COM0014 – Blog Post #7 – Once Upon a Time

Prior to starting this course I was curious to learn what content businesses or organizations could share that an audience would find meaningful. I come from a long line of people who like to share stories and I take advantage of that family trait when writing and presenting. Through this course I wanted to learn how to write in a way that was best suited to digital communications and social media.

Throughout the lessons and assignments, I have learned that good social media content mirrors what we expect when communicating information or advice in more traditional means. The ability to create content that is relevant and helps to engage in conversation is key to using social media effectively. Storytelling is important to creating great digital content because it helps to connect and develop relationships with an audience.

My goal is to use storytelling to create and share content that explains relevant benefits, issues, opportunities and threats. Ideally, I want to tell stories that inform and stories that entertain and in doing so share content that is interesting enough that readers are encouraged to come back to seek out future posts or engage in conversation. I realize my stories might not all be hits with everyone, but I hope the better part will be popular with most.

COMM 0015 Assignment # 5 Overwhelmed by Web Analytics

Analytics has become the new measurement tool for businesses. Increasingly, organizations are taking a data informed approach to make decisions on everything from where they advertise, to understanding who their customers are.

The information is fascinating, but can also be overwhelming, simply because there is so much data to dissect. I recently attended a professional development session on web analytics that helped me and my colleagues better understand areas of our web site that were performing well and others that were not.

From determining how long people were staying on our site to exploring where most of our visitors live, the information is very powerful. The challenge is to figure out what are the most important things we need to know. The facilitator said it best when he said, “You could easily bury yourself in analytics for days and still have more questions.”

I work at a community college and we are particularly interested in improving the web experience of prospective students. The web site is a primary recruitment tool, but with fierce competition from other colleges for the same students, our web site has to be more engaging then our competitors.

Web analytics is providing us with an opportunity to evaluate our site’s performance, while also providing us with other information that can help inform our marketing strategies. From search engine optimization performance to bounce rates, we are digging deeper to understand who our students are and what content gets their attention.

I’d love to hear how others are using web analytics? Please share your thoughts.

Blog Post 3: Social Media in the IT and Higher Ed Realm

This post is three-fold, and I will discuss all three in a broad way; there is a difference between social media in:

• the IT field alone,
• in higher eds alone,
• IT within higher eds (IT department in a College, for instance)

The IT Field

This one goes two ways – companies are either tweeting the overly technical information (new device specifications – stuff you’d find in a manual, which in my opinion, is the not-so-great use) to the gearheads out there who keep track of all the updated devices and features and operating systems, or they’re posting about wicked new innovations, journeys, or campaigns (I.e. technology developed to move objects with your brain, augmented reality, etc – in my opinion, the better use). Two of the places I follow for the latter (because I’m no techie, and I have no interest in a device’s IMEI or its firmware – no disrespect to anyone who does! It’s just over my head, is all) are FastCompany and Mashable. There are new innovations posted on these two sites daily, our world is moving forward at a rate I’m not sure we even know how to keep up with. I can’t wait to see what ten years from now will look like.

Higher Eds

Based on my observation, higher eds (main identities for universities or colleges) use social media to promote their programs, services available, campus events (or College-related events), as well as previous or current students who are doing great things, and to me, this is what social media is all about – spreading the word about things and people who are making a difference, or at least on their way there) Social media has actually changed a lot of these institutions’ approach to the admissions process. For instance, on MIT University’s admissions page, the first thing you see are these blog posts that are written by students, and they’ve chronicled their journey to and from MIT. What better way to sell yourself? They’ve put all of the admissions babble (I.e. admissions fees, policies, any other relevant babble) subsequent to the most important pieces – testimonials. It’s brilliant.

IT within Higher Eds

If you look at an institution like MIT University in the States, their use of social media in this realm would be much different than ours here at Algonquin, in that MIT is a forward-thinking, innovation-driven, prodigy in advancing information technology and being a force behind many breakthroughs in this area. MIT will often tweet or post pictures, videos, or tidbits of what’s going on in their classrooms with the most advanced technology and most up and coming developers and designers. Not to Algonquin’s discredit, but we just aren’t there. Algonquin, and more specifically the IT department, uses social media to communicate changes to/outages/maintenance to critical College systems (I.e. Blackboard, e-mail, etc). We’ll also use it to retweet content about really interesting things that are commonly known and current within the IT world (I.e. the Google Glass Project), or we’ll use it to help people connect to our wireless infrastructure or configure e-mail on their mobile device. Depending on the issue, we will also use Twitter to respond to complaints or questions regarding our services, and if it’s too complex or requires a work order, then we’ll send them off to the right place.