Walking the Talk
I’ve just wrapped the last weekly office hour with your colleagues who were enrolled in my 8-week online course on social media marketing for higher ed since February 24 (I know more than 8 weeks, the pandemic made it an 11-week course 🙂 to help them catch their breath).
In my parting words to my students I explained how important, even more today, it was to take the time to create solutions to recurring issues, solutions that can save us (and everybody else) a lot of time down the line.
I’m often guilty of what I’ll call “I’ll fix it for you” habit, because it does seem faster and easier to fix whatever issue comes your way than trying to prevent it in the first place.
Yet, it’s often an illusion than can end up creating a lot of headaches and sometimes heartaches.
In his latest (and excellent) book, Upstream, Dan Heath makes an incredible case to push us to try to think and act differently by switching our “fixing approach” with a focus on prevention instead.
Why don’t people follow instructions? They don’t read them – most of the time
So, when I saw this tweet earlier today expressing a sentiment I’ve seen shared many times by higher ed digital communicators and marketing professionals working on crowdsourced video or photo projects, I first offered this quick suggestion.
This is something we keep reminding writers in our online classrooms, including the 4-week course on Web Writing for Higher Ed that started on Monday.
Don’t Tell, Show — then Share!
But, then I gave it more thought and decided to do exactly what I was recommending: show and not just tell what I meant.
It took me exactly 5 minutes to go from idea to visual concept in Canva.
I’m obviously NOT a designer, but if this can help you avoid a bunch of vertical submissions for an horizontal video project (or the other way around for your next Instagram story), I thought I would share the resulting graphics as well as the Canva template if you want/need to adapt it:
- Download recording a horizontal video (Landscape) [34KB, PNG file]
- Download recording a vertical video (Landscape) [34KB, PNG file]
- Canva template you can adapt (add your logo, change colors, etc.)
Looking for a way to train your higher ed team?
The Higher Ed Digital Conference is the solution with a $425 registration covering up to 10 individual connections (if your team still has to work from home).
Designed and hosted by the only organization behind more than 25 annual higher ed online conferences for teams since 2007, this online conference is the event for higher ed professionals and teams who want to help their school create better content and strategies that will work in any context (or realities) across digital channels (social media, mobile, web, email, etc.)
Read below what a few of your higher ed colleagues who attended the past editions of another conference hosted by Higher Ed Experts, the Higher Ed Analytics Conference, say about the experience.