#41 - Mastodon and Decentralized Social Networking Models for Higher Ed Marketers
w/ ANDREW CASSEL
Middlebury College
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SHOW NOTES
My guest for this episode is Andrew Cassel, Senior Social Strategist at Middlebury College. In this episode we dive into emerging social platforms like Mastodon, BeReal, and the future of social networking in a Web 3 environment.
Key Takeaways:
Understanding the decentralized, ad-free experience of Mastodon instances and the Fediverse
Growing authentic community engagement through hashtag use on Mastodon
The dopamine rush of gaining followers on platforms without vanity metrics
Monetization challenges and community support funding models behind platforms like Mastodon
Balancing creativity and storytelling with metrics expectations in higher ed marketing roles
Why BeReal feels inauthentic for brand accounts but creates a sense of community
The importance of owning and controlling your own platforms and data
How tools like generative AI could impact higher ed storytelling and SEO
Connect with Andrew:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Middlebury
Website: https://www.middlebury.edu
Connect with John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Learn more about UNVEILD: https://unveild.tv
Join The Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
Andrew Cassel (00:00.465)
All right, I'll stand by. I know we're not talking about B-Real today, but I love B-Real.
John Azoni (00:06.474)
I just, I would like your thoughts on that cause I just barely scratched the surface on figuring out what that was. And so yeah, maybe we can, maybe we can talk a little bit about that too. Cool. All right. Here we go. Andrew Castle, thanks again for being here. You're a frequent flyer on the podcast now.
Andrew Cassel (00:17.961)
Absolutely.
Andrew Cassel (00:29.345)
It's my pleasure and can I just compliment you on the guests that you have been talking to today and oh gosh I've blanked an honor to Ashley yes just recently they are fantastic and so they talked about very great stuff about email which is really good basic things I think we're going to talk about something that's a lot more experimental.
John Azoni (00:39.828)
Ashley?
John Azoni (00:54.47)
Yes, they talked about the sort of dinosaur of communications, of digital communications email and here comes Andrew talking about this revolutionary weird thing. I still, I still am not sure I understand it. And the hardest I try, I like I got okay, so we're talking about mastodon.
Andrew Cassel (01:14.242)
Yes, we're talking about mastodon. That's right. That's right.
John Azoni (01:17.642)
Okay, so Mastodon, tell me, tell me like what's your, what's been your experience like with Mastodon and tell us what is it. Just give us a broad overview.
Andrew Cassel (01:26.493)
Sure, broad overview of Mastodon, it was created by someone who wanted to start a social networking platform that wasn't reliant on an algorithm, it wasn't reliant on an advertiser driven base. It was more of the old idea of you meet people that you're interested in, you form your own connections. It really is outside of anything that we sort of associate with social media. And that's why I was referred to it as social networking. And one of the ways I describe that is social media is
You're on a tightrope on a unicycle juggling, and every day you're out there trying to be better and faster and fancier, and everyone's like, look at me, look at me, look at me over here. And social networking is more like, I don't know, I'm hanging out, I'm gonna post something I'm interested in, and maybe people will find it, and maybe people won't. It's a lot more personal. And so the idea of the mastodon, also it's open source, open access, anybody can build a mastodon instance.
That could be just them, them and their friends and their community, their town, their school, their institution, their organization. So it really is, and I saw Donna Tallarico posted as X was doing its whole thing. She's a great thinker and a writer in the higher ed space. She mentioned that the X, Twitter's changed to X, whatever is going on there, as a reminder of the importance of owning your data and owning your social network so that
you have control over what happens on there. Mastodon instances are that to a T. It is your space, you create it, you control it. And it is a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to wrap your mind around it. One of the biggest ways to describe it is like email. You have your very own email, but you can email anybody in the world and you can receive emails from them, but your email is yours.
Same with your Mastodon account. It's yours, it's isolated to you. You can share and connect with anybody that you choose to, but people who don't have your email address can't send you emails. If you're on another social media platform, people can send it to you, just you get those ads, you get all the algorithms, shows it to you, because it's just figures you might be interested in. That is not how a Mastodon instance works. You choose what you see. You choose.
Andrew Cassel (03:54.793)
who sees what you do. You have a lot more individual control over your content, who sees it and who engages with it. So it's been around for a few years. It had a big burst of activity last fall. That's when I first discovered it because when Elon Musk bought Twitter, I was like, I don't want to be on that platform anymore. I just can see where it's going. You know, one of those things, they say when someone tells you who they are, believe them.
John Azoni (04:15.518)
Hmm. Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (04:24.593)
and Elon showed us who he was right away, walking into the Twitter building with a sink. Like he's some sort of, I don't know. I have no idea what's going on in his mind. You know, he's a billionaire. Billionaires think differently about things. I'll never understand. But what I knew it was a platform that wasn't gonna be friendly to me, the things I believe in, the ways that I approach thinking and wanting to share. And so I heard about Mastodon at that time and...
John, when I first logged on to a Masternode instance, we can talk about how that works in just a little bit, because I think that's an important part of it. But it was a feeling, that same feeling I got when I first discovered Facebook, that, oh my gosh, this is a place of true connection. This is a place of seeing the things that I am interested in, not what the algorithm thinks I may be interested in, but just the stuff that I really, really
like and I just immediately embraced the idea. I spent all of my holiday break like really digging into what Mastodon could be the potentials of that and how it could inform my work in higher education.
John Azoni (05:40.798)
Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. That's one thing that helps me understand is the lack of algorithm. Cause I remember when, I even remember when Facebook was around and then Facebook came out with the newsfeed. And that was a big, people were so mad about that. And then it was like,
Andrew Cassel (05:50.557)
Yes.
Andrew Cassel (06:06.83)
Yes!
John Azoni (06:10.874)
uh and then it was like because yeah you used to have like go to somebody's wall and like you'd have to like it like knock on their door almost and interact with them and yeah and now it's uh
Andrew Cassel (06:14.749)
Yeah!
Andrew Cassel (06:19.905)
Exactly, exactly. No, no, that feeling is exactly what starting on Mastodon is like. It is, oh, whenever I visit it, Mastodon, my instance, when I scroll through there, it takes me about 10 minutes of scrolling to remind myself I have not seen one advertisement.
John Azoni (06:41.462)
Hmm. Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (06:42.733)
not one. And my brain is so used to seeing them and just incorporating that branding and that marketing that just comes through. Like on TikTok, every fourth TikTok you look at is a promoted TikTok. Every fourth one. It doesn't feel that way because they've constructed the platform so beautifully, but every fourth piece of content and on Instagram, how many ads do you see? Promoted posts, suggested posts coming in from everywhere. You got to work really hard to Facebook.
John Azoni (07:07.391)
Oh my god.
Andrew Cassel (07:12.137)
LinkedIn even, and then of course Twitter, X and all those places. Advertise, of course, the platform's got to make money and that is one of the things about Mastodon is how do they make money?
And it comes from really, that's the other part that I like it, it's from this place of, I wanted to create this for me. And if you wanna take advantage of it, great. I don't mind here, you can have a place on my server. I've already got it, you don't take up very much room. I'm not trying to make money off of it. I'm trying to build a community. That could change over time. Obviously, most social networks and social platforms do. But for right now, it is ad free.
And it's a place of safety and comfort that you can really restrict who you... And it's such a big thing to talk about. I don't want to just ramble on with that because you have questions. And I want to make sure that I focus and take advantage of this brief time we have to talk about this platform that is so different from everything else.
John Azoni (08:02.097)
Yeah
John Azoni (08:05.751)
Ha ha.
No, I appreciate you talking because it's super helpful and learning new insights here even as we go. And I think that like, and you mentioned earlier the difference between social networking and social media. And I see that like, I mean, I see that so clearly like with, you know, the stuff that I post, you know, on LinkedIn or TikTok or Instagram or whatever.
the sort of like closed communities that I have are so much more rich experiences than a TikTok or something where the algorithm, you're really dependent on the algorithm to get your content out there. So like I'm a abstract painter and so that's TikTok is kind of where I hang out with that. And that's kind of part of the strategy is like, I want my work to reach new audiences. But then there are like people that know me and like,
know my family and stuff like that. So when I post on my private Instagram or when I post on Facebook, it's like tons of comments, tons of likes immediately. I can get immediate feedback on something because I know that people are engaged in that sort of community mindset. And that's what I love. And I wish there was some sort of, I wish there was a better way. And maybe this is it to build that type of community that I experienced on Facebook with my friends and family in a setting where
Andrew Cassel (09:23.333)
to build that type of community on Facebook with my friends and family in a setting where you can interact with strangers that you want to interact with because even on LinkedIn you're so the slave to the algorithm
John Azoni (09:30.686)
you can interact with strangers that you want to interact with. Cause even on LinkedIn, you're so a slave to the algorithm. I mean, it's, it's hard. It's hard. And people don't even really engage much on LinkedIn. Even just getting a comment is like, you know, sometimes just getting a comment is like, Oh my gosh, I'm surprised. You know,
Andrew Cassel (09:39.436)
and people don't even know.
Andrew Cassel (09:51.135)
I'm going to say this, I was at a conference recently and someone who worked at TikTok mentioned the algo and I had never heard the algorithm referred to like it was a co-worker that you have a nickname for like, oh, I visited algo's office, but you're absolutely right. We have become so trusting of the algo.
John Azoni (09:57.089)
I'll go.
John Azoni (10:04.406)
Yeah
Andrew Cassel (10:10.521)
and what it brings us and the personalization of these platforms. And it's so easy to not think about consciously that it is written by someone who it wants to benefit that company. The algo wants to keep you on that platform. It wants to keep you engaged as a vested interest in your time being there because that's how they make money is through your attention. So the thing that you said about where can I go to share these things?
with people who really care about them, that when I get engagement from them, it's true engagement that I wanna see, that they're interested in this. And a Mastodon instance is exactly that because you have crafted the people who see the posts, you've accepted their follow requests, you follow them. And so a Mastodon instance, when you first go and you go to join Mastodon, and it says, what instance do you wanna be a part of? And that's sometimes like,
overwhelming for people who are starting out. They're like, no, I didn't want to just choose for me. Like when you first logged into Twitter a few years ago, it was like, okay, follow five people, follow five more, follow five more. And you're already telling those machine learning models who you are and what you wanna see. And so by the time you get to your feed being created, there's things in there, they're like, oh, I like this already, cause you've already made it. Mastodon instance, join an instance. How do I even pick which one that is? There's ones for books, for art, for...
dancing, for sculpting, for engineering, for science, all those sort of things out there. You can find a community that's already geared to the things that you're interested in. I joined an instance that was based on Star Trek, big Star Trek fan, and immediately when I joined that instance and I went to the home feed and I went to the local feed of all the people that were there, so much Star Trek, and I was like, oh my gosh, I feel at home here.
John Azoni (12:06.912)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cassel (12:08.177)
And so that choice of where to start can be overwhelming, but the thing is you can always change it. So if you're existing, I had an instance that I really enjoyed for a long time. The creator of the instance is like, I can't do this anymore. It's just growing too big. It's more time. I have family issues. I'm going to have to take the instance down. You have to go somewhere else. And so, okay, great, no problem. I migrated and you can move all of your followers. You can't move your content.
but you can move all your followers and the people that you follow over to the new place. So there's always this option, but there is the start. Like, where do I begin? There's plenty of ways to search out there, plenty of search tools for finding the Mastodon instance that's right for you. And here is the big challenge for higher ed. What instance do you join as a higher ed place? For the place that I work, Middlebury College, back in November, I was reading about Mastodon and someone was posting, it was like on the eve.
of Elon Musk's takeover and all the people that I follow on Twitter were like, I'm out of here. This is done. I can't be part of it. I was like, oh my gosh. And someone mentioned Mastodon. So I was able to go over and get the middle barrier on the mastodon.social one, like the main one. And so, but some instances are closed down, there's a waiting list, you have to apply to get into them. So there's a little bit of a thing to get into these places. But once you're in there, as a higher ed place, then what do you do?
John Azoni (13:19.948)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cassel (13:35.345)
Like what content do you share? How do you start building an audience? And this is the next thing that I always like to talk with professionals about, especially who work in the digital communication space and social media space and share all of it. Mastodon feels so empty and so alone because it does not give you impressions or reach metrics.
John Azoni (13:58.111)
Mmm
Andrew Cassel (13:59.601)
Those I found when I started working in Macedonia for my work, I was like, who's seeing it? With no comments, with no boosts or reposts, who is seeing this content? I have no way of reassuring myself that 10,000 people saw it. Oh, somebody saw it because it had 10,000 impressions or it had a reach of 500. Okay, at least 500 people. With all of those, suddenly how do you justify having this social
platform. And it goes back to one of these things that when I was starting a new job, I was like, oh man, I wish there was just a way to know how many people liked this content that I was sharing. I just wish there was a way to know how many people just liked it. And then I realized there is that. It's our follower count. It's one of the most basic metrics that are out there and we ignore it all too often because those followers could be bots, they could be people who are, you know, not even having, they could be anything.
John Azoni (14:43.884)
Right.
Andrew Cassel (14:57.317)
So we start discounting, like you have 24,000 followers on Instagram. Sure, that's great, but who are those 24,000 people? Are 5,000 of them just random things that were created in some factory somewhere? But with the Mastodon, every follower you get is a person. So that becomes the measurement of success because that's always the thing. I have a goal, I wanna reach 100 followers. So if I can get five, I can get 10. If I can get 10, I can get 20.
If I can get 20, I can get 50. If I can get 50, I can get 100. Every platform that we've ever started out in higher ed started at zero followers. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, when we launched those things a decade ago, no one was following me. People worked really hard to build those follower accounts. And it is such hard work, but it's so, when I get a new Mastodon follower, I have a dopamine rush.
John Azoni (15:38.262)
Right.
Andrew Cassel (15:54.893)
unlike anything else that I have felt in years. Because I have worked to create a piece of content, to share it strategically with an audience, and then someone's like, I like what you're doing, I wanna see more of that, please continue. And so that has become the measurement of success for higher ed, is just building those followers. It's hard, I do not recommend it, because it's a lot of work, it takes a lot of time. You've gotta give something up if you wanna start a mastodon instance.
John Azoni (15:56.675)
Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (16:24.465)
But what I do believe is that this is the future for social networking as the algorithm becomes more and more overwrought with just a storm and chaos of content that everybody's creating. It's so messy and loud out there and people are really, really want somewhere quiet. And that connects me to the thing I wanted to talk about also, which was threads.
John Azoni (16:40.994)
Mm.
John Azoni (16:47.914)
Yes, I did want to ask you about that.
Andrew Cassel (16:49.829)
When you sign up for Threads and you go through and you start that account, you'll be like, hey, Threads is great. We're going to do all these things. One of the things they mentioned in there is that Threads will eventually federate with all the things in the Fediverse, which is what they call mastodon instances, and they call it that because it's decentralized social networking, it's a federated space. I mentioned Star Trek before for Star Trek fans. One of the big things with Star Trek is the United Federation of Planets.
They are the Vulcans, the Andorians, the humans, the Tellarites, all those things are all working together. They all have their own individual planets. They have their own individual cultures. They have their own individual languages, but they all work together for the greater good in the United Federation of Planets. That is what the Fediverse is. Each mastodon instance is like one of those planets with its own culture and its own people and its own understandings.
but they all work together in this federated space. Threads is like the most gargantuan mastodon instance that has been created yet. And eventually it will be able to connect with all of those other decentralized federated instances. So that email analogy from before, if you have your email and suddenly you had your Hotmail account, you could only talk to Hotmail people. But then one day it's like,
John Azoni (17:57.176)
Hmm.
Andrew Cassel (18:16.585)
to people who are on Gmail as well. And suddenly your world of communication has just gotten bigger. So that's one of the hopes I have for Threads is that it will eventually connect to all these other Mastodon instances. And for that owned part of owning your platform, I've started conversations with the IT department where I work of what if we had our own Mastodon instance for the college.
Some universities and places have started their own master on instance. The benefits of this internal communication, everybody who is, you get your email, you get your master's on ID, same thing. You're onboarded, you're handed this stuff. Suddenly you have a social networking way to connect with all the people that you work with, students, staff, faculty, it's very internal. It's not a newsletter through your email.
It's not an Instagram post and a story that's going out to the student community and the wider community. You can really use it to bolster and strengthen internal morale, community, communications, crisis communications, celebrations, really can keep that stuff right with the people that you want to see it inside your institution. And it just takes, again, sort of this idea of this is beneficial for us. We want to put in the time and effort.
to create a mastodon instance for our school. I think it has great benefits. The people that I've talked to have seen some of those ideas and can see that benefits, but it's just, there's so many other things going on right now that go to IT office, you're like, hey, let's start a mastodon instance. They're gonna be like, I have 2,500 tickets from people who just need to turn it off and turn it back on again. I can't worry about trying to create this new thing for you, social media manager. Maybe, you know, put in a ticket and we'll talk about it a year from now.
John Azoni (19:57.366)
Hehehe
John Azoni (20:02.866)
Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (20:09.937)
So all of these things, John, I wanna make sure that I stress, this is stuff that I'm experimenting with. I see value in it for the future. I can see what it might be when we just get tired and worn out of trying to game the algorithm. When machine learning and AI is really, really kicking in and is very mainstream. When generative AI searching is now what's happening on your Google versus keyword SEO. Now, how can we do it?
for this AI SEO, what's that gonna look like? Mastodon instances and all of that can really, really help about three years from now, maybe, is sort of what I'm imagining, but it really is something that takes work, it takes time, it's unusual, it's weird, people, it's a huge learning curve, but it has such great benefits. Again, I was going on there for 10 minutes, thank you.
John Azoni (21:04.122)
No, and you're right. I think it does take a lot of work and I think it's probably just, yeah, the follower count is probably gonna be a lot, yeah, you're gonna have to work a lot harder to get followers is kind of what you said.
Andrew Cassel (21:21.738)
It is a lot of work. It is, and it also, it really takes confidence in the work that you are doing. There is, and you mentioned this yourself, this feeling of I post a piece of content and then nobody liked it. Nobody comments on it. Nobody shares it. And I can see that people saw it.
because 400 people saw it or whatever, but I didn't get anything back from that. Then you start to go down, maybe it wasn't good. Should I take it down? Should I put something else up there? Should I get a picture of a sunset? Should I put a girl sitting under a tree reading? Because I know people are gonna like that. It's one of those things where why? Yes, yes! Let's do a Barbie meme. So all of these things with Barbie memes are great. No, I'm not denigrating that. I think Barbie is...
John Azoni (22:02.21)
Brene Brown quote.
Andrew Cassel (22:15.157)
It's such a great cultural moment for people who are embracing parts of themselves that they might have put aside. Anyway, we're not talking about Barbie or Taylor Swift right now, unfortunately, because we could do that anytime. But when you share something out there, it goes back to, why am I sharing this? I'm sharing this because I want to tell this story. I'm not sharing it for you. I'm sharing it for me. And in higher ed,
John Azoni (22:17.676)
Yeah.
John Azoni (22:24.29)
Hahaha
Andrew Cassel (22:44.637)
We, social media, you know, 11, 12, 13, 14 years ago now, it was, oh my gosh, here's a way that we can tell our story in a whole new way. And people engage with it because, oh, this is interesting. I'm hearing from this place that I have a vested interest in, I went there, I'm curious about it. Oh, here's a fun story about something that they're doing. Oh, this is great, I like this. I wanna know more about it. And so it was this idea of sharing, it came from a place of generosity before it started turning into.
really super big marketing. But once brands started really embracing Facebook for marketing over storytelling or communications, that was exactly what Metta now and Facebook then was counting on because they knew that brands would wanna do it. And now of course, the only way to cut through all the organic noise is with paid. This idea of Facebook and Instagram being free marketing for you, that ship has sailed so long ago and we are
John Azoni (23:15.788)
Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (23:42.953)
clinging to that idea so desperately, so desperately while the platforms move on without us. I remember Adam Masseri last summer said, we are going to prioritize reels over picture posts. We're just going to do it. So sorry, your pictures won't be seen. Just set it right to us. We are manipulating the algorithm for our own benefit. And if we don't think that they are doing that all the time anyway, we are misleading ourselves.
That's why places like Macedon, which are free of algorithms and advertising, is this frontier space, which is fascinating to me. And what can we do with these? And how can we actually use it to tell our story? But then, how do we grow an audience on there? That's the tricky part.
John Azoni (24:31.198)
Yeah, well, in the way that you say it, you're like, you know, become being confident in what you're doing on Mastodon and having something of value reminds me of getting people to sign up for your like an email list or something like that, like offering something that there's an exchange there. Which is which is hard. It's hard to do. It's hard to get. It's hard to grow your email list. You know, it's not like tick tock and people just just, you know, you.
Like I'll post something on TikTok and then I'll check it five minutes later, it's got 300 views. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like that's crazy. Even that is crazy, but like, but growing an email list like that, you know, is hard. Just as I imagine, you know, growing your following on Mastodon, but it's probably a lot more targeted. Like my email lists, I have a newsletter that I send out weekly and it's very slow growth, but what I like about it is it's...
Every person that signs up, I would say 80% of the people that sign up for it are very quality signups. And my open rates are like 50 and 60%. You know, and like that's what I want. Like I want a community where I'm putting something out there and people are getting value from it and they're looking forward to hearing from me. You know, and that's like a dream scenario for anything on social media.
Andrew Cassel (25:49.933)
It absolutely is. I mean, then that, you're totally 100% right. Every follower that you get, every signup you get, you know someone who really cares about that. It's not, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna log on because the algorithm is showing me a pretty picture right now, I'm just gonna follow it. Like it's a conscious choice. And one of the things with Mastodon instances where like hashtags are super important on Mastodon.
John Azoni (26:17.706)
Mm.
Andrew Cassel (26:19.293)
Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, hashtags are fun. You can follow them. Like they have some value on there still, but not like the old days of five years ago. When hashtags really were, when I remember first describing hashtags to people, it's like a campfire. I gather around my hashtag and we'll talk about a thing that we like together. Or it's like a filing cabinet. You can open up that hashtag and you can see all the stuff that goes on there. That's why I include hashtags, I would tell people.
John Azoni (26:29.151)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Cassel (26:45.933)
Now that is absolutely back the case again for Mastodon. You tag higher ed, and you can see how many people have been using the tags. And that is a content tip that I will give for people who are curious about using Mastodon. As you're creating your content in Mastodon, and you're creating a caption, you're writing them a caption, use a hashtag, it'll tell you how many uses of that hashtag have happened within a time frame. Try to pick ones that have
more than 10, 15, 20 uses in the time period that it shows because there's a greater chance of your content being seen and then you getting that increased follower count, which is the goal that I've set for myself. So if you put in a hashtag, hashtag higher ed and it has 10 people doing it, okay, that has some value. Hashtag higher education, that has 25 people using it. Okay, that is now within the window of hashtag uses that I want to have.
John Azoni (27:28.588)
Right.
Andrew Cassel (27:43.285)
in my content. If I do hashtag sunset and there's five people like okay I got to pick a better hashtag than that and just not hashtag that word because I want to make sure that these hashtags are how people are going to be seeing this content. I'm going to find it because that's how you search on masterton is by hashtags. I want to see stuff for hashtag social strategy.
So you put in social strategy, and then you'll see the people that are posting about that. Like, oh, this is good. This is gonna follow this person, follow this person. So the hashtags are so important on the Mastodon instance. And if you've been missing the value of your hashtags, that's the place to go to get new value from those tools.
John Azoni (28:25.27)
That's good to know. Yeah, that it that it relies primarily. So you're saying it relies primarily on hashtags, whereas like something that Instagram or Facebook or whatever, it's kind of like an added plus. Like you might get some extra reach from adding hashtags, but mastodon, it's like it lives and dies by the hashtag.
Andrew Cassel (28:39.001)
Yeah, it really, really does. And on Instagram, I follow, like if I, I do theater a bunch, and if I'm in a play, hey, Kat, if I'm in a play and I add the follow, the hashtag for that play, then I get to see all the people that are posting about that play. But other than that, hashtags are kind of meaningless for me on Instagram now. They just have lost, because the platform has developed such strong search, just text-based search.
for whatever you put in there, which is great for searching about normal things, social listening, social media monitoring. It's really, really helpful for brands and higher ed in our work as communicators to be able to just do a quick text search and Sprout relies on that, whatever monitoring and media tool you have really relies on that robust search tool. And that's why Macedon is so tough, really, really tough work, frustration, sadness.
All the self doubt, if you find yourself spiraling down into those dark places of our own psyches, it's either, it's like you gotta condition yourself to get over it and face those things inside yourself or just don't do it. It's not worth the mental health anguish of making five posts and having no engagement, which is just heartbreaking. But you know, again, it comes back to why am I telling this story? Who am I telling this story for? Am I telling it?
John Azoni (29:59.242)
Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (30:05.993)
to get people to see it or am I telling it because I believe it should be told? And that is such a weird balance in higher ed because for social media managers, as we know all too well, social media managers in higher ed are always the people who are like, what are you doing? How is your job worthwhile? What have you done? I could do your job like you're doing it. I post on social media all the time. Why do we even have you?
John Azoni (30:11.756)
Right.
Andrew Cassel (30:34.121)
Couldn't we just have our admin do it? So this whole thing that we struggle with of how we're always on display, always having to prove our worth, always having to demonstrate the value of our work, Mastodon makes that really hard to do. Whereas other social media is like, what about the value? I told this story to half a million people last month and leadership, your team members, anybody can be like, wow, that's a lot of people. Like, yeah, it is a lot of people. That's why you pay me.
John Azoni (30:36.194)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cassel (31:03.625)
And so being able to put it out there and demonstrate that audiences have seen it has great value for our work professionally. But for the purpose of why we are doing this, it comes back to, I wanna tell a story. And this is a story that I wanna tell. Take it or leave it, here it is, I did it. That's where art comes from as well. As you no doubt understand very, very intrinsically. When you see a vision in your mind
John Azoni (31:24.354)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cassel (31:34.741)
I've got to get it out. Got to get it out of my head. I got to get it out of my heart. Got to put it somewhere on some sort of material. That's the best kind of content. When we see a story of something that's happening with a student or a faculty member on campus, like, oh my God, I've just got to tell people about this. You tell that story and you did the thing. But part of our pay is relying so much on that close, like how many people saw it? How many people liked it?
John Azoni (32:00.685)
Right.
Andrew Cassel (32:01.341)
How many people engage with it? How many link clicks did you get? I was like, I didn't do it for that. I did it because it's an amazing story. That's so weird to walk that line of storytelling and marketing. It's so strange. And Mastodon helps really clarify, like I am doing this to tell the story. I'm not doing this to get a like.
John Azoni (32:11.601)
Mm-hmm
John Azoni (32:21.982)
Yeah, and it's so that's so hard with anything like storytelling, you know, video, social media, the ROI is probably very gray. You're probably influencing an ecosystem that is then going to produce fruit for you, but it's hard to know exactly where the inputs were having the effects, you know.
Andrew Cassel (32:46.261)
It is, the thing that you just said made me think of, you know, Vincent van Gogh, like he's creating beautiful artworks that are just sitting in his room, no one's seeing them. They're not on display. They're not being shown in galleries. They're certainly not being sold for millions of dollars while he's alive. But after that, it gets appreciated. The contents get seen and understood. Unfortunately, in higher education, I can't be like, oh my posts, people are gonna love them in 10 years, you guys.
Oh my God, this content is gonna kill in the 2030s. Like, well, we kind of need a class of students next fall. Maybe you could do some stuff that helps us stave off the enrollment cliff and not just be like art for art sake here on these platforms. So it is being able, that's one of the creator things. Like what can I do that feeds that creativity of like, oh, this is a beautiful piece of art. But at the same time.
John Azoni (33:15.947)
Yeah.
John Azoni (33:27.842)
Yeah.
Right.
Andrew Cassel (33:41.445)
I'm gonna get a butt in a seat in the class of 2028. Like, how do you? It's weird, it's weird, but it's the life that we live every day as content creators.
John Azoni (33:43.755)
Yeah.
John Azoni (33:51.598)
It's like, trust me guys, when I die, enrollment numbers are just going to skyrocket.
Andrew Cassel (33:57.608)
You don't need to worry about that, man. It's gonna be fantastic. They're gonna really understand me then. Maybe then we should find someone who we understand now and you can go off. But it is that. It is that. Why are we doing this? Why do we do this art? Because we are artists. We're writers. We're photographers. We're videographers. We're sculptors of content. And you know, Michelangelo is great.
John Azoni (34:00.962)
Yeah.
John Azoni (34:05.886)
Yeah.
John Azoni (34:20.128)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cassel (34:22.821)
He was a sculptor of content who got paid big bucks and was able to display in some of the most high, the highly valued platforms of his time, cathedrals and things like that. You know, that's social media of the Renaissance. And so we have those things too. And it's just how do we make ourselves fulfilled as creators and at the same time do our jobs to make sure that we are sharing the opportunities for people who are 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 years old.
that wanna be their own creators and be their own artists of diplomacy or science going on into the future. It's such a fascinating job and I love it so much.
John Azoni (34:57.313)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's great. So my next question is, so when, so for some, for a higher ed marketer wanting to experiment with Mastodon, I feel like, I feel like, I, I feel like I'm a, I am like a, maybe a mirror image of the people that try things and they don't work out. And I feel like, you know, all of my whole Instagram feed is gurus.
Andrew Cassel (35:09.927)
Yeah.
John Azoni (35:28.062)
where apparently they just woke up one morning, had an idea, they put a Facebook ad out there and now they're making $500 million overnight. It's just like, that frustrates me in this world of digital marketing because it's so hard and there aren't enough people talking about how hard it is. I mean, very much like in trying to understand Mastodon, I got on there. My first toot, these are called toots.
Andrew Cassel (35:57.553)
They were called toots. Now they've backed off a little bit of calling them toots because it is a pretty silly thing, but then tweets were silly too. But yes, that was the first piece that content were called was like, hey, let's put out some toots. And what the story of that, I'll tell you a little story about the toots is the creator of Mastodon is not in English. English is not their first language. So it's developed in Europe.
John Azoni (35:57.558)
Hahaha
John Azoni (36:20.334)
Okay, that makes sense.
Andrew Cassel (36:21.941)
And so when they were like, what should we call these? Someone joked to me, you should just call them toots. And he's like, okay, toots it shall be. And so then it was like, oh, well that has, you know, other sort of connotations in the English language outside of what we're doing. So that's why they've sort of tried to figure out a different word for them, but toots works. Toots works, yes, they are toots on the past.
John Azoni (36:30.246)
Yeah. Not, yeah.
John Azoni (36:36.798)
Hahaha
John Azoni (36:45.754)
Yeah, you know, and I've had this business idea for years, because every time I order something from Amazon, and I am always hoping it was made in America, but the dead giveaway is reading the instruction manual. And it's like the worst grammar. I mean, bless their hearts, they try to write these things in a sensical way. And my business, this is a side note, but I feel like if you could understand
Andrew Cassel (37:04.263)
Yes!
John Azoni (37:15.342)
um, these like Chinese companies, these, these Asian companies that, you know, what they're trying to do on Amazon is a P is, is appeal, uh, to a native, English speaking American speaking, uh, audience. If you could just like, like start a business like, Hey, I'm going to overhaul all of your copy for an American audience. Like pay me to do that. Like, I just think like, if, if you could figure out, if, if I was like one of these smart, like gurus, I feel like I would be a millionaire by now because
Andrew Cassel (37:41.577)
the
John Azoni (37:43.934)
I don't think anyone's doing this. I'm so, I'm always shocked at like, I'm like, just get one American to read this instruction manual.
Andrew Cassel (37:53.573)
John, you're so close to be able to realize in your dream. There's some tools that are those that generative AI and AI translation is now becoming so close that you could start marketing your, I will translate your instruction manual and localize it for the different places around the United States so that we'll read clearly for whatever language you're initially writing it in as we become more of a global market. So generative AI will help you and.
From there, you could take a couple of localization classes, which are out there to online. And then there's your $500 million. You could, I'll take a little piece of that. I'll get 1%, thank you. But you're so close to being able to do that. Generative AI is very, very close. The thing about that, I'm gonna talk about that for a second, is because, and that's a part of Mastodon as well, is because all over the world, large European contingent on Mastodon.
John Azoni (38:24.874)
Yeah, yeah.
John Azoni (38:28.554)
There we go.
Andrew Cassel (38:45.989)
It does not have, depending on the instance, it doesn't have natively built into it a translator like it on Facebook or Instagram or any of the platforms that are logged into Google Translator, things like that. So that's another element of like the authenticity and the truth of what's going on there is if you want, like saying you're doing a language learning and you want to learn more, you want to really sort of immerse yourself in Spanish or French or whatever language you may be learning, you could find a Mastodon instance.
that's in that language. And then you could live really in that work, really immerse yourself in there as part of your learning. So it's this idea that we've become so, you know the movie WALL-E and everyone's sitting in their little rolly cars and they're literally fed all of this stuff as they're sitting there. And the humans have become just fed by machines. That's been a lot of our social interactions.
John Azoni (39:30.861)
Yes.
John Azoni (39:37.581)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cassel (39:42.821)
over the past on social online interactions over the past five, seven years has become this. The algorithm says, oh, I know what you want. You want some of this and you want some of this. Or you like some of that. I just go to Instagram search. If you go to search and you, one of the things game I like to play is when I go to search is like who wins algorithm today? Which of these images am I gonna tap on first? Because I'm telling the algorithm with that action, it's gonna feed me a lot more of that.
John Azoni (40:01.599)
Mm.
Andrew Cassel (40:10.409)
And I am influencing my algorithm for the next five days by whatever I choose right now. And we've become to depend on that. People love that personalization. That's one of the strengths of AI and machine learning models in general, a really, really personalized experience. Mastodon instance, you can create a personalized experience but you have to do it. It's not done for you by the algorithm. It is not out there constantly learning about you by what you engage on, what you react.
John Azoni (40:33.496)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cassel (40:40.229)
You are doing it. And that's one of the things you mentioned, you went on there, you made a couple of toots, other people have done that. And it's like, oh man, I just don't, what do I say on here? Who am I on here? How am I finding people on here? How does this even work? I don't know. I got so much other stuff to do. I'm not gonna invest any time in this. Maybe I'll come back to it at some point when it's important to me. And that's what social media should always enrich your time online, not be a burden. Even if it's something that you do for your work.
John Azoni (40:51.66)
Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (41:09.917)
should not be something like, oh my God, I have to log into Facebook now. Ugh. If you're feeling that, don't log into Facebook. You know, your audience is out there being like, oh my God, what is this school gonna post on Facebook next? I can't wait to see. Like, I just don't, that does not feel like a sustainable strategy to me for working with your audiences. It should come from a place of authenticity and truth and wanting to tell the story because it's a good story. And Mastodon is
John Azoni (41:14.828)
Yeah.
Don't do it, yeah.
Andrew Cassel (41:39.625)
so dependent on, I like this content because I saw it, because I looked for it, I wanted it. And this creator, I will now include in what I follow. There's three rings of Mastodon engagement. There's your home feed, the people that you follow. That's your house, people you invite inside your house, your little party. Then there's a local feed. It's like your neighborhood, the instance that you've joined, all the people that are in there, all the stuff that they're doing.
That's your local feed. If you join an instance of all people who love to play World of Warcraft, then inside your local feed is all these people talking about their WoW adventures, maybe they went on a raid, whatever it may be. Whatever you're interested in, that local feed is your neighborhood of people of like-minded friends. Then there's the federated feed that goes outside of that, which it shows you what the people of your local feed have been engaging with. It's as close to an algorithm that there is, but it's not.
So someone in your local feed likes this piece of content and the federated feed is, oh, they liked this. Maybe you'll like it too. And so there's that three rings, the home, people you've invited to your house for a party, the local, the neighborhood that you're in, and then the federated, what your neighbors are seeing and doing. And that is how you can start to get sorted an organic sense of what's going on out there in Macedon and how you can grow the people that you follow. And then there's such a strong follow for follow culture on Macedon.
that you will follow someone and then they'll follow you back because we all want our audiences to grow. We all want people to see the stories that we're telling. And that's how an audience grows on Mastodon. Searching out content, liking in it, engaging with it.
John Azoni (43:23.318)
So you tell me that, and I think the last time we chatted, you told me that Middlebury has a presence, like it has an instance on Mastodon, is that true?
Andrew Cassel (43:31.877)
We are part of the Mastodon.social one. We haven't created our own instance yet. That is like something that is being talked about, but haven't gone to the place where it's seeing the light of day. But we do have a spot on Mastodon.social.
John Azoni (43:46.366)
Okay, so what have you seen, what's been the benefit that you've seen at Middlebury from being on there? Maybe just benefit to enriching your personal professional life or are students finding Middlebury, finding out about the school through this or what?
Andrew Cassel (44:03.869)
So I would say prospective students finding out about the school, no, that is not happening on Macedon. Macedon, the people who are following on Macedon want to know sort of what's happening, the news. It really goes to the communications part of the marketing communications versus the marketing part. So it really is purely a platform where I post things, repurpose content, I put it out there, I grow an audience. It's again, highly experimental.
John Azoni (44:33.056)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cassel (44:33.201)
because I just want to see what can I do? How can I use it? And it's another place that I can say, we get so much content sent to us in communications and marketing from everyone. Can you post this? It's not a good fit for here. It doesn't fit in with this content calendar. It's not quite a part of the tactic for this strategy, but you know what? I have a place that everything can go. On MasterDenial, I can share everything.
New paper from a faculty member. I just was first author on this paper. Great. I'm happy to share that over here. And sometimes, you know, they don't care where you've shared it. What they want to hear is that it got shared. They're never saying like what was our metrics on that? How many people read it? Like some people read it, but I posted it out there. You know, the medium is the message as Marshall McLuhan said back in the 60s and the 70s. So the medium of Mastodon is we are in this place. We are
John Azoni (45:13.087)
Right.
Andrew Cassel (45:29.921)
in a new ad-free algorithm-free space. We recognize the value of being here and we are investing time and energy by putting content in here to be a part of this conversation. That is what the value has for Middlebury, is we are part of developing this environment without trying to say, we want something from you. We're here because we have great stories to tell.
We want you to hear them.
John Azoni (46:02.066)
Yeah. And my question in being this ad free algorithm free space, I remember when Facebook was, um, you know, didn't have advertising on it. And I remember, you know, the, some articles shareholders were upset because, because there's the, they were struggling to monetize this platform. And now it is what it is today, which is just, it's just a whole marketplace.
you know, of, of advertisements and stuff like that. So like, what's, what's stop? I mean, I guess the two, twofold question. What do you think is the way that Mastodon would monetize their platform for sustainability? I mean, obviously if anyone's, if anyone's employed by Mastodon, the money doesn't just grow on the Fediverse or whatever.
Andrew Cassel (46:28.314)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cassel (46:50.093)
No, no, it does not. It does not. Unlike Starfleet where money doesn't matter because we have replicators that could just do whatever. So, Macedon instances, the people who start and build Macedon instances, some of them are just independently wealthy and they don't need money. And they say, I have millions. I sold a company years ago and I started this thing because I wanted to start it. So, I don't need money. So, I'm not interested in doing it. I'm doing it out of the goodness of improving the world. Some Macedon instances are like,
John Azoni (46:56.627)
Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (47:19.805)
please support what I'm doing through the Patreon or other subscription, things like that, then the people who are on that instance subscribe and they pay to support it because they believe in it, they like the community. So it's community supported is a big way that most Macedonian instances make money. And so that's another reason for the monetization, who's gonna pay for it to upgrade it and maintain it.
That's why these internal Macedon instances, I think are really, really interesting. Because if you're building it as part of your own digital communications infrastructure at your school, then you're not worried about making money on it. You're doing it purely as a communications platform that has social networking components built into it. You're not doing it to monetize it. And that's one of the things that is so confounding about Macedon is it's not there to be monetized.
It's there to empower and enrich. There are other platforms out there where you can make money. And it's a confusing thing. It doesn't make sense. Because usually when something is free, you are the product. And that is very different with Macedon. It's like, what am I getting out? What are they getting out of it? And so that's why people, they subscribe. They pay money to the servers. They want to support this idea. Because once you, I could tell you, John, man, once you spend like,
John Azoni (48:29.247)
Right, right.
Andrew Cassel (48:42.981)
four hours online and you haven't seen a single ad in that time, your brain space just feels a lot more free. And immediately when you log on Instagram, it's like, oh, that's an ad, that's a suggested post and maybe I'm going to mute that person. But the money part of Macedon, that's also a big thing. How's anybody making money of it? They're not. It's from the goodness of their heart and people are paying to support their own thing. Institutions can benefit from it by creating their own and not worrying about who's going to make money off of that platform.
John Azoni (48:50.997)
Mm-hmm.
John Azoni (49:13.006)
So the people that started Mastodon itself, like that built this platform, you don't think that they, you think they're all just doing it for free or do you think they take a cut? Okay, really? Okay.
Andrew Cassel (49:23.473)
They, yep. Nope, nope. They did it for free. That was like, you know, it was like.
On Reddit, there's all these people like, hey, I made this chart where you could go in and you can find out all of these things about what your favorite Game of Thrones episode is. People online are very generous at the start. They do things because they're interested in it, they're fascinated, can this work? Can I do this? Can we make a place that is genuinely free? And that is this spirit. And it's just so, it's one of the things that people don't trust about it. It's like nothing is free. Nothing is free.
But no, it's not free because the stuff that you put in there is your time, which is the most valuable resource that you have. And the return on investment for your time on MassageOn is content that you really care about.
John Azoni (50:15.542)
Yeah, I like that. No, that's good. Nice to know that people are out there, you know, just doing things out of the goodness of their heart.
Andrew Cassel (50:23.281)
They do. I mean, I live in New England. And so in New England, when you're driving around, and this is probably the case in many other places in the world, you're driving down the street and you see sitting out in the street corner, a dining room table and four dining room chairs and it says free. They put a lot of money into buying those dining room tables and those dining room chairs ever many years ago, but now they've got new set and they just want someone to get it. Please someone take this. Hopefully it can make your life better. And that feeling of humanity.
of honest giving, of I made this and I think it's useful, I hope you will find it useful as well, is what drives mastodon instances. And it's one of those things that haters and trolls and the internet love to crush. Anything that comes from a spirit of good, someone is out there ready to take that down in a minute because you know, that's why you can't have nice things.
John Azoni (51:17.118)
And this idea of the Fetiverse appeals to me because before we started talking, you mentioned Be Real, a whole other social network. And so, but now there's threads and there's TikTok and everything. And I would love a place that just, I was like consolidating your debt. Kind of.
Andrew Cassel (51:30.503)
Yes!
Andrew Cassel (51:44.097)
Yes!
John Azoni (51:46.338)
kind of thing. Like I would love to just consolidate all the logins and all of the different ways that you have to interact with different social platforms. And maybe that's not how the Fediverse works, but.
Andrew Cassel (52:00.825)
No, I think that you're touching on something I believe, which is where Threads is headed, which is you get your Instagram login, so you can see the Instagram experience, which is becoming more and more prevalent versus a Facebook experience. And then you can go over to Threads. So you have one login, Instagram, which also gets you over to the Threads, and Threads, it's what's connected to the Fetaverse. So I believe this idea of one place to log in, to have all of my...
online social interactions does have a glimmer of possibility through the Fediverse, through threads, through Meta's Instagram. And as much as I have a bad taste in my mouth about what Meta is and does and has done and the things that are going on with that company, I think they're on the right track with having threads be able to federate out there into the bigger world. It's closer to that one thing.
John Azoni (52:58.454)
Yeah, no, that's good. Sorry, my alarm went off there. Yeah, I'm like notorious for like, if I don't, I have an alarm that reminds me to set alarms for the day. I think just as a creative person, I just, I'll get so sucked into something and then just forget to show up to meetings and stuff like that.
Andrew Cassel (53:03.717)
Yeah, we need those reminders.
Andrew Cassel (53:14.761)
Yes, very important. It's very important.
Andrew Cassel (53:25.645)
Yes, it's hyper-focus and time blindness is a thing. Don't let them tell you. You mentioned B-real and I wanted to talk about B-real really quickly, if that's okay, if we could take these experimental things. Because B-real I just love is one of my new favorite social networking things. I just love B-real. When I first heard about it, I was like, okay, I'm gonna try this out. I just really, really love it. It's again, you know, people that you care about, you see the thing once, if you don't know what B-real is, you take one.
John Azoni (53:29.85)
Yeah. Hahaha. Yeah.
John Azoni (53:37.485)
Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (53:54.305)
one picture front and back facing camera on your device at one time during the day. It gives you the notification could come any time during the day and you share it in the time zone that you've agreed on. So I just love it because it is again back to that thing of I don't need to I can't upload something into here. The culture is to post something right now whatever is it you're seeing. It's not curated really carefully. It's like a little bit of curation that goes on there but it is so authentic and I just love the vibe of Be Real.
And then my first thought was, how can I use this for work? As it is with any social networking and social platform that I go on. I was like, oh, it's gonna be great. We can do student takeovers in B-Real. You could have a student, they get the B-Real, but one of the things that I came up against was you can only have one login and B-Real at a time. You can't toggle back and forth like on Instagram. And so asking a student to log into your B-Real and then log out of your B-Real and then log into the other B-Real, that's too much to ask a student to do.
John Azoni (54:38.862)
Ah.
Andrew Cassel (54:47.173)
And so then it's like, okay, do I just do it for work? But that's lame. My B-reels would all be me sitting in front of my computer working. That's not what B-real is about for a brand. How do you do it for a brand? There's ways to do it. You got to have a student crew. If you give them a dedicated device, they might be able to do B-reels. And I have seen some higher education places that are doing B-reels out there. But the one thing that I think it has in common specifically with Mastodon is it is social networking.
and not social media. There is a discover algorithm in B-Real. It's okay, but it's mainly just like a big dump of things. Your friends feed is what makes B-Real really great. And so it is another step towards the move away from social media for higher ed and for users in general into this social networking space that has a much weaker or non-existent algorithm based on the content that you create, the list of followers you curate.
and what you put the effort into, just like social media used to be.
John Azoni (56:55.742)
I like that. I did brush up a little bit on Be Real while I was on vacation a month or so ago and I was like, this is, that's kind of cool. Like, you know, just to, but I agree the same thing. It's like, if it's like, Hey John, like what are you doing right now? Same thing I was doing three hours ago, sitting at my computer, you know, the life of a video producer is actually not very sexy. It's, it's
Andrew Cassel (57:16.861)
Right.
Andrew Cassel (57:27.401)
That's one of the greatest things about B-Real is it's so boring and mundane. When that B-Real notification comes in, like at one o'clock in the afternoon, and you post your B-Real, you are guaranteed to scroll through your friends. Everybody is doing that same thing. I'm sitting and working. Here's my keyboard and here's my monitor. And it is such a feeling of community.
Like, oh, we're all in this together. We're doing this all at the same time. Look at us working. And it's a very, it's a lovely, lovely feeling. I'm a big fan of the social network, Be Real.
John Azoni (57:55.63)
Mm.
John Azoni (58:07.966)
Yeah, and I see the plus side of that. I see how that could be really cool for now. I'd be curious to see, does that sustain itself over the long haul? Cause if you look at just even the way that reality TV has evolved and as a video producer, I now I have a full deep understanding of how fake every scene is. I did shoot one, I shot one reality.
Andrew Cassel (58:29.097)
Hahaha!
John Azoni (58:34.118)
episode for some UK based content creation company. The story was about this husband wife, the wife kept cheating on her husband and so they became swingers together. So like you do. Yeah. So they, and so I went to their house. They live an hour from me. Apparently these, these types of people are right in our backyard. Yeah.
Andrew Cassel (58:46.065)
You know, like you do, like you do.
Andrew Cassel (58:56.645)
Yeah, no judgment. That's great.
John Azoni (58:59.53)
Totally. They're very nice, nice people. But anyways, just the whole process of shooting that, like everything, every shot was staged, was pre-planned. And when you think about it, like reality itself is super boring, you know? Like to sit, cause like the difference between, there was, there's, they're in like the,
2008, 2009, there was like this boom of these survival shows. And I remember there was one that was like, I think it was, whatever, with Bear Grylls, like the one that was a little more produced. But then there was another one, and I can't remember what it was called, where it's like, you know, a guy that just had his own video camera and he would just film like real stuff. And that one was so boring to watch. Everyone wants, you wanna watch Bear Grylls cause he's moving, he's doing stuff. He's like, you know?
Andrew Cassel (59:38.137)
Mmm.
Andrew Cassel (59:48.957)
Right? Yes.
John Azoni (59:57.326)
He's reaching his hand somewhere and pull out a fish and you know, you're seeing things happen But like that's not that's even that's not the reality of surviving in the wilderness like it's that
Andrew Cassel (01:00:01.051)
Right?
Andrew Cassel (01:00:09.377)
And that's exactly, with all the content that we share across social media, that's why that authenticity is such a big word because you wanna make it feel real. Like if you walk into a building on campus, you're gonna see these students doing this exact same thing. Probably not. They're probably gonna be sitting down quietly, earbuds in, heads down in their computer during their work. They're not gonna be smiling and laughing like you see in the view book, but you've got to come up with some sort of theatrical crafted way.
to tell this story, to make it appealing when you see it online. Otherwise it is just very boring. And who wants to go to, you know, you could say in your group, we have classes, we have buildings, you will learn, pay us $10,000. That's not a view book that's gonna be effective, but that's the message that we coat in all of this creation and crafting and editing and storytelling. And it's one of the things that as a social media strategist and social content creator, we've learned how to go from
to blend that what is real versus what feels great to watch. Just what you were talking about.
John Azoni (01:01:16.338)
Yeah, that's great. Awesome. Well, this has been great. Thanks for thanks for coming on again. If people haven't listened to the first episode that Andrew was on, we talked about what did we talk about? I think just Middlebury in general and being on the cutting edge of yeah and since that since then I've been following you and I feel like maybe we'll make you just like our unofficial
Andrew Cassel (01:01:32.485)
Yeah, just stuff in general, storytelling, you know, still using social media, you know.
John Azoni (01:01:46.638)
So...
Andrew Cassel (01:01:46.893)
I would appreciate, I would love that because I have lots of feelings about generative AI for images, videos, and words, and how we could use that in our storytelling. So if you want to talk again about generative AI, I would love to do that.
John Azoni (01:02:00.47)
Okay, I'm always wed, I mean, jeez Google today was like, all right, you're out of the waiting period or whatever for this generative search or whatever like that. And I clicked on it, I'm like, I have no idea what it is. Another thing I gotta figure out. So maybe we'll... Maybe we'll... Ha ha ha.
Andrew Cassel (01:02:17.441)
It is, it's a huge thing. It is, it is really, really big and it's so important. And I guess I'll end by pitching that we should really talk about generative search and what that can mean for prospective students and for SEO. Because generative AI search is here, it's here to stay. It's only to get stronger. And what that means for us and what it means for how we create webpages, how we create social content, how we create videos.
Because generative AI searching, those machine learning models look at everything. They watch your videos, they watch, they read what's in the images that you post. They read all of the words, the metadata that you've put in there, the alt text. They go through all of that to return the best answers possible for searchers. And it is a game changer for SEO for higher education. And it's something that we need to talk about a lot. We don't know what it's going to be like, have no idea where it's going to go.
John Azoni (01:03:06.466)
Hmm.
Andrew Cassel (01:03:13.885)
But those conversations need to start and I would love the opportunity to talk with you some more about that.
John Azoni (01:03:18.418)
Absolutely. I'm always I'm always up for just other people sending me ideas of things to talk about. It's one less thing My brain has to do So so yeah people keep an eye out for that generative search Topic come in your way
Andrew Cassel (01:03:26.613)
There you go, there you go, okay
Andrew Cassel (01:03:37.005)
Yeah, generative research, SEO, and all that means. Yes, we'll talk more about that. Okay, great. Always great to see you. Thank you so much, John. Thank you so much.
John Azoni (01:03:44.606)
Absolutely. All right, see ya. All right, awesome. Cool, thanks for doing that, appreciate it. I have to run to another meeting, but super appreciate you coming on and looking forward to chatting again. All right, see ya.
Andrew Cassel (01:03:57.813)
Anytime anytime Alright, sounds great. Bye!