.
It is no secret that further education has been through a number of changes in recent years and has also faced criticism that methods and courses have not moved quickly enough in line with current techniques and opportunities. Although it would be hard to level that criticism against these two giants of the education sector, it is a strong sign that they wish to lead from the front and take learning to a more open and accessible level.
MIT and Harvard will also use the jointly operated edX platform to research how students learn and how technologies can facilitate effective teaching both on-campus and online. The edX platform will enable the study of which teaching methods and tools are most successful. The findings of this research will be used to inform how faculty use technology in their teaching, which will enhance the experience for students on campus and for the millions expected to take advantage of these new online offerings.
The platform will be overseen by a not-for-profit organisation, which will be owned and governed equally by the two universities. MIT and Harvard have already committed to a combined $60 million ($30 million each) in institutional support, grants and philanthropy to launch the collaboration.
Anant Agarwal, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who has led the development of the MITx platform under the leadership of MIT Provost L. Rafael Reif, will serve as the first president of edX.
At Harvard, Provost Alan Garber will direct the Harvardx effort and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith will play a leading role in working with faculty to develop and deliver courses.
It is anticipated that initial course offerings from a range of Harvard and MIT schools will be included on the edX platform, and the first courses will be announced in the summer, and are due to begin in the autumn of 2012.
Here’s the edX video: