Tim Staney's Blog

Notes from CONFAB - Creating Emotionally Relevant Content for Higher Education Audiences

Content strategy is like the summer before going off to college.
It's a good time to make some important choices about what to include on a website.
Let's set the scene -- excited -- set the tone -- experience.
Selling points they focused on:
School spirit
Great arts
People to meet from all over the place
Places to explore; sell the town and/or area.
Get involved
Exposed to culture. College experience (Very saturated photography)
Museums and opportunities
Alum were saying that after graduation the experience grows dark. < The problem
Is the organization still relevant to people after school?
What di the organization offer them?
What's the purpose of the website? How do we create meaning? How did we miss the boat?
Think deeply about what to accomplish.
Had to learn the culture -- especially of the younger alumni base. 10 year gap < problem
Alumni Association was saying no engagement. Consultants found out (by trolling social media) for college flair -- seeing where the college mark was showing up. Research showed great college pride showing up in {Research} > Pets, fashion, babies -- flair, apparel.
Showed the spirit was still there by the Alumni Association was missing the opportunity
Herman B. Wells, Brain on Love chosen as inspiration, motivation, themes
"The things we choose to do with the free moments of our lives show who we are."
The alumni had no emotional connection to the Alumni Association, Dispel the "Old boy's club" notion
Happy about success
Tell us about your first job
Tell us when you get married (U-themed weddings, getting married on campus, AA was missing the connection, "Future Hoosier" -- baby socks, baby apparel -- pictures with brand started pouring out on social media.
Appeal to parent alum -- recharge that whole parent pride for student passed down to their kids
These are our "favorite professors"
Reinvigoration of the base
Brand strategy and content strategy all woven together with a story.
Be realistic with goals -- no fast win without full engagement -- in other words, don't just contact them for an appeal, build a community first.
Target audience -- all for not if you aren't thinking about your target audience.
Alumni Association rejected proposal -- want to try to go after 40-somethings and just get a few more 'big fish' -- golf outings, etc.
Consultant pushed back and was able to convince director to create an emotionally relevant experience
In the end they won.
Crafted the story: "Open the door to our online experience" -- shift focus from the Alumni Association's usual battle cry -- Not: What can you do to support your college? Instead -- What can we do to support you? <3 this.
Established core purpose statements. "We want to inspire you" Share feelings about the institution and how you feel about it.
Key calls to action
Think about the economics and the common good (for the college)
It's worth their investment to hand over that much money and show some return on investment. Leap of faith. We have to serve these people. If we want to stay relevant, we need to invest in them. A customer is brand-loyal if they feel like a member of your family.
Created a "hub" - Personalization
"The modern agency has two products: stories and software." Laain Tait
INST realized that to sustain this effort they had to make an investment in their programmers and make sure that they understood the social components and how it all needed to work with the website.
Humanized some of the core messages :: Directory -- Share pics, partnered with corporate sponsors for cost
Facebook cover images that grads and Alumi can download -- branding the college (spirit) - not tag lines
Established a point system of rewards for interacting with the community -- partnered with alum businesses (loyalty) < sweet
"What if the feeling of being in college never had to end?"
Identified subcultures across the college and alumni and created targeted platforms.
Brought back alum to events and kicked off with famous alum - big splash
"In 8-words or less" tell us you story / journey
Added the winner to the front page of the 'Spirit' website with community connections
Quadrupled their traffic once the story campaigns were live
Paired up announcements and relaunches with key events (editorial calendar) -- NCAA, homecoming -- used the platform as the SpringBoard
Primed the audience to want to engaged.
What they learned
They needed to educate their leadership - Help them understand (even got the college president Tweeting)
Had to band together with other institutions and share knowledge - they are even posting whitepapers about their content strategy and branding strategy and sharing that with other colleges around them.
Watch out for the View Book and the legal ease -- has to be readable
Had to invest in the IT team and get developers that were relevant and understood the business goals
Stewardship - Showing how they are using those resources; transparent time, talent and treasure model
Alum and student blogs sprung up that supported the network.
Learn from peers, learn from mistakes
Use content strategy to change lives.
Need to get the buy in to "do something different" -- had to sell it to administration, board, etc.
Used product called social engine to build the community
Programmers working with content architects and content people -- no barriers -- make it an ecosystem
"Super-creativity" work sessions
Brand and content strategy drives everything that they do
Consultants made the institution understand the voice and tone and how they couldn't institution speak
What do you want to do on the website?
For each page identified both the student/alum goals as well as the institution's goals
Had alum and students do the user testing
"We needed to educate the whole team and make sure everyone knew how to do this."
They have since launched other community based websites for the institution
Cons provided page tables. They had the clients write all of the low-level pages; consultants wrote the high-level. Cons did the editing on all of them.

Posted: 5/15/2012 1:41:23 PM by <timstaney/>
Filed under: content strategy, content team, higher ed, responsive design, management, confab12

About Tim Staney

Web Developer Tim Staney of St. Petersburg, Florida

Tim Staney has more than ten years (since 1997) of web development experience building enterprise-grade web applications for Fortune 500, small business and not-for-profit enterprises across the United States and Canada over a wide-range of industries. Tim specializes in information architecture, content management with a keen focus on user experience, and social media integration. Tim Staney is a resident of St. Petersburg, Florida and active member of his community.

Staney regularly presents to professional and community groups, speaking on social media, social marketing, web content management and web strategy.

Tim Staney is a member of the American Marketing Association and <uwebd />, University Web Developers as well as the St. Peter's Episcopal Cathedral Communications Task Force. Tim is the Web Content Manager at St. Petersburg College working for the Marketing and Public Information department managing content in the college's Ektron content management system. Tim also teaches courses like Social Marketing for Small Buisness and Designing Effective Websites for St. Petersburg College's Learn to Earn program.