This weekend at Podcamp Boston, one presenter made the point that monitoring social media won't give you all the answers, but it will give you some really good questions. Six months ago today, we started Meet Content to open a discussion about improving web content in higher education, and we've covered a lot of topics, ranging from infographics to contextual content delivery to crisis communications to editorial style. 33 blog posts and 41 On … [Read more...]
Liberate Your PDF Newsletter Content
September 20, 2011 by
We’ve all received them—heck, perhaps we’ve even had to (shudder) distribute them. You know what I’m talking about: PDF newsletters, sent as an email attachment to a distribution list or linked on a webpage. In some corners, they still lurk. I’m just going to say it: People use PDFs for a hundred different reasons, and about 97 of them are wrong. (Rick blogged about some of these content problems in April.) The wrongest of the wrong, however, … [Read more...]
A Content Strategy Approach to Online Crisis Communications (Part Two)
August 31, 2011 by
Last week, we began discussing how to approach crisis communications planning from a content strategy mindset, ensuring that we will be able to effectively publish our most "useful, usable content" when it is needed most. I outlined core communications principles that apply during a crisis and addressed how to plan roles and resources and how to structure messaging. Today, let's dig deeper into our channels and how to manage them during a … [Read more...]
A Content Strategy Approach to Online Crisis Communications (Part One)
August 24, 2011 by
The most important communications plans at our universities are the ones we hope we never have to use. These are our plans for crisis communications, to be activated when a threat is posed to the health and safety of our campus community. Nowadays, these plans revolve heavily around electronic communications. Many universities shifted their crisis communications planning into high gear following the fatal shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007. … [Read more...]
New Semester, New (Awesome) Content
August 11, 2011 by
Soon, the quiet in the halls will yield to chatter and footsteps. The lines at the campus food court will become exponentially longer, and the frisbee will resume its flight path over the quad. That's right: students. They're baaaack. Or they will be soon, anyway. So how do we plan content to herald this annual rite? There are many aspects to the beginning of the academic year that present compelling content opportunities. I've got a few … [Read more...]