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Columns Content Creation Content Strategy Social Media

Thrive as a social media team of one

Columnist Kevin Agee lays out a three-part strategy for finding success as a solo social media manager.

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Content Creation Member Highlights Social Media The Working World

Taking care: HighEdWeb members start wellness newsletter

Working social media in many industries, particularly higher education, can be a demanding and constant responsibility. Realizing a need to provide something for these professionals, but without adding to cognitive load, two HighEdWeb members developed a wellness newsletter. Erin Supinka, associate director of digital engagement at Dartmouth College, and Krista Boniface, senior social media strategist […]

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2020 Conference Marketing Social Media

Boring documents = creative freedom?: Liz Gross on her Red Stapler-winning presentation

Liz Gross outlines ‘Five Essential Documents for a Strategic Social Media Program’ In 2012, Liz Gross was a marketing communications director for the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha (now the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Waukesha). She attended her first HighEdWeb Conference – conveniently next door, in Milwaukee – and presented a poster she fondly recalls was “made […]

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Accessibility Analytics Association News Marketing Social Media

Let’s discuss! Continuing the conversations from HighEdWeb 2019

HighEdWeb is hosting online community group discussions with some of your favorite presenters to discuss a variety of topics.

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Content Creation Social Media

#HEWebHero Q&A: Liz Gross

We asked our HEWeb community, who is your #HEWebHero? Liz Gross is the founder and CEO of Campus Sonar, but some may know her better for her Twitter presence. Liz, along with the Campus Sonar team, has been sharing a number of helpful resources surrounding how higher education institutions are being impacted by COVID-19. The […]

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Social Media Uncategorized

The ‘why’ behind BYU’s Insta stories to address tough topics

Communications is a function of leadership. Changing policy doesn’t mean you’ve changed the culture. These are the two refrains my colleague Joe Hadfield and I have been uttering for the past two years at higher education digital communications conferences. We’ve presented at six conferences in those two years, talking through the work we’ve been able […]

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Marketing Social Media

Developing an annual report that shines

In the age of technology, many social media managers are finding there are more and more data points available – both natively and within other tools – to measure social media efforts. But with an increase in data comes an increased likelihood of confusion for managers and their teams. Which data points matter? Are the […]

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2018 Conference Social Media

Are You Addicted to Data? Balancing the Heart and Mind in Your Content Strategy (MCS2)

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 […]

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2018 Conference

More Than Numbers—Your Data Doesn’t Need to be Boring

Presented by Chris Seek, web and digital design manager at the Office of the University Controller at the University of Colorado Chris Seek sees a lot of numbers in any given day. His challenge, he explained during a HighEdWeb session titled “Your Data Doesn’t Need to be Boring,” is how to present those numbers a […]

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2018 Conference Marketing Social Media

A Contest from @VisitSacramento!

Our friends at Visit Sacramento are launching a social media contest for HighEdWeb attendees next week. (Not that this crew needs any sort of special inspiration to tweet a lot.) The first contest is on Sunday and Monday, and it’s called “GO WEST.” Post on Instagram or Twitter, using the hashtags #heweb18 and #visitsacramento: 1. […]

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2017 Conference Marketing Social Media

MCS11: The (Wo)man Behind the Mask: Why Managing Social for a President Isn’t the Same as for a University

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 […]

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2017 Conference

We Live in a Pay to Play World—Let’s Embrace It!

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 […]

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2017 Conference Marketing Social Media

#MCS3: Online Reputation IS Your Reputation: Are You Listening?

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 […]

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2017 Conference Content Creation Marketing Social Media

Finding harmony: How we promoted an inaugural event

What if you were told tomorrow to plan for one of the biggest events in your university’s history? Would you be ready? How would you pull together your team to tell the story? What if the event celebrated one of the most controversial election outcomes in U.S. history? That was our charge. Missouri State University’s […]

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Social Media Uncategorized

Go, Team (HESM)!

Many of us have an opportunity once a year to meet up at a conference, learn from others, politely borrow ideas to bring back to our own institutions, and ask questions that can often only be answered by others in the field. Wouldn’t it be great if we could collaborate with others across the country […]

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Content Creation Social Media

5 things your social media manager wishes you knew

Social media in higher education started as a fad; something that could exist or not. Suddenly, institutions needed to be on every platform imaginable — Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, even Yik Yak — and social media manager positions began to pop up everywhere. With roughly 78% of Americans on social media, it’s clear the position is […]

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Marketing Social Media

Crushin’ on institutions this Valentine’s Day

Ah Valentine’s Day…the commercialized holiday for lovebirds. Chocolates, flowers, teddy bears; they’re all over department stores willing to be purchased. But hey, who said that this holiday was only for those in relationships? You’ll fall in love with these ways institutions engaged their audience on Valentine’s Day. Love Stories From the classroom to sporting events, […]

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2016 Conference Social Media

Getting It Right: What REALLY Matters To Students in Social Communities

Corie Martin from Western Kentucky shared her study on what mattered to the students in her incoming class in their social communities. She found that surprisingly, academics, finances, and outcomes DON’T MATTER to her students. So she set out find out what DOES matter to them. Come join me in #TIE9 to learn about what […]

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Content Creation Social Media

Arresting developments: Meet man behind famed Bangor police Facebook page

Sgt. Tim Cotton didn’t plan to become a social media celebrity. And while the Bangor Maine Police Department Facebook page he manages has more than 175,000 fans and has earned worldwide media attention, he has a very simple philosophy. “I write how I think. I write exactly what I think, and I write it like I […]

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Content Creation Marketing Social Media

ALL CAPS: The never-ending trials and tribulations of the Facebook Algorithm and dealing with change

With every announced adjustment to a major social platform integral to social media managers and strategists, conversations turn to postulating what this change means for the work that we do. Yes, we must be nimble and cat-like in our approaches, but what does that actually look like in action? In this edition of ALL CAPS, […]

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Content Creation Social Media

Cinderella social media stories brighten March Madness

March Madness, as the NCAA basketball tournament is known, transcends the athletic contests to create a tapestry of stories at colleges large and small. The perennial basketball powers — Kansas and Kentucky, Duke and UConn — expect to do well and be there. But what if you’re a lesser-known school suddenly finding national attention on […]

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2015 Conference Social Media

Tragedy, Pitchforks, and Twitter

It was a tough spring at University of South Carolina. With a campus shooting, blackout, and a student incident that went viral, in addition to weather-related updates, the social team was busy… busy learning lessons on how to manage mobs, keep parents calm, and provide timely communications in complicated situations. Being strategic and staying on […]

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Analytics Social Media Uncategorized

Adrift in Data

Timothy Cigelske, Director of Social Media at Marquette University, also teaches a class on social measurement and analytics at the school. When he couldn’t find a textbook he liked, he decided to write his own. He was kind enough to let us reprint the introductory chapter to his Analytics to Action, published in late 2014. “Not everything […]

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2014 Conference

Centralized or Decentralized: The Hybrid Social Media Approach

On some campuses, there are silos between departments. Ok wait, on pretty much every campus there’s silos. We’ve all been there, as has Chris Barrows from NYU. He’s not only dealing with the silos on his campus, but the multiple academic centers around the world, as well as two other degree granting institutions on the […]

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2014 Conference

Your Website is the Next Social Medium

Personalization is becoming pervasive in our society. It’s time for higher ed to start thinking about their websites that way too, says Bob Jones University’s Peter Anglea. Anglea told his audience during his presentation “Your Website is the Next Social Medium,” Tuesday at HighEdWeb 14 that, quoting author Gary Vaynerchuck that every platform now needs to […]