Let's put ourselves in the shoes of one of our students. A graduating student, let's say. Perhaps their feelings are best represented like this: Or like this: (•_•) <) )╯College / \ \(•_•) ( (> is finally / \ (•_•) <) )> over. / \ Or perhaps they would feel more like this: Why are we talking about GIFs, emoji, and ASCII art in a space where we typically discuss CMS workflows and … [Read more...]
A Closer Look at Shorthand Visual Communications
Optimizing Your Content for the Social Feed
The following guest post was written by Mike Petroff, digital content strategist, Harvard University. Content strategy typically starts with planning for and managing content on your own website. Words, images, videos, and other elements all fit within your carefully constructed design. But, what happens when people discover your content in spaces like Facebook and Twitter? How can we prepare our content to visually stand out when it … [Read more...]
Mine Your Archives for Content Gold
When considering how best to use social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, we are often thinking in real-time. What are people talking about right now? How can we communicate the vitality of campus life? How can we be proactive listeners and responsive publishers? However, one of the most intriguing ways to use real-time platforms comes from looking into our past. Many institutions are finding that highlighting archival university … [Read more...]
Creating a Social Media Style Guide
Style guides are essential partners in the creation of effective content. They help ensure consistency of tone, voice, brand, spelling and grammar, giving our content credibility and value. Rick provided a great breakdown of the elements of editorial style for the web last August. But what about social media? Since we can’t erect an editorial process around every individual tweet, status, comment or response, it is critical to have a style … [Read more...]
Social Media Guides for Content Creation
What do Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube have in common? While they are often essential to our content strategy, none of these third-party social media platforms are completely intuitive. They all have little-known functionality, power user tricks and an unceasing tide of new features that, if we’re in the know, can help us more effectively achieve our communications goals. The good news is, we can get a lot of insight straight from the … [Read more...]