A Business Case for Higher Ed Content

Higher ed is often troubled by talk of business objectives when it comes to web content. How can we make a business case for content if we're not a business? But, it’s an important question to answer if you want to gain support for quality content and demonstrate value. Content strategist Colleen Jones tackled this topic in a recent blog post, offering advice on pairing content to cost savings and results. Business or not, a business case for … [Read more...]

Content and Community at Boston University

Last week, we talked about content and community in higher education. What is the role of content in online community management? What are the challenges and opportunities? Some smart higher ed community managers chimed in to share their thoughts on these questions and others. Today, I'd like to dig a little deeper. I reached out to Jenny Mackintosh from Boston University to learn how she and other BU Marketing & Communications staff … [Read more...]

Content and Community in Higher Education

Some things were just meant to go together — mac and cheese, Wallace and Gromit, Georgy Cohen and a karaoke bar. Also, content strategy and community management. When it comes to social media, these disciplines are completely dependent upon each other. Every tweet, Facebook comment, Flickr photo, YouTube video and blog post is content — and content should give people a reason to stay engaged in your community, conveying meaningful ideas worth … [Read more...]

Quality Content Kills Clutter

Nobody likes clutter. It's overwhelming, distracting, and a chore to clean up. No, I'm not talking about your office space — I'm talking about your website. All the clutter people have to sift through to find the information they're looking for. Web professionals often see "clutter" as a design problem, but as usability evangelist Jared Spool notes, "It’s not the visual design the users are reacting to. It’s the actual … [Read more...]

SEO Copywriting for Content Contributors

Search engines such as Google are one of the primary ways people find our websites and the content they seek. As such, it's very important to be mindful of search engine optimization (SEO) best practices so that we enable search engines — and the people using them — to find and discover our web content. People often consider SEO to be a content editing task — something you hand-off to a specialist. The reality is that SEO is an important part of … [Read more...]