Higher Ed Storytelling University

John Azoni: All right, Darren Roubinek, welcome to the podcast. Darren, you are the Senior Marketing Lead at Central, or University of Central Missouri. And you are formerly in leadership at Avila University. So welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Darren Roubinek: Oh, thank you, John. I've, I've, I'm honored and appreciate the opportunity. Yeah I've I've recently taken the position here at the University of Central Missouri, UCM. This is my first, we were just talking earlier, this is my first move in day. So, the fall season is, is, is starting. And really this is my, first Eighth year in higher ed, so I'm, I'm still, you know, things are still shiny and [00:03:00] amazing to me, which is, which is pretty cool.

Darren Roubinek: Prior to joining Avala, I spent an entire lifetime on the agency side, small agency in Kansas City. Really doing a lot of B2B, B2C for, and wearing a lot of hats and it transfers beautifully into, into higher ed. So, it's, it's, it's, it's great. I couldn't be happier.

John Azoni: So, well, so we're, you posted, the reason we got you on here, you posted something on LinkedIn that really kind of resonated with me cause I was kind of feeling that way at the time.

John Azoni: And it was something about You know, trying to keep up with all the, keep up with the Joneses on, on all these social media platforms. And what to focus on, what not to focus on that, that kind of thing. So we got you here. I wanted to just have a conversation with somebody that's also thinking about those things currently too.

John Azoni: So I appreciate you being here. First off, let's see. So tell us a story. Tell us maybe a story from your life [00:04:00] that people might be surprised to know about you. Let's kick

Darren Roubinek: it off that way. Yeah, and this is, this is my icebreaker story. It's not so much of a, well, it's a bit of a story. But it's always the icebreaker one.

Darren Roubinek: So I went to high school with Brad Pitt. And so, I, to be honest, I don't remember him that much. But he signed my yearbook. So I have evidence that I was actually there and it's obvious. Yeah. And it's, it's obvious from what he said that we had a PE class together. So then I just kind of make the, the titillating leap.

Darren Roubinek: Well, we must have then showered together. So I've showered with, with Brad Pitt. That's, that's my, that's my lead in any ice breaking conversations.

John Azoni: That's amazing. Brad Pitt

Darren Roubinek: signed your yearbook. He signed my yearbook. Yeah, yeah, he did. He's a year older. So, you know, I, I still have, I still have time to become the world's sexiest man.

Darren Roubinek: But

John Azoni: yeah, you still, yeah, you're on your way.

Darren Roubinek: You're well on your way.

John Azoni: I'm on my way.[00:05:00] That's cool. I have a similar, I mean, I didn't. I didn't go to high school with Madonna, but I went to Madonna's high school. And so she's like on the wall at Rochester Adams high school. You know, in like the, the old yearbooks from like, I don't know, it was like the, the eighties or something.

John Azoni: And so she's on there and my history teacher. And also who was also my gym, like PE teacher was her cheerleading coach way back in the day. And they interviewed her on some VH1, like behind the music of Madonna. Okay. She was on TV. It was like very weird. I don't think I saw that episode. I should Google it and see if it's out there.

John Azoni: But yeah, that's, that's our claim to fame here is Madonna is, you know. Madonna's from like 20 minutes from where I, where I live. I'm sure she's, she, I don't know if she's been back.

Darren Roubinek: Right. Right. Did they change the mascot to the, to the Madonnas at some point, you know, just to really play up [00:06:00] on that that notoriety.

John Azoni: Yeah. Yeah. So, and okay, well, that's great to know. Thanks for sharing that with us. Sure. Speaking of celebrities and if People listening listen to my Bart Kaler episode that we just released as, as of today, we released that yesterday. We're recording this on the day after the release of that, we talked all about AI.

John Azoni: And so putting into practice some things that I learned from Bart I went on chat GPT in preparation for this episode. And I said I told the robots, I said, I'm interviewing. Darren Roubinek on the Higher Ed Storytelling University podcast. This is my exact prompt. We will be, we will be discussing social media platform overwhelm and how there are so many social media outlets popping up.

John Azoni: It's harder for higher ed marketers to keep up with them and know what to do. Lots of fear of missing out. Here's, here's where it gets good. Act like Oprah. And give me a list of deep thought provoking questions to ask him that will get at the heart of people's pain points With all these social media platforms to keep up with [00:07:00] All right.

John Azoni: And the first iteration was very Was just very I don't think maybe like didn't pick up on the Oprah part of it. So it was just very generic questions. So I my my whatever you do like a regenerated I said make you sound more like oprah and so I'm, just gonna throw i'm gonna pepper in this episode a few oprah questions.

John Azoni: So these are apparently things that oprah would say so she would greet you like this. Well. Hello there darren picture this higher ed marketers caught in a world are caught in a whirlwind of new social media platforms popping up left and right. How can they find that aha moment between innovation and overwhelming FOMO fear of missing out?

John Azoni: I actually think that's a good question. We'll start there. Cause that might kick us off. What would you say?

Darren Roubinek: Yeah, and I think, I think the, to me it plays on a lot of levels. Higher ed marketing [00:08:00] departments are notoriously thin resourced. And yet there is a, I think there's a, just a kind of a natural pressure to because you're dealing with, with, with students and recruitment of, of, of, of young adults.

Darren Roubinek: You need to be where they are. We need to be, you know, this is the latest and greatest thing. We have to be there and there's this fear if you're not there then you're missing out and I like to when this, and it comes up it came up with threads. That was the, I think that was the LinkedIn post, we were talking about threads.

Darren Roubinek: And it came up with, with that and I like to take a, take a breath and my philosophy really is looking at the resources that you have, what can you do really well and with that, without, without just trying to be everywhere all at once, where are the, where are the platforms that you can do really well and, and focus on [00:09:00] those sure, experiment with, with threads, but don't devote a lot of, a lot of resources to it until.

Darren Roubinek: You have the resources to, to really dive into it, or you find that your other platforms just really aren't, aren't performing and, and you, and you need, you need to change up. And so part of my, my, my unofficial policy rule is if you're, if we're going to bring threads into the, into the mix, then I need to I need to get off one of the other platforms.

Darren Roubinek: And so again, threads was kind of easy because. We weren't, we weren't really paying a lot of attention to, to Twitter. So, okay, if we're going to, if we're going to really try to figure out threads, then we need to stop putting our, our time and resources to, to Twitter and, and use that in, into threads.

Darren Roubinek: There's just only so much, there are only so many hours of the day. There's only so much you can do. And I just [00:10:00] really don't subscribe to that school of thought of just. Put stuff out everywhere and hope that something sticks. I think you should, you should be somebody somewhere. I may not get the reach that, that others are getting, but I hope I'm developing the content and engagement with that smaller audience on, on whatever, whatever platform we're, we're using.

Darren Roubinek: So I try to take a, take a deep breath and and, and not to have that, that FOMO. It's not easy, but I try.

John Azoni: I saw, I was scrolling through TikTok yesterday and someone was talking about FOMO and, and the woman goes, I don't have FOMO, I have JOMO, Joy of Missing Out. She's like, I see all these people clamoring after the next thing and I'm just happy that I'm doing what's working.

John Azoni: Right.

Darren Roubinek: If it, if it ain't broke, don't, don't necessarily fix it. Again, I don't want it to sound like we [00:11:00] don't want to try new things. Right. We have to take care of the things that we are doing well and build on those.

John Azoni: Yeah. And I think it's an interesting conversation because on this podcast, I mean, I learned so much just from.

John Azoni: All y'all, you know, guests coming on here. And I mean, every guest, I, I feel like I leave, I go for a walk around my neighborhood and I'm just like, man, I got to do something different now. It's just like always challenging me. So, you know, we've had multiple schools of thought on this, on this podcast. We've had several people talking about, quality over quantity. Things like you said. Be some, be someone. Pick one thing. Do it really well. If it's LinkedIn, if it's Twitter, Facebook, whatever, X, whatever they call it now. Do it really well. Have a point of view. Create really quality content. Don't feel like you have to post three times a day, four times a day.

John Azoni: Just do it. do it really well. And I've resonated with that. And then we've had the other side of the spectrum and I think it is a very [00:12:00] valid point too. We had Rob Clark on the show from he's that his account is that tall family on, on TikTok and he's gone viral. He's got over a million.

John Azoni: Followers on, on on tick tock. And he also consults with, I think it's Greenville, University College in like Greenville, South Carolina, North Carolina, one of those anyways, but his, his whole philosophy is be like cast a wider net, like create vertical video content, but put it on reels, you know, YouTube shorts, TikTok LinkedIn, that kind of thing.

John Azoni: And I've actually tried that. And I think there's, I think there's validity to that. Cause his, his worldview is it doesn't, you don't really know what's going to take off. And he always says, like, he says, like the people that hit the baseball players that hit the most home. The ones that swing at more pitches hit more home runs or something.

John Azoni: He posted like a graph recently that like proved that point, like from actual [00:13:00] baseball data. But he, he, his philosophy is kind of like something eventually is going to take off on one of these like vertical video platforms. And that's going to make up for all the. The ones that didn't go anywhere.

John Azoni: You know, but you want to take, take advantage of all these different you know, the different algorithms across, you know, reels and, and, Tik Tok, Rob, if you're listening to this, maybe I just butchered your whole world view. I might be getting an email. That's like, that is not what I said, but but, but I've, and I, but I've been experimenting with, with, with, with, with both.

John Azoni: So. LinkedIn for me has been my primary because that's just where, where my audience is active kind of director level higher ed marketers. But I've also seen some promise with and it's using a social media tool I use social pilot and you can set up multiple accounts and really just like taking one vertical video that I'll [00:14:00] post like a clip from the podcast and with.

John Azoni: some extra clicks. You can cast that also to YouTube shorts, TikTok, things like that. And I'm always intrigued, like it's not been like crazy good, but it is, it is good to see like some things I'm like, Oh, this one got like 500 views versus on LinkedIn only got like a hundred impressions or, or whatever.

John Azoni: So there is, there is something brewing. I feel like in that sort of. More viral potential kind of vertical video space like Tik Tok and, and reels and stuff, but it does call into question this quantity versus, versus quality thing. And I think there's, there's really validity to both sides, but I think that does, you know,

Darren Roubinek: cause, yeah, I, you know, I, I agree.

Darren Roubinek: And it's not that. That we're not repurposing you know, we're, our, our focus is really Instagram and, and YouTube again, kind of because of the, the resources that we have, have around us.[00:15:00] And so, so shorts and reels, but we're also, you know, we're also making sure that we, we do post it on, on Facebook.

Darren Roubinek: We do post it on Tik TOK. We do, you know, we, we do share that, but first and foremost, it needs to work on. Instagram and, and YouTube for us. And I think the, I think the other part is with, with, with Rob and content creators is that that's their job is content creation and they can spend, they can spend 12 hours a day.

Darren Roubinek: On, on content creation in a higher ed marketing department social media is only one sliver of it. And we're, we're wearing multiple hats and, and, and pressure's coming from multiple ways. So we can't, we can't spend 12 hours making, making tick tock. So what, where are we going to spend the time that we do have and, and, and, and spend it [00:16:00] wisely.

John Azoni: So tell me about let me back up a little bit. So you were at Avila, Avila university or college? Yes.

Darren Roubinek: Yep. Avila University.

John Azoni: Avila University. You've since very recently moved over to UCM. And your teams have been very different. As you told me in our pre call and as you're just talking about like resources to get the content made, tell me, tell me about the difference you've experienced with your teams at both universities.

Darren Roubinek: Yeah, so, AVA is a small private institution in, in South Kansas City. My team full time employees at, at one time was maybe four or five. When I left, there were three of us. And, and none of us really had none of us really had, had video skills, video, video talent. So, while video was.

Darren Roubinek: It's, it's very important. It was hard for us to create video content. It took us a long time to, you know, to, to, to [00:17:00] create video content. Whereas, more text based or image based, we could, we could move that pretty quickly. So, Resource wise, we focus more on, more on, on, on still images, carousel, you know, type posts and, and not, and not video.

Darren Roubinek: Just simply because we didn't have the, the, the talent around us to. To to utilize and we were all wearing so multiple, multiple hats. So there were, there were three of us but you know, we're still doing everything from commencement programs and theater posters and every flyer known to mankind and you know, occasionally you would have student workers who are, who were really, I mean, I had a couple of student workers who were just spectacular in the seven years that I, that I was there, but then they graduate and, and now.

Darren Roubinek: What they were doing isn't necessarily going to be picked up by it by another student. And so you've got to pick up that that load amongst the amongst the 3 of [00:18:00] us. So it was very much. It was definitely more reactive than than than proactive. It was just pretty overwhelming, but that was. Really kind of where I help me kind of develop that philosophy.

Darren Roubinek: We can't do everything. So let's make sure we do this. You know, let's let's prioritize and do the things that that we can do well and build build on that. You know, part of the FOMO is universities are also horrible at prioritizing. They never want to. They never want somebody to feel like they're not as special as somebody else.

Darren Roubinek: And so marketing is this. We're the fixers. How do we understand that. How do we fix all of these important things? And, and, and how do we set priorities? Which is, again, I kind of, I kind of picked up and learned and learned on, on that at, at Avila, then moving to UCM. It's a regional public. We are probably 9 times the size of Avala, and so my, my team is kind of reflective of that as well.

Darren Roubinek: I'm in a department of, [00:19:00] of, of 16, 17, and 10, 10 are in the kind of design content creation I, and I have, I have really three strong videographers. So now video, it's like, okay, we have the resources now to produce and really work video. And that's why YouTube is, is, is going to be an important platform for us.

Darren Roubinek: Why, why Instagram and Reels and, and TikTok will be, be important because we now have the resources that we can. We can, we can use for that. So it, so my role has really kind of shifted from a, a day to day doer to more of a day to day mentor and, and I'm kind of more of a creative director now in, you know, in that I have people I don't have to go shoot anymore which was a wild thing for me to.

Darren Roubinek: You know, first day is like, wait a minute. You mean I don't have to take a camera and [00:20:00] go down there and monkey my way around and try to try to, you know, it was, it was, it, it, it, that really is like, oh, this is, this is awesome. This is, this is really good because they're also so much better than I ever will be at their, at their, at their skills and talents.

Darren Roubinek: But with that nine times size comes also nine times kind of the type of work in the amount of work that we're doing across, across campus. So I have one, I have a, I have a social media, media manager. And he's also a, a, a great videographer. And so his focus really is. Really is on, on, on social media, but we're trying to, trying to build this kind of integrated team where design is, is, is helping out and, and, and my marketing specialists are providing content and we're working as a, you know, kind of as a, as a mini team within the team [00:21:00] on, on social.

Darren Roubinek: So that's really. Opened up a lot of opportunities for us, but again, outside of my, my media manager, I, you know, everybody is, has a lot of other projects too. So it's, it's, it's resource man. So I'm a creative director and I'm going to logistics resource manager too in that regard.

John Azoni: So, and that's makes me think of, you know, the, the video team, the design team would tell, tell us about.

John Azoni: The, the inflow of work, because are you guys like pretty centralized, like, like all the, like all the different programs are sending requests through your team for visuals and things like that?

Darren Roubinek: They should be, that doesn't always happen. But yeah, so, anyone in the, in the university can submit a job.

Darren Roubinek: I, I need a. an image for this newsletter I'm sending out, or I need, I want to send out a newsletter. Can you [00:22:00] help me write, design, send out a, send out a newsletter? Or again, you know, we've got this theater coming up and here's the season. I need, I need posters and I need this and that. Each department has their own budget.

Darren Roubinek: So they don't, our services. Don't cost them anything, but if they're printing something, if they have to, you know, if they, if, if they need something printed that comes out of their budget. So that kind of determines what type of projects they're sending us. But, but yeah, they, it anyone can. And so it's a lot, you know, so it's a, and it's a mix.

Darren Roubinek: Some people still don't realize, I believe anyway, don't realize that we can help them and do this. So there's, you still have people who are doing on their own just simply because they didn't know this was not an option. Others know it's an option and know, well, I just want to, I got Canva. I'm going to just do it, you know, and so in one of the, you know, one of the, one of the roles that we also take is that brand [00:23:00] police and you know, unfortunately we're the ones who, who oftentimes have to say no.

Darren Roubinek: And. Okay. With that no but or next time, let us come in up front and we can do this together. You can still, you can still do it, but let us kind of help set you up for success so at the end, you know, we don't run into a, into a no situation. So it's a, it's a constant education also amongst, you know, amongst the university.

Darren Roubinek: There are a lot of people here and a lot of, and a lot of a lot of departments and we're just, we're just, we're just one. And some people don't even know we exist.

John Azoni: And so, how would you, how do you, how do you manage like. The balance between taking orders and then actually doing forward pushing content.

Darren Roubinek: It's, it's, yeah, it's hard. It's, it, it, it's hard. So we have, so the way that, that we're organized, we have four colleges and so [00:24:00] we have four marketing specialists who each has a, is, has a, a college and are responsible for, for a college. And so a lot of that work is making sure that that their content on the website is, is up to date and is, is, is, is working from not only an SEO standpoint, but from a visitor standpoint.

Darren Roubinek: So a lot of the work is just maintaining that, that website content as they, is, As they work with the partners, the hope is that we can be more proactive with, with the individual colleges, with the individual departments and chairs. And and, but I don't think we're necessarily to that, to that point yet.

Darren Roubinek: We are still taking a lot of just kind of Taking orders and just, we just got to crank some stuff out. Sometimes we're trying to get to a place where we can be more proactive and at [00:25:00] least if, and at least if somebody puts in a job I know you wanted a brochure, but have you thought about what if we did a video, you know, and to be and to bring that those what ifs and those, those questions questions back and we're doing a better job of that.

Darren Roubinek: So that's how we're kind of yeah. Stepping into being more proactive but it's, but it's difficult. It is, it's, it's, it's, it's a small university, but it's still big. You know, it's, there's still a lot of moving pieces.

John Azoni: Yeah. And so YouTube makes, makes sense. Instagram TikTok and all that stuff makes sense.

John Azoni: But you said your, your main focuses are YouTube and Instagram. So tell me about what kind of content are you posting on each?

Darren Roubinek: Yeah, it's we tend to, we tend to focus heavier on traditional undergraduate recruitment. And so it's, it is, it's slice of life stories. It's a student [00:26:00] stories. We are in a We're in a, in a, in a small town in, in Missouri, Warrensburg, Missouri, which is about 50 miles from Kansas City the closest larger metropolitan area.

Darren Roubinek: Most. Students, if you, if, you know, if you were to ask a high school student, what do you, what do you know about Warrensburg? Have you heard of, you know, they have an impression of you know, a small, more rural town. If you ask them about the university, then they kind of have that, that same impression.

Darren Roubinek: Well, it must be, it's, it's small and they so what we're trying to do with our, With our reels and with our YouTube is to show the campus because it really is a big campus in a small, in a small community. It's surprising what, what, what it looks like. And it surprises a lot of students. They didn't think they would find that in Warrensburg.

Darren Roubinek: I would expect to find that in Kansas City. [00:27:00] Sure. In Saint Louis. Yes, but not in Kansas City. In Warrensburg, so it's a lot of it is just showing what we look like, but then also, and I guess it kind of in the same way. What do our students look like and sound like? And what are their their desires and their challenges and their struggles?

Darren Roubinek: And how have they succeeded here? Those are the type of stories that that we're trying to tell more and more. So it's trying to give an insider look. Yeah. To a community that you may or may not have an impression of at all.

John Azoni: So, so storytelling does play a pretty significant role then, it sounds like,

Darren Roubinek: in your content.

Darren Roubinek: Yeah, I think absolutely, yeah, absolutely. We probably lean a little too heavy on you know, 94% get scholarships, 97% are in a career, you know, we probably lean a little too heavy on that. But it's really the, the, the stories that, that give you an idea of, [00:28:00] am I a right fit for this university?

Darren Roubinek: Because not everybody is. But I just need to get, I just need to get it out there so you can make that decision on your own. Is this a right fit? Right fit for me. Can I see myself there and succeeding there? So I think stories do the best, best at telling that.

John Azoni: Yeah, I agree. Have you seen like a difference in engagement between stories versus the more statistical?

John Azoni: Stuff or,

Darren Roubinek: you know, nothing that I could that I could point to and say, you know what, this, this post five people into into seats, you know, nothing, nothing like that. But engagement wise, I think you definitely get more engagement when. People see a face and a person and that engagement may just be, Hey, John, I saw, I saw your video, you know, and it's, or mom is, is, you know, is [00:29:00] tagging the, the aunts and uncles or whatever, you know, but it's, I think you also get, you also.

Darren Roubinek: Whether it's, again, whether it's positive or negative comments, you get more comments on, again, when you're showing a person. And you know that they're at least, that they're watching it and engaging with it. More statistical, it's hard because, oh, yeah, I like it, I guess. I don't, you know, it's easy to scroll past, scroll past the numbers.

John Azoni: It might, it might make a, a dent in their brain and you would never know that, you know, if they scrolled past it, they might be like, Oh, okay, cool. And, you know, they don't engage with it, but it made an impact on them, you know, in some way. So, when you are filming we're doing videos for, for Reels versus YouTube.

John Azoni: I know there's kind of this fork in the road of like, all right, do we, do we create horizontal videos for YouTube and then somehow crop them vertically? Or do we have [00:30:00] someone also come to the shoot with an iPhone? Do we make that vertical thing like a separate thing? Do we have the student film themselves?

John Azoni: Like tell me about how you guys are managing that.

Darren Roubinek: It's, it's it's probably a mixed bag. I think our, our two main videographers are primarily shooting horizontal, but they're shooting in 4K with the idea of their eye, of their eye that this is probably going to be also used vertically. So they, they go into the shoot kind of thinking it's going to go, it's going to go both ways.

Darren Roubinek: My social media manager, he's, he's definitely shooting, he's definitely shooting more just verticals straight out, you know, when, when, when he's shooting. But even and even though we have these 3, these 3 videographers we want to do more video. We definitely want to do more, more student work. So, we'll have student workers and, and the hope and the idea is that they will be shooting and they will be doing iPhone, more iPhone stuff.

Darren Roubinek: Yeah. More man on the [00:31:00] street type type video. Those are the, those are the, those are the pieces that are really kind of missing out of our, our puzzle because we aren't in the places that students are all the time. We're, we're still on the, we're still on the edges. We just, it's, we shouldn't be inside.

Darren Roubinek: That's where the students should be. So what's the, I'd like to see that, that POV. So we're going to, we're going to be using more kind of student help with that.

John Azoni: Cool. And I know that there's, there's always been kind of a, maybe not a debater, but just, just people noticing that this, this more like down to earth sort of lo fi look, like to vertical videos.

John Azoni: Seems to fit in better, and then, with, then, then maybe something that was filmed on a cinematic camera with a shallow depth of field with blurry background, that kind of thing and I actually kind of held that view for a long time, but really, in the last month or so, I've been seeing stuff in TikTok that looks like it was Shot very well or [00:32:00] repurposed.

John Azoni: And I'm like, like that actually fits like that. So I kind of feel like at least I'm seeing in my algorithm the, the pendulum swinging a little bit the other way where people you know, schools shouldn't be afraid to film something horizontally and make it look nice and then repurpose that. I think maybe the difference is like.

John Azoni: If it's clearly a commercial, like you're starting with a drone shot and there's this inspiring song and then there's this inspiring, you know, voiceover, poetically speaking, that's different. That, that doesn't really fit. But but yeah, I mean, just from what I've seen, I, I seem to. It seems, it appears that there's kind of being a shift maybe a little bit towards quality being accepted to in, in as, as well as just some more lo fi stuff.

Darren Roubinek: And I, I think that's part of the, it's, it's also what's the story that they're telling with that, with that cinematic shot, you know? Is it, is that's what is, because I think that's what's resonating more than, than [00:33:00] whether it, it looks like it's... It's it's raw and authentic. It's it's the story. Authentic is is what they're saying.

Darren Roubinek: Authentic. And that's probably me because I come from a writing background. So words are, you know, words are king. So is the is the story and what they're what the messaging what they're saying is that's authentic. It really doesn't matter how it's how it's shot necessarily.

John Azoni: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, so On this podcast, we talk a lot about video.

John Azoni: But I, I appreciate having guests that, that come on with a text based perspective. So tell me, tell me a little bit about like, what are you bringing the team that has you guys doing more tech space? Storytelling, content creation if anything you know, do, do you guys, are you guys like really like 90% video or do you, what else is going on

Darren Roubinek: that you, yeah, we're definitely not 90% video.

Darren Roubinek: Yeah, we're we're probably, we're probably still rather [00:34:00] text have heavier, you know, maybe 70, 30. Text still image to, to, to video. I think, I think that will get, I think that will, will change. I mean, because I think that kind of our, our emphasis is, is shifting to utilize video more. So I think that will, will change.

Darren Roubinek: But I think there's always still a place for for that for that still image. I mean, Yes, Instagram has changed and evolved over time, but it's still a visual first medium, you know, and that can be a really engaging still image as well as, as, as a, as a, as a video image. I, you know, I, I think from, from a, a writing standpoint, Background and writing perspective.

Darren Roubinek: I, I hope what I'm bringing is editing. I think in, in general, people like to talk too much or type too much. They just, you know, and so I hope I'm bringing editing to it.[00:35:00] I, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a firm. I don't know. I'm a firm believer of whether you're doing a I'm a billboard or not. Your message should be 7 to 11 words and be instantly recognized, you know, understood at 55 miles an hour.

Darren Roubinek: Even if you're not doing a billboard, that's where you, that's where you start and then you, and you can expand on it. And so I, I hope that what I'm bringing is that, that editor's, editor's eye. Is it, are we just being fluffy here? You know, or how can we, how do we say this more succinctly? Yeah,

John Azoni: content creation and, and, and arriving at quality, I think is almost as much about what you put into it as what you leave out, you know?

John Azoni: And I think it's, it's it's just about continual. I think like, you know, for me, when I'm writing an email newsletter or whatever it is, I usually just kind of like, [00:36:00] just go free. free thinking, whatever, just right. And then I'm usually like, it was way too long. I need like the things that I think like, Oh, this is great.

John Azoni: I got to include this usually and end up, you know, I'm kind of like, okay, maybe I just getting too long. I might need to cut that part and then just kind of boil it down. And so I think that's important, especially, you know, in this day, day and age of short attention spans. But yeah, I think people think a lot about.

John Azoni: What am I going to say? But then you also have to have an equal eye on like, what am I going to not say?

Darren Roubinek: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is. I think that's that's definitely definitely true And you know, I I've always thought if you're gonna write there's a place for a long copy, too Yeah, but you've got to be such a much better writer because I now need to To move you through from paragraph to, you know, sentence to sentence, not even paragraph to paragraph.

Darren Roubinek: So your writing has to be so engaging and you have to be such, yeah, to me it's, it's, it's [00:37:00] like short copy to me is a, is a crush because I don't think I'm not that good a writer to let you, you know, that you're going to want to read all, all of this, this text. So, but I think I am a good short, I'm a good burst.

Darren Roubinek: I'm a sprinter.

John Azoni: And I think it matters, the platform and the context, because I think a lot about you know, this podcast, when I first started, the first few episodes were like 20 minutes long and and, and to me, I'm like, wow, that's really long. Who's going to listen to me talk for 20 minutes, but now they're.

John Azoni: hour. And I don't edit much you know, we, my editor just, I instruct her just to kind of cut out the, the egregious errors, you know, cut out some of the things like that. But I noticed like, I mean, for me, when I go to listen to a podcast, I'm I'm deciding to invest in a long journey and I actually want it to be longer.

John Azoni: Like that's for me personally, I, I will, if I'm going to listen to an episode about a [00:38:00] topic and it's like 10 minutes long, I'm like, I don't know. I need, I need something more. I need, I need to really sink into something. An hour long is, you know, 45 minutes, an hour. That's kind of, that's kind of good. I listened to a podcast by this comedian, Nate Bargett, see the Nate land podcast.

John Azoni: His are two hours long and, and I just continue to snack on them as I'm doing dishes and I get in my car and things like that. So it, it matters like in those contexts where. The conversation can just be free flowing. You don't, you know, we're not like strategically every question trying to figure out how to move the person, the people listening to this episode through the episode.

John Azoni: Listen to the end. Because we just assume that people have come here to just sit for a while. You know, and I think when you have, when you have that's a very different thing than when you're scrolling. When you're trying to stop someone from scrolling, that's, that's very hard. If I'm just scrolling, that's what I've decided to do.

John Azoni: I've decided to be in scrolling mode and, and it's hard to get me. To, to [00:39:00] invest in anything, to click away to a different site, to do, you know, I just want like quick hits. So it really becomes like, kind of like just managing, like where, what you think your audience will be. Doing at that point, if it's a program page and you have a lot of copy you know, you probably get away with someone reading a lot more because it's like, if they want to know more about the program, this is how they would know, you know, they, they read it.

John Azoni: I'm not trying to like, get you to stop watching cat videos to come learn about this completely irrelevant college program, you know, but, but yeah, but yeah, so there's a balance there, but yeah, definitely writing, editing, making it. Tighter using bold, you know, headlines and things that allow for skimming those things come into play.

John Azoni: But but yeah, so, Oprah wanted to ask you another question. Yes. Yeah, I'm ready. Oprah says all right, darlings, let's get real universities want to shine. Bright like a diamond on every new platform, [00:40:00] but how can they channel their inner wisdom to pick the ones that truly light up their unique brand instead?

John Azoni: That sounds, it sounds kind of Oprah ish to me. Kind of a re kind of, we've already kind of covered this, but I do want to, I want to get back onto the topic of like, platform overwhelm. So, so tell Oprah what you think about that.

Darren Roubinek: I, yeah, I, I, I think that I think in able to, to, to shine again, you, you need to pick, pick your hill, pick the hill that you're going, that you're going to own.

Darren Roubinek: And this is going to be, this is where this is my shining hill. If you had unlimited resources, I think you could pick every hill that, that pops up. And, and, and go with the, go with the flow. Okay, this, this, you know, we're, Myspace is dead. We don't need to be on Myspace. You know, we can, you know, we can cut, we can go with the ebb and flow of what's, what's hot and what's not.

Darren Roubinek: But we don't have unlimited resources. So we need [00:41:00] to be. Really focused on the hills that we can, that we can that we can do well on and that we can own. And so, you know, I think what's, what's important is then once you have that hill, once you have, once you have that hill and you're shining on that hill, I think what you'll see is happen is that hill gets either higher or, or broader as you're becoming, you know, you be, you're becoming this, this yeah.

Darren Roubinek: Destination on platform, whatever again, you may not, it may not be the one that has the greatest reach, but if, if what you're seeing is engagement from if, if you're looking at an enrollment, if you're looking at engagement from the right demographics, if you're seeing, if you're seeing clicks from that, from that platform onto your website It doesn't, you know, I don't need every high school student in the world [00:42:00] to come to UCM.

Darren Roubinek: We're not right for every, every student, but there is a student that that we're right for. Are we seeing these students engaging with our, with our platform? You know, I, I, yeah, again, I need 10 students. I don't need it. A thousand students. I'm sure I'd love a thousand students, but I need 10 to, I need 10 to enroll, you know, 10, 10 makes it 10 makes a difference.

Darren Roubinek: It really does. So, instead, yeah, instead of thinking about trying to be everywhere. And I think you just, you only have so much power, so much light. And so you're just, you're going to be dimmer if you spread yourself too thin, as opposed to staking your claim on this is my hill and I'm going to be bright and shiny.

Darren Roubinek: Thank you.

John Azoni: Yeah. And so tell me about, like, have you, so there's, there's like the main, the mainstream. So there's X and there's Facebook or Meta, I guess we're calling everything by new name now. I know . Yeah. Right. Instagram you know, so there's the main, there's the [00:43:00] main players, TikTok. Then there's these like, these kind of like newcomers threads.

John Azoni: Be real isn't is one. There's some that have, have kind of left. Was that one that was, it was like audio rooms. Let you go chat.

Darren Roubinek: Yeah. Yeah.

John Azoni: Yeah. I don't know. Something like that. I'm okay. I'm going to forget about trying to think of the name, but there's like, there's things like fringe ones too.

John Azoni: Like, like, and there's probably one, there's probably hundreds of social. Networks, social media, places that are trying to build a community. You couldn't possibly be on, be on all of them. But it is worth experimenting with some. So you mentioned threads. Have you, have you experimented much with threads? Or did you just say like, this is not for us right now?

Darren Roubinek: Not a whole lot. And, and, and one of the reasons, and I may be completely wrong on this. I need to, need to look it up. But so the way it's set up with, with Instagram, you're, it's tag, it's, it's linked to your Instagram account. [00:44:00] That's where they're getting all the, where that big influx of, of new users came in.

Darren Roubinek: But if, if, if it's my understanding, if I were to leave, I can't cancel my Threads account without deleting my Instagram account. And so, we haven't as a university started a Threads account simply because I would just have to let it die. I don't like just letting things die and just sit there either.

Darren Roubinek: And so, so what we've done is on, on a personal side, we're, you know, my social manager and myself and others are, we're on threads and kind of trying to feel it out a little bit, see if this is the direction. But from a university standpoint, we're not experimenting with it right now. And I think it really is for main part because.

Darren Roubinek: And again, I'm probably, whether I'm right or wrong, this is my perception that I would [00:45:00] have, I couldn't just kill my Threads account. I would have to I would lose my Instagram account if I did that.

John Azoni: Yeah, that's a, that's a good point. I, you know, because you don't want someone to go there and it's just dead.

Darren Roubinek: And it's just dead, yeah, exactly. Sends the wrong message. Yep,

John Azoni: yep. Well, cool. This has been a great conversation. I'm gonna, I'm gonna let Oprah ask us one more question here. All right, let's do

Darren Roubinek: it. Take us out.

John Azoni: This is a, this is a, this is kind of a lofty question here. So if you don't have an intelligent answer, I don't blame you because I'm not sure that I do.

John Azoni: All right. But, but Oprah wonders, hold on to your seats because we're peering into the crystal ball. The future of higher ed social media is right around the corner. Darren, how can universities channel their inner fortune teller and prepare the, for the digital revolution? I feel like Oprah, I feel like Oprah is a little less cheesy than that.

John Azoni: I feel like she's a little more like, I don't know, but what, what, what do you got [00:46:00] for us? Do you have anything?

Darren Roubinek: Again, you can just say no. No, no, I mean, but I think it, I think it comes, I think it comes back to to me, it comes, it comes back to your resources. You, you know, I also don't want to, I don't want to set up my, my social media manager for, for, for failure, for burnout.

Darren Roubinek: I don't, you know, I. So, so the future is, is really in, in his hands in a lot of ways. I need to keep, I need to keep him challenged, keep him pushing. But I also have to be realistic in, in, in expectations and how many hours there are in a day and not take advantage, advantage of that. You know, I, I don't want to lose any, any of my, of my, of my team.

Darren Roubinek: I want this to be a place where they grow, where they're, where, again, they're, they're challenged where they're [00:47:00] doing things that they've didn't think they could do, where they're developing professionally. I want to make it hard for them to To leave. And so, so the future is really in, in, in his hands.

Darren Roubinek: I need to keep him healthy and wise and insane. So whatever comes down the pike, we're ready and able to, to to adapt to it.

John Azoni: Yeah. Yeah. And it's an interesting question because I feel like. Where is the line between we're not in the digital revolution and we are? Yeah, yeah, because I feel like, I feel like we've been in it since like the nineties, you know, it's just been slowly snowballing since, you know, everything's becoming more digital.

John Azoni: And

Darren Roubinek: yeah, exactly. And, and our, and you know, our students have not known anything but digital. Yeah, they, they don't, they don't know analog, you know, so yeah, this is, it's, yeah, what's next in the, [00:48:00] in the digital future I have no idea. I think it's, the, the key is to stay flexible.

John Azoni: All right, cool. That's great.

John Azoni: That's a great spot for us to end on. Darren, where can people find you if they want to connect with

Darren Roubinek: you? Yeah, well, I, I am on, on LinkedIn and I'm just Darren Rubenek, which of course is incredibly hard to spell because there are 14 ways to spell Darren, but I'm, I'm two R's E N and then Rubenek is R O U.

Darren Roubinek: B I N E K you can find me on LinkedIn or email, it's just Rubeneck at U C M O dot E D U.

John Azoni: Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate you know, just kind of processing things out with, I think it's interesting for our listeners to hear from someone that. Has a lot of it figured out, but doesn't have it all figured out yet.

John Azoni: And it's still kind of, you know, still kind of having these conversations with their team and things like that. So I appreciate you being here. Oh,

Darren Roubinek: absolutely. John, my pleasure. Such an honor. Big [00:49:00] fan. So glad to, so glad to, to, to help out if I can.

John Azoni: All right. The podcast has one fan. It is Darren. It is me.

John Azoni: And he's here today.

Darren Roubinek: So, well, I'll, I'll bring Brad in next time. Next time you have me, I'll have Brad come with me.

John Azoni: Yeah, yeah. Let's let's sexy it up a little more in here, you know? Yeah. Not that you're not sexy,

Darren Roubinek: but, you know. Thank you. No, I understand. I understand. The bar was high. Alright, cool.