Survival is about getting your hands dirty ...

Having been a bit on the 'busy' side for a little while I have not had much time to sit back, think and contemplate an article for this blog. Not that there hasn't been much happening, more that some of it is probably beyond blogworthiness at this moment (so watch this space).

However, here is a thought ...
I get to meet many educators in many situations and with this I often encounter a mentality that 'marketing' isn't doing their job properly. Having stuck at this education lark since the mid nineties I have some news for everyone - we were all complaining that marketing wasn't doing their job properly even when we had more students than we could shake a stick at.
Personally, I prefer to try and work with the marketing and comms types ... we do see things differently they are not always perfect ... but dear academics nor are we, in fact they often find us to be amongst the most awkward bunch of cantankerous sods ever to walk this planet.

Having worked with academics and educators - I tend to agree with them - that is who we are.

Considering all of this, educational survival is about getting your hands dirty. Yes, we the pure academics have to involve ourselves in marketing, communications and other channels such as social media. It takes time to build up a presence - if you want something for tomorrow, you should have been working on it a year ago. That is the nature of the beast.

It is taking time to raise the profile of something I am involved with - I have as yet not seen any immediate dividends. But, it is my instinct that presence is better than no presence at all. Where being seen in different media spaces may have some influence over the longer term decline of any of my programmes of study.

Rather than expecting others to do this for me - I am making sure that I am involved and may have some minor influence over my longer term survival and the longevity of the programmes I work with.

It is all about getting your hands dirty.

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