What's new, what's next, what's best, and how it all fits in to a successful digital marketing strategy… Get inside our head with these helpful resources—from blog posts to best practices guides—written by our team of experts.
Universities everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief. For most, tassels have been flipped, mortarboards flung in the air, and the academic year has come to a close.
Summer is a quieter time on campus, which provides the opportunity to play a bit of catch-up on tasks and projects that eluded us during the school year. So, with a better digital presence in mind, how can you take advantage of this time to shine brighter come the fall?
After a decade of working with numerous Content Management Systems such as Sitecore, Adobe CQ, Ektron, Kentico, and Wordpress, I recently joined OHO Interactive and, for the first time, I’m diving deep into the Drupal CMS, including attending this year’s DrupalCon earlier this month. DrupalCon Los Angeles was a great experience - in fact, I was completely blown away.
Imagine going to your favorite blog and seeing they’ve just posted a video entry instead of the usual text-based one. A lot of users might think it’s pretty cool, but other users, particularly those with a hearing impairment, might not think so. That’s because most videos on the web aren’t captioned, making them disappointing experiences for people who can’t hear.
Ever since Erik Runyon published his post on carousel statistics for the Notre Dame website, there has been plenty of debate on whether carousels are an effective way of providing navigation and information to users. Seeing that carousels are used universally on a wide variety of websites - including e-commerce, higher education, and B2B platforms - one would think the answer would clearly be yes. However, sites such as Should I Use a Carousel have fervently come out and opposed them.
Exciting news! Our work with StudentCity and Simpson Gumpertz & Heger has been honored with Awards of Distinction by the 2015 Communicator Awards.
The Communicator Awards is an annual competition honoring creative excellence among communication professionals. Overseen by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts (AIVA), the awards draw thousands of entries making it the largest awards of its kind in the world.
While Oreo’s and Old Spice’s social media campaigns make it seem like Twitter is built for consumer-focused companies trying to sell a product, there is plenty of room for other folks trying to master social media to play ball as well. By fully utilizing its simplicity, wide reach, and analytical prowess, Twitter can become an incredibly effective tool for any marketer.
Do you want to know the secret messaging strategy of one the most recognized non-profit online schools in the country? It isn’t confidential. It isn’t stolen. It’s right out in the open – on YouTube:
One of the foundational deliverables for a website project is a content audit. A website content audit is a comprehensive website evaluation that takes into account multiple quantitative and qualitative factors in order to gauge current content quality, components, connections, structure, and function.
Senior year of high school is marked with a lot of really exciting moments -- homecoming, prom, graduation, and of course, deciding which college to attend in the Fall. And to make sure the excitement doesn’t waver during the time in between getting the acceptance letter and making a decision, schools put a lot of effort into creating a bond with accepted students with websites designed just for them.
Transparency flies in the face of silos, which are endemic to higher ed. Silos seclude people from one another and disconnect people from streams of information. This creates redundancy and inefficiency, inhibits the ability to gain broad buy-in, and makes communication challenging.
But when you strive to foster transparency, the walls fall away. People become humans, not just names on a list. Information becomes common knowledge, not the stuff of legend. Communication and connections become the currency by which things get done.
If you’re still thinking about how to make your website more mobile-friendly, you better stop thinking and start doing because you’re about to get left behind. In case you missed it, Google modified its search algorithms yesterday, resulting in a major change to the way the search engine ranks websites.
The world of web design is truly an interesting place and lucky for us, we get to experience it every day. On one side, we see phenomenal creativity and ingenuity from designers trying to give users a unique web experience. However, the other side is a dark place where designers overstep their bounds and ruin webpages. Here are some common design mistakes we see, along with our reactions in GIF form.
“Fifteen years from now more than half of the universities [in America] will be in bankruptcy,” predicts Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. He’s not alone. Financial services firm TIAA CREF anticipates closures among the “1,600 schools in the U.S.
We’re thrilled to announce that our work with CIEE has been named as a finalist in the 2015 MITX Awards in the Best Performance Marketing Campaign category. The MITX Awards are presented by the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange and are the largest and most prestigious annual awards competition in the country for marketing and technology innovation.
You may think you know exactly what a style guide is, but depending on who you’re talking to, you could be completely wrong. Most of us, particularly those of us who have anything to do with maintaining brand identity, assume a style guide refers to a collection of guidelines that govern usage of creative elements and details in digital, print, and media vehicles. And while we’re right about that, there are other types of style guides that are just as important to keeping a consistent brand look and feel.
We've packed up our Harvard Square office and trucked over to Somerville's Davis Square! Our new home is in the historic Hobbs Building, also home to the iconic Somerville Theatre, and we've taken over the marquee to tell everyone how excited we are about the change. You can now find us on the third floor at 55 Davis Square, and while our address has changed, our phone numbers remain the same. No need to change your speed dial.
Check out our new digs:
For years, the U.S. government has provided billions in grants and loans to the higher education system while leaving questions of its quality to others. Private publications like U.S. News & World Report’s annual college rankings focus largely on factors like faculty quality, acceptance rates, and test scores of incoming students, but do not assess how much students learn and how they thrive financially after they leave a college or university.
Did you know of prospective students who complete applications, only 15% apply on their first visit? And, more than 54% of eventual applicants visit college and university websites five or more times before applying?
It’s great they’re coming back but, if your school is like many, you don’t need prospects. You need more enrolled students.
Baby Boomers make up more than a quarter of the population of the United States. That’s 77 million people who, as they reach retirement age, are seeking information and answers to questions about Medicare insurance plans. The door is wide open for healthcare marketers to capitalize on an incredible growth opportunity. But before they can start marketing to Baby Boomers, healthcare marketers need to understand how this group likes getting information about health-related matters, their online usage behaviors, and how they envision themselves.
The recent announcement that Sweet Briar College will be closing its doors at the end of the academic year has some experts heralding the start of a trend for higher education institutions with dwindling enrollment numbers. While unfortunate, this contraction in the number of small, private colleges and universities across the country is not unexpected.