In this 4-question interview, Amy Grace tells us about an exciting content project, a favorite tool, the place of SEO and shares a cool video with us.
1) What is the most exciting content project you’ve worked on over the past year?
Before I left University of South Carolina, we launched a new platform for our campus news. It was a great collaborative project! I had the opportunity to work with the development and design team and the writing team to help develop better ways to showcase our great stories. We even reintroduced long-form stories, which performed better than nearly all other content.
2) What is your favorite tool to use when working on content projects?
I love the Hemingway App. It’s a tool that analyzes text for elements such as reading level and difficult sentences. It’s not only useful for writers. I’ve used it in user experience evaluations to show stakeholders content that may not be matching their audience needs. And let’s be honest, academia has a tendency to be wordy! It really helps us keep our web writing in check.
3) What is the place of search engine optimization in your content creation and distribution process?
I try to think of SEO in a user experience mindset. It comes into play in navigation labels, how content is written and formatted, and how we create page URLs. I don’t try to add in keywords that don’t match to user goals. As I view it, clear, concise content that meets user needs with the language and terms they use will be successful and used.
4) Video has become a key format. Can you share the most successful video produced at your school?
While at University of South Carolina, I didn’t get involved in the video process often, but we had a great team of storytellers between our writers, creative team, and new videographer. As our ways to display content expanded so did the video storytelling. The most successful video was created after my departure by CJ Lake, our social media strategist. It featured some of our favorite faculty members attempting to define “millennial vocabulary” such as woke and shade. It quickly went viral via social media!
A conference focusing on content strategy & practices in higher ed?
The HECO conference has become a must-attend event for marketing and communication professionals in higher education looking for new ideas and best practices for content creation, management and distribution..
Read below what a few of your higher ed colleagues who attended the past editions of the Higher Ed Content Conference say about the event.