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
Save the Date
An editorial calendar is invaluable in ensuring up-to-date, well-organized, on-task content. But to make it work, you can't just use an Excel template you found via Google and call it a day. An effective editorial calendar, says Brain Traffic's Melissa Rach, has to be customized to match both the purpose and the prioritized particulars of your content. While it requires a bit … [Read more...] about Save the Date
It’s the Strategy, Stupid
What do the letters "CMS" mean to you? Do you read them as "cry myself to sleep" because your campus content management implementation has been largely ineffective? If so, where does the problem lie: with the tool, or with the strategy supporting it? If you let the tool lead the process, you end up ignoring the pressing content needs and concerns that, ideally, should shape … [Read more...] about It’s the Strategy, Stupid
Image is Everything, Except When it’s Not
One of the most valuable weapons we have in our web content arsenal is a good photo. However, employing photography as meaningful web content is more difficult than it sounds. Do we have the resources both to shoot photos and format them correctly for the web? Are the photos we have available to us high-quality? And how do we select the right photo for the job? MIT's … [Read more...] about Image is Everything, Except When it’s Not
Content First, or Content Forever?
A few weeks ago, Rick and I appeared on Higher Ed Live to talk about A ‘Content-First’ Approach to Higher Ed Web. It sounds great, doesn't it? While we addressed the need for a content-first mindset, Sara Wachter-Boettcher elaborates to clarify the need for content-process mindset. How do we achieve this? By better thinking through the structures that support our content. … [Read more...] about Content First, or Content Forever?
A Website That Listens
On our social media channels, we may have this conversation thing all figured out. We ask and answer, listen and learn, share and engage. But what about our websites? Are we extending our mastery of the social web to our .edu? Are we integrating those conversational principles into our digital home base? Jordan Williams, who has helped create several interactive features on … [Read more...] about A Website That Listens