What would Scooby do? Uncovering the real mysteries about your audiences
Some of us go to great lengths to understand and truly get to know our audiences. Through community management and regular engagement, to audience research and user testing. There are many ways that we can – and already do – seek to know them better and empathise with them through our content.
But what don’t we know about them? What are the mysteries yet to be uncovered that might actually hold the key that will take our engagement strategies from great to outstanding. What are they not saying? What are they not sharing? What’s hidden from plain sight, and leading us on a path of assumption and belief, instead of truly knowing and fully understanding?
In this session we’ll explore the power of supercharging your curiosity to really have you sniff out the truth about your audiences. We’ll take an ontological approach that will help us to see what’s beneath the surface, or right under your nose that you might not be seeing or might be afraid to explore.
About Tracy Playle
Tracy is CEO and Chief Content Strategist at Pickle Jar Communications. She is also a public speaker and coach.
Since founding Pickle Jar Communications she has worked with over 200 education institutions around the world to help them advance their approach to content strategy, content design and content marketing.
The best version of Tracy comes out to play when she’s running workshops, training sessions, coaching individuals and teams or delivering presentations and conference keynotes. She dedicates herself to develop others to become powerful content professionals.
Tracy sees that her purpose is to inspire people - through curiosity and play - to step into their full potential and go beyond what they believe to be possible. This purpose drives her work as a content strategist in the education sector, as a leader, as a speaker, and as a coach.
Before founding Pickle Jar Communications in 2007, Tracy worked in-house at the University of Warwick, latterly as Head of Research-TV. She chose to become a consultant so that she could have an impact across the education sector, not just within a single institution, and to have greater breadth and variety in her work.
She is also the founder of ContentEd and Utterly Content. And she is the author of The Connected Campus: Creating a content strategy to drive engagement with your university (2020).
Tracy is an award-winning keynote speaker, and has spoken at conferences and events in five continents. As a speaker she unites insight and perspective with playfulness, humour and compassion.
Alongside her work as a consultant, Tracy is also a leadership coach. She practices the highest standards of coaching, having trained with Accomplishment Coaching in New York. She has also been involved in training coaches too.
Tracy is especially committed to bringing a coaching style to her leadership at Pickle Jar Communications, and helps other leaders do the same with their teams. She passionately believes that a successful team stems from leaders who stand to empower others with a huge dose of compassion, humour and humanity.
Making content gender inclusive with Dana Rock, Director of Marketing and Communications at University of Derby
Designing inclusive content is important because subtle signs can make us feel welcome or unwelcome. Is this for me? Do I belong here? If we are serious about user-focused design, we need to be serious about inclusivity.
If we do not intentionally include people then we risk inadvertently excluding them through our choice of words, imagery, and design. Today gender inclusion is undergoing a step-change in visibility. More people feel able to be their authentic selves and yet many still face barriers. Sometimes because of explicit discrimination but more frequently because of subtle signs which make them feel excluded.
This session provides practical guidance on how we can make content inclusive for people of all genders. We will explore how we can embed inclusivity more widely within our processes and truly put users at the heart of what we do.
Everyone is welcome.
Key takeaways:
The role inclusivity plays in user-focused design
Practical tools and guidance to make your content gender inclusive
How to embed an inclusive approach to content within your existing processes
About Dana Rock
Dana Rock is Director of Marketing and Communications at the University of Derby.
Led by data, insight and a passion for Higher Education, Dana is focused on inspiring and enabling others to achieve their potential. They have a reputation for creating innovative campaigns, delivering inclusive and personalised communications, empowering teams and putting users at the heart of what they do.
They have previously worked at Oxford Brookes University, University of Exeter and University of Nottingham. When they are not leading teams and campaigns, they love running training courses and sharing their love of data, insight and innovation with others.
Twitter @dinojrock
Designing—and Governing—Internal Communications with Mike Powers, Executive Director of marketing and communications at Indiana University of Pennsylvania
When internal communications fail, people notice. There’s no one at your event. Students don’t do things on time. People say, “but you never told me.”
At times like those, we might say, “Ugh. If students/faculty/whoever would just read their email….”
We’ve all said it—or at least thought it. But what if we looked at this problem not as a problem with our audiences, but as a psychology problem? A strategy problem? A governance problem? A design problem? Follow this path, and you can make real change in your internal communications.
This presentation will show you how to follow that path, by:
- Understanding the context: You’re overwhelmed. So are your audiences. Find out how the concept of cognitive load can help you craft better communications. And learn how to gauge your audience’s communications preferences.
- Finding your champions: You can’t follow this path alone. Learn how to find champions and companions across your school and work with them to make change.
- Making your plan: Use what you’ve learned to choose the right channels, find the right cadence, and choose the right things to communicate
- Playing well with others: Learn about working with and training non-communications people across campus to raise your institution’s level of practice
Internal communications can get better if you learn how to design and govern them.
Key takeaways:
Understanding the psychology of your internal audiences will enable you to meet those audiences where they are. Add in research and data about your particular audiences and your internal communications can be much more effective.
Because internal communications are, like the information on your website, typically decentralized, concepts from web governance should be applied to manage them.
You can't do it all. Offering training to staff and faculty who do the actual communications can help.
About Mike Powers
Mike Powers is executive director of marketing and communications at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and an award-winning higher ed speaker. A former academic, Mike has worked for IUP since 1999. Since 2007, he’s overseen IUP’s transition to a CMS and then to a responsive site, put IUP on social media, worked on IUP’s smartphone app and student portal, and managed many other projects. Currently, he manages a team of creatives working in media from digital to print to video to social media. He’s used the term content strategyto describe much of what he does since sometime in 2010.
Data driven communications: Use data to drive your content strategy with Brian Piper, Director of content strategy and assessment at University of Rochester
How should you be tracking your communications? How do you set up your content so you can figure out what's working and what's not? How can your data help you decide what content you should be creating and how to optimize the content you already have? This session will look at the variety of data available to you and what insights you can find in that data to help you determine what content is currently performing well and help you predict what content will be most effective moving forward. At the end of this session you will be able to use Google analytics and metrics from your social channels to find your high performing content and know how to track new content you create.
Key takeaways:
Learn how to set up your analytics to get the most data insights
Discover how to find existing high performing content and optimize for search engines
Implement keyword research practices to determine what new content you should create
About Brian Piper
Brian Piper is Director of Content Strategy and Assessment for the University of Rochester Department of Communications. Brian has been doing SEO and web content development since 1996. He has created online training programs for hundreds of companies including Xerox, Carestream, Kodak and Volvo. He has spent the last 6 years focusing on data analytics, digital marketing and content strategy.
When he's not creating data visualizations, he teaches wingsuit skydiving and spends time with his wife and six children.
Going agile in a non-agile world: how to make it happen at your university with Padma Gillen, CEO at Llibertat
For many in our industry, agile ways of working are the standard. Digital projects shouldn't be run any other way. But in higher education, like in many other large organisations, you're generally operating in a non-agile environment. This can (and generally does) kill your chances of creating high quality, user-focused content at pace. This session will talk you through different ways you can get agile in a non-agile organisation, without totally freaking out your colleagues and senior management.
Key takeaways:
Understand why going agile in a non-agile environment is hard, what it looks like from the other side's perspective, and how you can change that
Understand different approaches to risk, how to report back to a non-agile Board, and how to talk to budget holders used to waterfall approaches
Get an action plan for getting started, moving forward, and getting your organisation on the road to digital transformation - one retrospective at a time.
About Padma Gillen
Padma Gillen is the author of ‘Lead with Content’, and CEO of Llibertat, a content-led digital agency that puts users first. He uses his expertise in content strategy and agile to help organisations get clear on what they’re trying to achieve, build a roadmap to get there and then deliver the change their users are looking for.
Led by Padma, Llibertat provided the team that helped the University of Southampton design, plan and deliver their multimillion pound digital transformation programme, OneWeb. in 2019 Llibertat and the University of Southampton won the ContentEd award for Excellence in Content Strategy.
Previously, Padma was Head of Content Design at the Government Digital Service (GDS). He had overall responsibility for the quality of content on GOV.UK, the award-winning website of the UK Government.
Taking the plunge: from marketing officer to content designer with Claire Furnish, Content designer at University of Southampton
This talk is about my personal journey of moving from marketing to content design at the University of Southampton. Marketing colleagues have become subject matter experts, content effectiveness is measured by meeting user needs rather than lead generation, and marketing messaging is replaced with readability techniques and plain English. In my talk I’ll share how I dealt with this move and why I’d recommend it.
Key takeaways:
Prepare to question things - content design can change your outlook, professionally and personally
Don’t be afraid to embrace accessibility - it’s an important part of a content design role and you can learn about the barriers we all face
Recognise your organisational knowledge - HE marketers can bring great business insights to content design teams
About Claire Furnish
I spent 15 years as a graphic designer working for agencies in Hampshire and Berkshire. Clients included Pfizer, Toshiba and De La Rue. In 2012 I moved into faculty-based marketing at the University of Southampton looking after subjects from healthcare to social sciences. In 2019 I became a content designer as part of the University’s digital transformation programme, OneWeb. My work includes helping relaunch over 200 postgraduate taught course pages.
A purpose renewed: pandemic, human-centred design and the role of new tech with Rich Prowse, Director of Experience Design at Pickle Jar
The pandemic changed everything, or did it? In this talk, we’ll examine the effects of the 1918 pandemic on education and what, if any, lessons it can teach us today—as we adjust to life in a new normal.
We’ll explore the challenges universities now face and answer the question: Can human-centred design and new tech help institutions create a new kind of university fit for the 21st century.
Key takeaways:
How universities have responded to pandemic
What might happen next and how that can aid decision making
How human-centred design and new tech can help
About Rich Prowse
Rich regularly speaks at higher education events and has previously hosted ContentEd in person and online. He also regularly delivers keynotes, workshops and training.
Why there’s no such thing as perfect content design (and that’s perfectly OK) with Candi Williams, Content design lead at Bumble
Oxford comma. Cloze tests. User needs. There are so many brilliant guidelines on what makes great content design.
While they're super useful, let’s take a minute to reflect on the lesser told realities, the behind-the-scene bloopers and the mascara-running mishaps that help you grow exponentially.
In this talk, I’ll share my thoughts on why there’s no such thing as a perfect approach to content design. I’ll reflect on some of my imperfections, learnings and things I wish I’d known when I started my career in content.
You can expect unfiltered realness, unpretentious imperfections and an uplifting does of content self-care. I got you.
Key takeaways:
Realising your content superpowers
Understanding that people not getting it isn’t about you
Protecting your wellbeing when things feel tough
About Candi Williams
By day, Candi’s a content leader who loves nothing more than supporting her team, solving complex ContentOps challenges and flying the important flag for inclusive design. By night, she’s a published author of four books—and counting.
Since graduating with a first-class degree in English Language and Linguistics many moons ago, she’s been obsessing over psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and the endless power of content on how people think, feel, and do. She’s used her word nerdery to solve big challenges, and build content teams and strategies for big name brands and agencies alike.
When she’s not waging the war against unnecessary jargon and inaccessible, head-scratching content, you’ll probably find her tweeting about content and inclusive design, growing her crystal collection, desperately trying to meditate more, or seeking out more brightly coloured kicks.
There’s a new sheriff in town! - Taming the wild west of microsite city with Dougal Scaife and Lauren Gale from Leeds Beckett University
Virtually every university website eventually becomes a hotchpotch of microsites, each competing for attention, each shouting into a vacuum, and each taking pot shots at your brand. We will take you through the paths we took to deliver a cohesive suite of sites that follow the rules, and make your stakeholders think it was all their own idea whilst avoiding the gunfight at the OK Corral.
Key takeaways:
Let your CMS do the heavy lifting - Your CMS should be your friend and your gateway into managing your contributors. Enabling them is key, but subtly shepherding them into the direction you’ve already mapped out.
Talk is cheap but amends are expensive - Find ways to engage your stakeholders at the right time and on the right things, and they will love you forever.If you get their input early doors then they will be less demanding the day before launch.
Rules are there for a reason - Training should include hearts and minds, not just the technical methods for chucking content onto a page. Get your stakeholders to think about their content before committing finger to keyboard. It is possible - honestly.
About Dougal and Lauren
Dougal Scaife is Head of Digital Experience and Engagement at Leeds Beckett (and has been for the past eight years.) He has a passion for UX, AI, creativity, great content, disrupting the sector and fixing formatting errors on the LBU website. Lauren Gale is LBU's Online Content and Search Editor and has been the driving force behind the development of the new Leeds Beckett site. She divides her time between marshalling fabulous content and keeping Dougal under control. And has more earrings than Pat Butcher.
Creating the ultimate content team with Tracy Playle, CEO at Pickle Jar Communications
If there’s one thing that has many organisations scratching their heads, it’s wondering what the best way is to structure a content team:
What area should the content team report to? Is it a function of marketing, communications or something else?
What skills are needed and how do we configure them into roles?
Should the team be a strategic lead or an agency style model?
How can we best operate across different functions and objectives?
In this brand new talk being delivered for the very first time at ContentEd, Tracy Playle, author of The Connected Campus, will share models for structuring a content team, and share her vision - never shared before - for the ultimate content team structure.
About Tracy Playle
Tracy is CEO and Chief Content Strategist at Pickle Jar Communications. She is also a public speaker and coach.
Since founding Pickle Jar Communications she has worked with over 200 education institutions around the world to help them advance their approach to content strategy, content design and content marketing.
The best version of Tracy comes out to play when she’s running workshops, training sessions, coaching individuals and teams or delivering presentations and conference keynotes. She dedicates herself to develop others to become powerful content professionals.
Tracy sees that her purpose is to inspire people - through curiosity and play - to step into their full potential and go beyond what they believe to be possible. This purpose drives her work as a content strategist in the education sector, as a leader, as a speaker, and as a coach.
Before founding Pickle Jar Communications in 2007, Tracy worked in-house at the University of Warwick, latterly as Head of Research-TV. She chose to become a consultant so that she could have an impact across the education sector, not just within a single institution, and to have greater breadth and variety in her work.
She is also the founder of ContentEd and Utterly Content. And she is the author of The Connected Campus: Creating a content strategy to drive engagement with your university (2020).
Tracy is an award-winning keynote speaker, and has spoken at conferences and events in five continents. As a speaker she unites insight and perspective with playfulness, humour and compassion.
Alongside her work as a consultant, Tracy is also a leadership coach. She practices the highest standards of coaching, having trained with Accomplishment Coaching in New York. She has also been involved in training coaches too.
Tracy is especially committed to bringing a coaching style to her leadership at Pickle Jar Communications, and helps other leaders do the same with their teams. She passionately believes that a successful team stems from leaders who stand to empower others with a huge dose of compassion, humour and humanity.
To FAQ or not to FAQ: That is the question with Lisa Hitt, Content strategist at George Mason University
FAQs are common across websites and an easy way to get content up quickly. But are they always the best, most effective choice? This session will look at the pros and cons of using FAQs, when to use them, and how to craft them to best serve the user and the university. It will also include a case study on the use of FAQs to deliver information to the George Mason University community during the COVID-19 crisis.
Key takeaways:
FAQs should not be the automatic go-to for conveying information, and the questions should be exactly that: frequently asked.
FAQs might have a place on your website. They can be posted quickly in an emergency. Users often look for them. They can effectively convey certain types of material.
FAQs should be crafted carefully and strategically to maximize SEO and fit naturally into the user journey. They should be tightly focused on user goals.
About Lisa Hitt
Lisa Hitt is Content Strategist at George Mason University, where she writes and edits content for websites, as well as social media posts, ad campaign copy, and other digital projects. She provides guidance and governance on content for Mason's college, school, and departmental websites, and leads workshops on content strategy, writing for the web, curating photos, and creating information architecture. She presented at the EduWeb Digital Summit in 2019 and at the ContentEd Conference in March 2021. Prior to joining Mason, she was a journalist, most recently an editor in USA TODAY's Money section. She has also taught courses in journalism and public relations as adjunct faculty. She has a BA in journalism and MS in public relations.
Standing up for standing out: using content strategy to demonstrate our distinctiveness by Robert Perry, Head of Research at Pickle Jar Communications
Making ourselves stand out in the crowded higher education marketplace is not an easy task. How can we grab an audience’s attention and communicate what really makes us distinct from other universities? In this talk, we’ll look at what distinctiveness even means for a university, and what we can do to go beyond just defining our brand and move towards living our brand.
Key takeaways:
Find out what “difference” actually means for the way you use content
Learn about the situations where standing out can be to your detriment
Take the first steps to embedding your distinctiveness throughout your institution.
About Robert Perry
Robert is Head of Research at Pickle Jar Communications. He primarily works on behalf of clients in the education and charity sectors, where he is responsible for all aspects of information-gathering, audience research, user testing, and anything else related to content or customer insights.
He has worked with schools, colleges, universities, membership organisations, charities, and education sector bodies. Whatever the work and whoever the client, Robert likes to find the connections between the driving forces of a project and the needs of the audience, with the aim of being able to satisfy both at the same time. He wants to know about the journeys that people make in relation to clients’ offerings, because the only way to truly deliver the right content to the right audience is to understand the context behind that journey. That’s why his favourite answer to any question is “it depends”.
He has a particular interest in student influencers and widening participation efforts, and has worked with clients such as UCL, Aston University, Leeds Beckett University, and United World Colleges on projects that focus on these areas.
Robert also represents Pickle Jar Communications at education sector events, speaking on aspects of audience research and digital communications at conferences organised by groups such as CASE and UUK.
Before joining Pickle Jar, Robert worked on content creation and digital communications in the aviation industry. He studied communications and English literature at Newcastle University, and now lives in Newcastle.
The Student-Centric Marketing Playbook with Vedika Taunk, International marketing and communications manager at Humber College, Canada
Join this presentation to learn 5 key operational changes you can make to your institution's marketing efforts to be more student-centric and ensure your enrollment goals are met. The digital-native students entering higher education today expect and demand the same kind of personalized, customer-centric digital experience when interacting with a prospective institution that they receive in their consumer technologies and are often disappointed by the former. This lack of connection might result in a loss of student enrolment. We all want to be more student centric but the question is how do we do that?
This session will show you 5 strategies, with examples, of how Humber Global has reengineered how we tell our story with a student centric-approach. Learn quick and easy-to-implement ideas on improving your web experience, communication flow, brochures/viewbooks and more.
Key takeaways:
How to find your institution's own authentic voice that connects with Gen Z and forms an emotional bond so that they choose you over other institutions
How to leverage technology and inter-department partnerships to be more student-centric
How to deliver the right pieces of information to students at the precise moment in their application journey so that it is helpful to them and they move on to the next step in the process
About Vedika Taunk
Vedika started her career in digital marketing at Yahoo! and has since worked in the higher education sector for 11 years in New Zealand and Canada in international marketing, communications and recruitment roles. Vedika currently works at Humber College, Canada’s largest college, where she is the International Marketing and Communications Manager. Vedika has presented at various conferences in New Zealand, the US and Canada and is passionate about student-centric storytelling, digital advertising, data interpretation through Google Analytics and drip communication strategies.
How to nail your first 90 days on a content job with Nicole Michaelis, Senior UX writer at Spotify
Starting a new job or content project? No matter if you’re a UX Writer, Content Marketer, or Content Strategist — the first couple of months are key to set yourself up for success. But starting from scratch can be overwhelming. In this session, I share my top tips for starting new content and UX projects that work for both freelancers and employers, no matter at what point in your career you are. What to document, who to talk to, and how to sell yourself to stakeholders (plus, much more!) will be covered in this session.
Key takeaways:
Starting a new content job — top to-dos
Getting to know stakeholders (and getting their buy-in!)
How to prioritise your tasks
About Nicole Michaelis
Nicole Michaelis is a UX Writer, Content Strategist and Content Marketer currently based in Stockholm. She runs her own content consultancy and works as a Senior UX Writer at Spotify. She teaches Content Marketing at Sweden’s biggest communication school and runs one of the biggest content podcasts, Content Rookie. Nicole also publishes poetry and is passionate about removing entry barriers to working in content.
Persuading senior leaders to do the right thing with David Dylan Thomas, Founder and CEO of David Dylan Thomas
It’s one thing to know what your organization should be doing, but that’s not always enough to convince the people who sign the checks. How do you get them on board? In this talk, David Dylan Thomas, author of Design for Cognitive Bias, will talk about the biases that drive organizations to make counterproductive and sometimes unethical choices, and what we can do about it. You’ll come away with a greater understanding of how to fight bias with bias to navigate some of the risk-averse, short-sighted, and poorly-incentivized habits organizations and clients often fall into.
Key takeaways
How to change behavior even if you can't change minds
How to create metrics that motivate better behavior
How to get folks to adopt ideas when just stating the facts isn't enough
About David
David Dylan Thomas, author of Design for Cognitive Bias, creator and host of The Cognitive Bias Podcast, and a twenty-year practitioner of content strategy and UX, has consulted major clients in entertainment, healthcare, publishing, finance, and retail. As the founder and CEO of David Dylan Thomas, LLC he offers workshops and presentations on inclusive design and the role of bias in making decisions. He has presented at TEDNYC, SXSW Interactive, Confab, An Event Apart, LavaCon, UX Copenhagen, Artifact, IA Conference, IxDA, Design and Content Conference, Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise, and the Wharton Web Conference on topics at the intersection of bias, design, and social justice.
From website management to student-centred digital services with Neil Allison, Head of Prospective Student Web Content and Lauren Tormey, Content designer at The University of Edinburgh
How do you build a team to get a grip of a sprawling university web presence and then keep hold? Two years ago, the University of Edinburgh invested in a team to transform how prospective student web content was managed.
We turned that original proposal into a human-centred design team focused on improving the overall prospective student experience. Our goal now is to influence student and staff behaviours to achieve business outcomes.
We don’t have all the answers, but we’ll talk about both theory and practice, sharing our team’s successes and learnings along the way.
Key takeaways:
The role of content specialists in a human-centred design team
The role of organisational culture in delivering useful and usable digital services
Examples of putting the theory into practice, and the impact it can have
About Neil Allison and Lauren Tormey
Neil Allison and Lauren Tormey are members of the University of Edinburgh’s Prospective Student Web Content Team, part of Communications and Marketing. Their multi-disciplinary team blends user research, content design and software development expertise to support colleagues across 22 schools, 3 colleges and numerous service functions, and deliver great experiences for prospective students.
Neil Allison is the Head of Prospective Student Web Content. He has over 20 years’ experience in the public sector as part of content management service teams and digital consultancy functions. Prior to his current role, he established the University of Edinburgh’s User Experience Service.
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilallison/
Lauren Tormey is a Content Designer in the Prospective Student Web Content team. Over her six years in higher education, she has used her editorial, CMS, and UX skills to support the creation and maintenance of more effective, human-centred content.
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-tormey/
Beyond enrolment marketing: What can higher ed learn from other industries with Day Kibilds, Director of growth at Pickle Jar Communications
Higher education is different than other industries, but our audiences are the same. Our prospective students and their parents are the customers of other industries' products and services. Their experience in those industries is the level of experience they expect from us. How do we make it possible?
This talk shares five tried and true strategies real estate, food delivery, retail, and fitness have used to delight and engage their audiences and presents how you could implement them in a typical enrolment funnel.
You'll leave this talk with at least one implementable idea that will move your prospective students from one stage to the next.
About Day Kibilds
Day is Director of Growth at Pickle Jar Communications, helping institutions worldwide make their content strategy dreams come true.
Before this role, Day spent 11 years in higher education both in the United States and Canada. She has led teams and transformed operations in enrolment and digital innovation at Penn State, Cornell, and Western University. She also speaks regularly about enrolment marketing, productivity, and stakeholder management at global conferences such as HighedWeb, Confab, PSE Web, and ContentEd.
Day is passionate about equity and inclusion and advocates for using content strategy as an equalizer to give students of all backgrounds access to the educational institutions they deserve to be a part of.
Re-shaping advancement around experience design with David Willows, Director of Advancement at International School of Brussels
Just before the pandemic hit, the Advancement team at the International School of Brussels made a decision to abandon the traditional structure of admissions, communications and development, in order to focus more intentionally on their role in designing experiences for families visiting and attending their school. This workshop will outline the thinking behind this restructuring and look back on some of the challenges and remarkable discoveries of the past year.
Key takeaways:
1. Learning key principles of Experience Design
2. Reflect on an innovative way of structuring a team in your organisation
3. Listen to the lived-experience of one school making this change.
About David Willows
Dr. David Willows is Director of Advancement at the International School of Brussels, Belgium. He is also a regular presenter & trainer at international events and author of several books and articles in the field of international school branding, innovation, admissions, marketing and communications. Today, he is considered a leading practitioner in the fields of Enrollment Management & Advancement and continues to be involved in several global network organisations, helping to shape and define the future of the learning business. Read his blog at www.fragments2.com.
More than school visits—how have you transformed your student recruitment using content strategy?
In this panel discussion, leaders and practitioners in recruitment, communications, and digital marketing will share their best advice on how to transform your recruitment operations from heavily visit-based to an operation that places the audience first and uses content as a strategy to achieve your goals.
Panelists:
November 25, 3:20 pm ET (Canada Focus)
🇨🇦JP Rains, Director of Communications and Digital Experience at Laurentian University
As Director of Communications & Digital Strategy at Laurentian University, JP leads the institution's digital brand and communications efforts. He is also a lecturer in the School of Sports Administration, within the Faculty of Management at Laurentian University. His evenings and weekends are spent as President of Rains Media, working on digital marketing projects with clients in Education, Retail, Health, and Professional Services.
Prior to that, he was the Vice-President of Strategy at Soshal (now Craft & Crew), a digital marketing agency, where his primary function was to lead the development of solutions for clients. He is a past chair of the board for the Post Secondary Education Web Conference of Canada and is a published author in the Journal of Education Advancement and Marketing.
🇨🇦Vedika Taunk, International Recruitment & Marketing Manager at Humber College
Vedika started her career in digital marketing at Yahoo! and has since worked in the higher education sector for 11 years in New Zealand and Canada in international marketing, communications and recruitment roles. Vedika currently works at Humber College, Canada’s largest college, where she is the International Marketing and Communications Manager. Vedika has presented at various conferences in New Zealand, the US and Canada and is passionate about student-centric storytelling, digital advertising, data interpretation through Google Analytics and drip communication strategies.
🇨🇦Kendall Beselaere, Team Lead Undergraduate Recruitment & Admissions - Marketing & Communications at Western University
Kendall Beselaere is Western's lead marketing & communications strategist for undergraduate recruitment and admissions. Kendall is passionate about audience-focused communications and is always the first to ask "What do the students need?" In the 5 years she's been at Western, she has been at the forefront of the evolution from a purely in-person operation to digital-first recruitment. As lead strategist, she creates and coordinates personalized email communication journeys, social media content calendars, website content, and coordinates stakeholders across the institution.
Kendall lives in Calgary and in her free time, you will find her at the summit of the most stunning Alberta mountains.
November 26, 11:20 am GMT (European Focus)
🇬🇧Dana Rock, Director of Marketing & Communications at the University of Derby
Dana Rock is Director of Marketing and Communications at the University of Derby.
Led by data, insight and a passion for Higher Education, Dana is focused on inspiring and enabling others to achieve their potential. They have a reputation for creating innovative campaigns, delivering inclusive and personalised communications, empowering teams and putting users at the heart of what they do.
They have previously worked at Oxford Brookes University, University of Exeter and University of Nottingham. When they are not leading teams and campaigns, they love running training courses and sharing their love of data, insight and innovation with others.
Twitter @dinojrock
🇬🇧Claire Furnish, Content Designer at the University of Southampton
Claire spent 15 years as a graphic designer working for agencies in Hampshire and Berkshire. Clients included Pfizer, Toshiba and De La Rue. In 2012 she moved into faculty-based marketing at the University of Southampton looking after subjects from healthcare to social sciences. In 2019 Claire became a content designer as part of the University’s digital transformation programme, OneWeb. Claire’s work includes helping relaunch over 200 postgraduate taught course pages.
🇪🇸Emanuel Dìaz, Head of Content Marketing at IE University
Emanuel Díaz is Head of Content Marketing at IE University in Madrid and a storytelling lover and aficionado. His passion for content started in the banking industry in his native Puerto Rico, where he was leading copy and digital marketing for the institution. The challenge of making a bank soulful caught him.
A Fulbright grant took him to Madrid to study at IE, in which he stayed as the Associate Director of Alumni Communications. Emanuel has a passion for creativity, emotional content, and weaving stories that showcase the beauty of working in the educational sector. He is also a proud collaborator in LGBTQ+ initiatives and does improv theatre in his free time.
🇬🇧Simon Fairbanks, Head of Student Recruitment Events at the University of Nottingham
Simon Fairbanks has over 14 years of experience in the Higher Education sector. This includes recruitment, marketing, and events roles on four different campuses: Nottingham, Birmingham, Warwick, and Coventry.
He recently spent two years working at Pickle Jar Communications, where he advised international schools, colleges, and universities on their content projects. He provided strategy, research, creative content, and training to help the education sector share its stories through digital communication channels.
Clients who have benefited from his expertise include AHUA, Bangor University, City & Guilds, Emory University School of Medicine, the University of Liverpool, the Office for Students, Queen Margaret University, UCL, United World Colleges, and Zurich International School.
As a published author, Fairbanks is particularly interested in storytelling, and how content strategy can deliver stories with greater impact. He spends his free time writing, running, and watching Hey Duggee with his two young children.
Beyond the brainstorm: a tried and tested way to generate solutions to absolutely anything with The University of Manchester
You know what you want to achieve. You meet to start planning how you achieve it. The most confident member of the team speaks up. Their idea gets chosen, and everyone else is ignored.
In this session, we’ll go beyond the brainstorm. We’ll show you a tried and tested way to solve problems and work as a team to come up with the very best solutions.
We’ll crowdsource a problem. And within an hour, you’ll have generated dozens of solid, testable ideas to solve it - whether you’re in the room or online.
Key takeaways:
A tried and tested method of generating brilliant ideas, quickly
How to stop having meetings that waste everyone’s time and your organisation’s money
Empower your team to generate great ideas
About Cheyenne Brown
Cheyenne Brown, Alumni Officer (Communications), The University of Manchester
Cheyenne has worked in multiple communications roles since starting her career at The University of Manchester three years ago. She has led on several integrated marketing campaigns, with her first ever project winning a HEIST Silver Award for best Student Engagement Campaign. She is now responsible for coordinating the marketing and communications activity delivered to over half a million alumni across various channels. As a Psychology graduate, Cheyenne is passionate about delivering user-focused and accessible content.
About Markus Karlsson-Jones
Markus Karlsson-Jones, Senior Alumni Officer (Global Volunteer and Networks), The University of Manchester
Markus leads the University‘s international alumni engagement strategy, including managing a network of 300 volunteers and 60 alumni groups across the world.
Markus enjoys designing alumni programmes to meet evolving needs while unlocking the huge creative potential of enthused and ambitious volunteers. It’s led us to attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest number of people joining an online run (twice!) and abruptly shifting a global volunteer activism programme to an online mode. The last of those earned the University a global finalist spot and first place in Europe for the CASE Platinum Award for Best Practices in Alumni Relations in 2019-20 (pre-pandemic).
Markus has worked in HE since 2006 and in alumni relations since 2010.
About Tom Fern
Tom Fern, Senior Communications Officer (Alumni), The University of Manchester
Tom Fern is Senior Communications Officer in The University of Manchester’s alumni relations team, where he is responsible for managing communications to almost 500,000 former students in over 190 countries across digital and print. His main areas of interest are content design, behavioural change and email marketing. Before joining Manchester in 2016, Tom spent 8 years managing online communications in secondary education and football.
Thrifty and thriving: Cost-effective ways to boost student experience and conversion with Amy Ward, Media Relations Officer at EKC Group
As purse strings tighten across the sector, it’s more important than ever to find cost-effective solutions to boost student experience and conversion to meet strategic goals.
In this workshop, you will discover how to utilise the information and resources you have available to transform your communications, student engagement, and recruitment and conversion strategies…on a budget!
You will also discover how you can turn big ideas into small budget wins - with tips on how you can maximise the impact of your activities and get ahead of the competition.
Key takeaways:
Gain insight on how to harness your data and stakeholder understanding to focus your budget where it matters.
Discover how to capitalise on existing content, resources and knowledge to repurpose and curate new activities that have an impact.
Develop the confidence to innovate, explore big ideas and try something new without blowing the budget.
About Amy Ward
Amy Ward is currently the Media Relations Officer for EKC Group, one of the largest Further Education college groups in the South East.
Prior to joining the Group, Amy worked for over five years in Further Education and Higher Education in marketing and communications roles. Most notably, Amy spent three years at the University of Kent as the first-ever Marketing and Communications Manager for the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science where she was responsible for all aspects of student recruitment, marketing and communications, admissions, student experience, student voice and events.
Beyond the education sector, Amy has worked as a freelance Graphic Designer, Photographer and Marketing Consultant for small independent businesses.
Planning and running effective discovery workshops for your content strategy
Presented by:
Tracy Playle. Chief Content Strategist, Pickle Jar Communications
Author of The Connected Campus: creating a content strategy to drive engagement with your university (2020)
About this webinar
Running workshops is an important part of the content strategy discovery phase. In them, we're often faced with a limited about of time to get as much gold out of our participants as we possibly can. So how can we do that in a way that makes it meaningful and joyful for both you and them?
In this session, founder of ContentEd and author of the The Connected Campus: creating a content strategy to drive engagement with your university, Tracy Playle will share with you tools, tricks, techniques and exercises developed in almost two decades of working in content strategy and content development with education institutions.
Key takeaways
Sharing many workshop activities that you can steal to use right away
Overcoming common pitfalls with particular workshop activities and approaches
Reflections for conducting workshops online when you can't meet in person
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Bringing more play into the workplace
Presented by:
Tracy Playle. Chief Content Strategist, Pickle Jar Communications
Author of The Connected Campus: creating a content strategy to drive engagement with your university (2020)
About this webinar
How would your work life be if it were filled with more playfulness and joy?
Many of us relate to "play" as the thing that we do outside of work. Or the thing that's reserved for children. But play is an important mode of bridging human relationships, developing new ideas and expanding our creativity. When we dismiss play as "silly" or "frivilous" we miss out on the opportunity to use it to expand our work.
In this session, ContentEd founder, Tracy Playle, will talk about the importance of play at work and in content strategy, and help you think how you can bring more play into your working practices and working life.
Key takeaways
Understand how you relate to "play"
See how shifting your relationship to play may bring more joy into your work
Practical suggestions for weaving more play and playfulness into your content strategy projects
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Taylor Made: Creating Web Governance That Works For You
Presented by:
Georgy Cohen. Director of Digital Strategy, OHO Interactive
About this webinar
Through web governance, you can create accountability and structure to sustainably support the achievement of your digital communications goals. But web governance — especially in higher ed — is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Each institution must uniquely consider what processes and guidelines are necessary and appropriate, accounting for the relevant goals, roles, skillsets, cultures, and technologies.
In this presentation, OHO Interactive’s Georgy Cohen — who has worked with dozens of institutions both in-house and as a consultant to develop web governance solutions — will walk through the flex points of web governance and discuss how to determine what approach will work best for you in terms of governance model, publishing roles and workflow, content quality assurance, training, and more. Her special co-presenter, Taylor Swift, will help affirm your critical role as a steward of effective governance — because “you can't spell ‘awesome’ without ‘me.’”
Key takeaways
Core elements of web governance
How to scale web governance approaches to your institutional needs
How to define success and yield effective results
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Over-coming imposter syndrome in Content Strategy
Presented by:
Tracy Playle. Chief Content Strategist, Pickle Jar Communications
Author of The Connected Campus: creating a content strategy to drive engagement with your university (2020)
About this webinar
If there’s one - and only one - thing that professionals across content disciplines have in common, it’s our tendency to feel the fear of imposter syndrome. As our profession evolves and adapts, so too the breadth of our experiences, skills and know-how grow and expand. No two content professionals really look the same. So with such a vast array of expertise and loosely defined role descriptions, how do we begin to establish a sense of our own individual belonging and value as a content professional? In our conference opening, Tracy Playle will explore how we can move from imposter to superhero, allowing for difference and diversity in an ever-shifting industry.
Key takeaways
Understanding what we mean by imposter syndrome and the impact it can have on our work
Getting present to the difference between your skills and your super powers
Finding ways to believe in yourself as a content professional and keep believing
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Virtual open days: Maximising the influence of content and exploring the future of these platforms
Presented by:
Sophie Palmer, Senior Account Manager, Revolution Viewing
Sarah-Jane Spooner, Head of Video Projects, Revolution Viewing
About this webinar
Virtual open days have always been a proven conversion tool, but as we approach the "new normal" there's no doubt that they're here to stay. Heading into the new academic year, we ask "If you were tasked with designing the ultimate online experience for prospective students, what would you include?" Revolution Viewing have produced over 50 virtual open days for universities and conducted extensive research with prospective students. Join us as we explore the essential content your virtual open day needs, and look to the future at the art of the possible.
Key takeaways
What prospective students need and expect from your virtual open day
Optimising content for the student recruitment cycle - insight from Revolution Viewing's primary research programme
How you can use your virtual open day to build and maintain relationships with prospective students
From virtual open day to virtual experience - a look ahead to the future