In higher ed, we often talk about finding our champion -- a top-level administrator who gets the value of content, who will be our advocate in securing the resources to do it right, who will translate and relay our concerns to other decision makers and higher-ups. This “champion,” however, can sometimes be a holy grail -- invaluable, but elusive. What if our champion wasn’t at the top, but in the middle? And what if the the value of this … [Read more...]
The Future of Content Strategy In Five Minutes
September 12, 2011 by
Last week I attended and had the pleasure of speaking at the Content Strategy Forum in London. It was an amazing conference chock-full of web content professionals helping to move the industry forward. One of my favorite moments of the event was a series of "lightning talks"—by Shelly Wilson, Matthew Grocki, Nicole Jones, and Sara Wachter-Boettcher—discussing the future of content strategy. Each of them crammed tons of … [Read more...]
Content Strategy Aid for Financial Aid
August 23, 2011 by
For students and their families, financial aid is potentially one of the biggest sources of stress and concern. If we can make any aspect of this complex process easier, we should -- and that includes the web experience. At this year's eduWeb conference, J. Todd Bennett and Adam Forrand of decimal152 broke down the process they went through to overhaul the Ithaca College Student Financial Services Website. They took the website down to the … [Read more...]
What .edu Can Learn From .gov
August 19, 2011 by
In the web world, higher ed is often compared to government, and the comparison is not always flattering -- crippling bureaucracy, committee hell, lack of funds and resources, the list goes on. So it is heartening to learn that smart content strategy can be achieved in the .gov domain. Erin Scime of HUGE recently detailed her work on the redesign of the Department of Energy's website, Energy.gov. The project sports many parallels to the ones … [Read more...]
Developing a Progressive, Multiplatform Content Strategy
August 17, 2011 by
As web communicators, we operate in a multiplatform world, and our content strategies have to take that into account. Often, however, due to lack of resources, time or a sense of how we might use a particular channel, we don’t dive into all platforms at once. Josh Cole from Tippingpoint Labs says that we should account for this growth over time, but that we can also plan that trajectory from the outset. Cole explains that even if we start … [Read more...]