Joshua Dodson, Web Strategy and SEO Manager at Eastern Kentucky University, is one of the 12 higher ed professionals presenting at the 2015 Higher Ed Content Conference (April 15).
In this 3-question interview, Joshua discusses the state of content at his institution, how he 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?
I definitely believe that EKU is working hard to making strong content prominent and approachable for our audience.
Everyone sees the value of content and its central role in telling our brand story, as well as promoting the university.
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?
We measure the impact of our content in several ways.
A couple of them include monitoring how often our web pages show up in search results and how people interact with the content on the site.
Another primary consideration is the relationship of the content to goal conversions (inquiries, applications, etc.). If the content does not achieve its related objective, it needs to be reviewed and altered.
3) Can you share the best piece of advice or lesson you learned about creating content for higher ed?
One lesson is that people do want to share their stories, but on their terms.
We, as the hunters and gatherers of content, need to make it easy for people to share their stories with us.
When we make it easy, they will share stories about their experiences. They will inform us, direct us, and delight us. We will still have to do something with it, though. If we make it easy for people to share their stories and then follow up, we will never lack valuable content.
