Content Strategy in #highered: State, Impact & Advice by Mary Jo Stockton (@docmjs) from Longwood University

Mary Jo Stockton, Director of Web and Social Content at Longwood University, is one of the 12 higher ed professionals presenting at the 2015 Higher Ed Content Conference (April 15).

In this 3-question interview, Mary Jo discusses the state of content at her institution, how she measures content performance and shares some advice to create content for higher ed.

1) Would you say that content has now the place it deserves at your institution?

Content has become very important at Longwood University.

This past year we reorganized to better facilitate the process of creating good content. We now have a department of Digital Marketing and Content Strategy with a team of 8 dedicated to creating quality digital content.

The department has several strategies in place that keep us constantly thinking of new ways to produce engaging content that tells the story of our institution.

2) How do you measure the performance and/or the impact of your content at your school? How does this help you with the content creation process?

Traffic to the pieces of content we produce is monitored.

For website content we use Google analytics and for our social media we are using Simply Measured.

When our content is picked up by other outlets we look at the engagement on their articles and posts and keep in mind the type of traffic different outlets attract. If it works we build on that success, if it doesn’t work we look at how we could have done it differently

3) Can you share the best piece of advice or lesson you learned about creating content for higher ed?

If it’s possible in your work environment, bring your team together and collaborate on ideas.

Our team members often have great ideas but once we bring them to the table and brainstorm around that idea we end up with something even better.

It’s more than just our work skills, we all bring different interests and views to the table and can represent different audience segments. Short brainstorming sessions have lead to better and more engaging content.