Link: The Journal of Higher Education Web Professionals
Liz Gross and Andrew Cassel entered the session room tossing out vital organs to audience members. This distribution of hearts and brains set the stage for a presentation about the tug of war we often face between our feelings and “the numbers.” Each speaker played their role well. Andrew, of University of Alaska Fairbanks and […]
Presented by Melissa Dix and Bonnie Willison A few years ago, Beloit made a big mistake. A 30,000-person email-wide mistake. 30,000 high school sophomores and juniors received an email with the dreaded salutation, Dear {first name}. Twitter blew up with students pointing at the glaring error. Parents weren’t having it either. But, Melissa didn’t let the […]
Presented by Mitch Canter He was dressed for the part. A self-proclaimed nerd, Mitch Canter’s presentation ensemble was topped off with a Nintendo-controller hat. A perfect way to set the mood for a session on gamification. Mitch opened up talking about his interest (obsession?) with video games and other nerdy stuff. But he also developed […]
When Gail Martineau took over the social media presence for Ohio State’s President Drake, he had only an unverified Twitter account with 6,000 followers and very little engagement. She started by taking 90 days to do some research. She did audience analysis, using native Twitter data, Brandwatch, and Hootsuite; she utilized general social media stats […]
Only five percent of your Facebook page audience sees your organic content, and it’s been that way for a long time. It’s time for social media managers (and their bosses who hold the purse strings) to recognize that social media—like all other media—isn’t free. Even $10 can make a difference on Facebook. This was the […]
Love was in the air on February 14, 2017 at the College of the Holy Cross – 1.8 million dollars worth of it – when the school established a new donor participation record for a 24-hour giving day. On Valentine’s Day 2017, 6111 people gave online to support Holy Cross, thus breaking the previous record […]
“We’re not looking for quotes. We’re looking for stories.” Who we ask matters. What we ask matters. How we ask matters, and when we ask matters. Donna Talarico, editor of Hippocampus Magazine, talked about tips that we can use when we’re creating content for the web: The type of story you’re writing will dictate the […]
Liz Gross, Director of CampusSonar and a long-time evangelist for social listening, kicked off the second round of morning sessions today with a look at how to help manage your online reputation. We have a trust problem in higher ed; large percentages of people distrust “the system,” and 60% of people put their most faith […]
“Findability is the biggest content problem in higher ed.” That’s how content strategist Rick Allen opened his session Beyond SEO: Writing Findable Content. He also debunked the myth that “SEO is dead,” a notion that’s becoming quite ubiquitous in online marketing. A notion that’s just not true. Allen explained that he sees some of his […]
Have you tried the new app, Snapchat yet? Record scratch. Wait a minute. Hold your horses. Lori Packer reminded us that Snapchat is anything BUT new. Released in 2011, this app joined the world the same year as Pinterest, Google+ and Siri. “It’s not as new as we think it is,” said Packer, adding that […]
Twitter chats – or planned conversations linked together through a common hashtag – can be valuable tools for brands and organizations, higher education included. Dave Tyler, of The College at Brockport shared his experiences engaging with his institution’s community this way in his presentation, “Is This Hashtag Really Necessary: Taking the Plunge into Twitter Chats.” […]
Amy Grace Wells reflects on her time at the University of South Carolina in MCS6, and as the first content strategist, she had to build a lot of new things. Of course, she had to fight all the “stuff” that got thrown at the wall, with not much sticking. The goal: build a consistent and […]
Ithaca College’s Dave Cameron (no, not THAT Dave Cameron. Or the other one. This one.) brought down the house at last year’s HighEdWeb New England with his “Share Human” keynote. He brought a version of that talk to #heweb16. Dave starts with the reminder that “the entire point of being human… is to share.” He started […]
ALL THE THINGS! Gabriel Nagmay, Web Designer, Portland Community College Serving 100,000+ students a year, Portland Community College is the largest institution of higher learning in the state of Oregon. As the lead web designer for the college, Nagmay works with a small, but very dedicated team who is charged with providing web services for […]
Web Content Strategy: Effective Pairing Multimedia, Social Media and Text Romana Amato, Web Strategist for Saint Xavier University Romana summed up her content strategy goal as working to create a distinct user experience. While simply said, there are many steps to achieving that outcome. First, the action of finding useful and usable content to lure […]
#uwrightnow: Integrating your social, web, editorial and marketing networks John Lucas, Social Media Manager, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Nick Weaver, Director of Web Services, University of Wisconsin-Madison What do you get when your boss tells you to pull together a “new huge enterprise multimedia project,” in just about two months? The communications staff at the […]
Fording the Social Media Channel Ma’ayan Plaut, Social Media Coordinator, Oberlin College, and Mallory Wood, Marketing Manager, mStoner Ma’ayan Plaut of Oberlin College and Mallory Wood of mStoner took attendees on a trip down the Oregon Trail of social media, giving users a strategy to arrive safely at the other side, and providing lots of […]
Designing for next steps (a forward moving user experience) Nick DeNardis, Associate Director of Web Communications, Wayne State University It was standing room only for Nick’s presentation right after the Adam Savage keynote, and he set about busting some myths of his own about the user experience on the Web. Myth #1: The back button […]
Hundreds of higher education Web professionals head to the HighEdWeb conference each year to learn the latest and greatest in our exciting and ever-changing industry—that is, what is happening right now. And faster than we can master these new skills, we return “home” to our campus to find the higher ed stork has left behind […]
If you believe the futurist Raymond Kurzweil, humanity is entering a phase of it’s existence where technology will start to merge with our humanity at a downright dizzying pace. In his book “The Singularity is Near” Kurzweil envisions a future where humans live forever, we’ll upload our minds into computers, and virtual reality is the […]
No Such Thing As TMI: How to Create a Culture of Sharing Donna Talarico, Integrated Marketing Manager, Elizabethtown College We hear a lot about oversharing in this social media celebrity-mad age. See: Kardashian, Kim and Twitter. But when it comes to the web and your college community, Donna Talarico of Elizabethtown College argues there’s no […]
How UW-Milwaukee redesigned for the LAST time John Mills, Digital Designer, University of Wisconsin-Milwauke Sounds final. You know what they say, “never say never.” He sees what he does as being at the center of the combination art, science, and philosophy. 30k students. Centralized infrastructure but decentralized content. Around 800k uniques per month. His POV […]