Content Worksheets for Editorial Workflow

For web professionals in higher ed, keeping content up to date is an uphill battle. Regardless of the size of your institution, as a content professional you still have to deal with numerous subject matter experts, content contributors, editors, approvers, and publishers. Content has a shelf life, and without processes for maintaining it, it can quickly become ROT. Editorial workflow for the web is a challenge for day-to-day work, not to mention … [Read more...]

Case in Point: Content Culture at Vanderbilt

One of the biggest challenges we face in higher ed getting people to buy into the value of content strategy and build support for content across our organization. At Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., executive director of integrated communications Melanie Moran has rung up a string of successes doing just that. Whether it’s their news site, the 365@VU photo project, the alumni magazine or a recent reorganization, Moran and her team at … [Read more...]

A Content-First Approach to Your Events Calendar

Ah, the events calendar. One of the most ubiquitous components of a university website, and often one of the most confounding. From wrestling with feeds and technical configurations to simply getting people to use the darned thing, a calendar can be a headache. Time to schedule some Excedrin. With the right approach, though, that headache can become a valuable asset. An events calendar is not just a software application, after all—it’s a rich … [Read more...]

Designing Content Workflow for Your CMS

We can talk all day about creating great content, but if we don't have a process for sustaining it, our content strategy will fail. A big content governance challenge is ensuring that multiple content contributors maintain messaging, communication, editorial and content standards. This is particularly true for staff who have other responsibilities and for whom content is not always the highest priority. For many higher education … [Read more...]

Higher Ed Takeaways From Confab: The Content Strategy Conference 2012

Last week, Meet Content attended the second annual meeting of Confab: The Content Strategy Conference. It was another three sweet days of killer content and cake. Yep, still plenty of cake (and related puns). Higher ed had an even larger stake in the conference than it did last year (check out our higher ed Confab 2012 Twitter list). Plus, there were two great higher ed talks which we’ll cover in-depth tomorrow (stay tuned!). Our friends at … [Read more...]