November 2012: Our "On Topic" link blog has been retired. Below is an archive of published On Topic posts. To keep up on news, resources, and ideas about content in higher ed, check us out on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
On Topic
Campaign or Commitment: What’s Your Content Culture?
Are you one of those people who only cleans the house when you’re expecting company? No? Am I the only one? Well, similarly, for some organizations, content is something that only gets significant attention during a major campaign. In higher ed, this may take the shape of the resources poured into a viewbook that is expected to hold up for multiple years, or a website for a … [Read more...] about Campaign or Commitment: What’s Your Content Culture?
Relinquishing Control of Content Delivery and Context
In the latest issue of A List Apart, Cameron Koczon writes about the state of "orbital content"—where "individual users are the gravitational center and content floats in orbit around them." Users have tremendous control over how they consume content. Applications like Instapaper push the boundaries established by RSS and Google Alerts because they can … [Read more...] about Relinquishing Control of Content Delivery and Context
Making Friends with the Backend
You know who is one of your most valuable partners in content development? Your web developer. I'm a big believer in integrated teams, and the closer you can work with the web developer to understand the goals of your content initiatives, the more he or she can bake the structure and coding into your content that supports those goals. Content strategist Rachel Lovinger, who … [Read more...] about Making Friends with the Backend
Defining Authentic Content
"Be authentic" is popular advice for using social media. But this attribute is not only applicable to social media content. All web content needs authenticity. So what does that mean? How does that requirement fit within a content strategy? How do you plan for authenticity? In a video interview with host Erik Michielsen of Capture Your Flag, Simon Sinek provides … [Read more...] about Defining Authentic Content
Talk About the Passion
While user-generated content is not a magic bullet for an effective content strategy, it is pretty nice to have in the arsenal. But what actually makes user-generated content work? As content marketing expert Joe Pulizzi explains, using LEGO as an example, the most fundamental building block for successful user-generated content is passion—when people love you so … [Read more...] about Talk About the Passion