Stuff every higher ed marketer ought to know about:
- The American Marketing Association has issued its call for papers for the 2010 Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education. This year’s symposium will be held Nov. 7-10 in San Diego. The AMA is looking for “proposals/papers that report on new and innovative strategies and tactics in higher education marketing. Popular topics include including image and brand building, buzz/viral marketing, marketing research, internal marketing, electronic marketing, new marketing channels, social media, Web 2.0 tools, emerging markets and trends, marketing organizational structure, marketing budgeting, web metrics, and marketing ROI.” Submissions are due April 9, and this year the AMA is even welcoming video submissions. (Hear that, Todd Sanders?)
- What do social media users want? According to research from online ad network Chikita (and as reported by Mashable), “Twitterers mostly consume news, MySpace users want games and entertainment, Facebookers are into both news and community and Digg’s audience has a mixed bag of interests.” Also, MySpacers “have no interest in news whatsoever.” (Hear that, news mogul Rupert Murdoch?)
- Virtual graffiti. No, that isn’t the name of a Led Zeppelin remix. It’s what’s happening, right now, on college campuses everywhere, thanks to mobile mapping apps like Foursquare. “Since Foursquare’s debut last year,” writes the New York Times’ Marc Parry, “students have diligently labeled, praised, and, in some cases, profaned college campuses. Take this note, easily Googled, that somebody calling himself Mock Redneck Jr. left at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte: The library has Free Wi-Fi, Barely Legal girls and a warm place to drop a deuce.'” Drop a what? (Via Mark Greenfield’s Delicious links.)
- The state of campus CMS. Good research results from a survey of content management systems as compiled by .eduguru’s Michael Fienen. Lots of data to sift through here.
- From the it-had-to-happen-eventually department: RandomDorm: ChatRoulette for the College Set, via @davewiner.
Higher Ed Marketing 
I hear you loud and clear, but unfortunately I call bullsh!t. Below is my gripe with AMA’s call for proposals that I posted as a comment over on Karine’s blog.
“Dear AMA,
Your deadline (for) proposals is 7 months before your conference. Yet your call for papers reads:
‘…discuss cutting edge approaches, new tools and technologies and the hottest trends on the forefront of Higher Education Marketing’
If you’d like to discuss “cutting edge” and “new tools and technology and the hottest trends” please schedule panel discussions, NOT dated presentations.
Thanks.”