Here's a great story about elite colleges and some smaller educational institutions and their admissions people turning to blogs for improved traction among students, applicants, faculty, and administrators. Entitled "College Blogs Tell it Like It Is," this piece in boston.com highlights blog initiatives at MIT, Dartmouth, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and some smaller local schools such as Olin College of Engineering, Hampshire, and Providence College.

Still think blogs are a passing fad and of no real use? Check out some of these statements in the piece:

Blogging has become one of the hottest trends in college admissions. …the technology gives colleges another tool to help applicants make the best decision, especially if they cannot afford to fly in for an overnight stay.

"We all have these glossy brochures, and most of them are trying to be as much like Harvard as possible," said Matt McGann , an admissions officer and blogger at MIT. "We see blogs as a way we can say, 'This is what a university really is.' There's some good and some bad. There is no perfect university, so we want to show a little bit of what makes MIT interesting and unique."

One-quarter of all college admissions offices offer blogs written by students or admissions personnel, according to a forthcoming study from the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

A survey of all students admitted last year found that the blogs were among the top three most useful things in helping them decide whether to apply or to accept an offer.

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If big, establishment PR firms can't spell blog, what does that imply about their broader social media awareness and effectiveness? What does it say about their future?

Here's a very recent example offered by Todd Zeigler, courtesy of theBivingsreport blog, which is a production of the Bivings Group. [From their website: The Bivings Group’s sole focus is on helping our clients use technology to converse and communicate with the audiences that matter to them… In everything it does, The Bivings Group believes the power of the Internet lies not in the technology, but in it its strategic use. I couldn't agree more with their mission or their beliefs about the power of the Internet.]

In this example, Mr. Zeigler got an email pitch from a firm he describes as one of the five biggest PR firms in the world. In the first five lines there were three typographical errors or mistakes of ignorance– you be the judge: intrested, infomation, and blogg! A press release followed. Writes Mr. Zeigler, in part:

By the time some of these mammoth firms figure things out we’ll have all already moved on to the next thing.

I'm a bit more cynical than that. The mammoth firms won't figure it out. Many can't and the rest don't want to. Establishment entities threatened by a new and better way protect themselves by doing what they've always done only harder to protect their vested interest in what is versus what can be and will be.

New Bedford whalers never made a dime in the crude oil business; train moguls never adapted to airlines; minicomputer companies ignored the PC or failed at it; and most big establishment PR firms will never get the social media world. The economies and speed of the new media destroy the establishment's financial models. They won't go here, in other words, because they can't go here.

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