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Kelsey SeymourKelsey Seymour, Digital Marketing Manager at the University of New Brunswick, is one of the 12 presenters of the 2017 Higher Ed Content Conference (the 4th edition!).

In this 4-question interview, Kelsey 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?

We tried new social tactics like Facebook Canvas and Twitter Conversational Ads as part of our #OnlyHere recruitment marketing campaign. I was skeptical that the Twitter Conversational Ads would work – first, because our target 15-17 yr. old audience is leaving Twitter in favour of platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – and second, because they seemed to be designed more for business than higher ed.

Here are examples of our ads:

It was really exciting to see the tactic work – and it’s kind of a triple-threat, helping our awareness, engagement and lead generation goals. When students engage with the ad, they are not only being exposed to messaging about UNB and encouraged to participate in our contest, they end up becoming brand ambassadors for UNB by sharing the messaging with their network.

We are ultimately measuring the success of the tactic by the number of contest entries and cost per action, and so far it hasn’t been as effective as Facebook or Instagram in generating leads. But it was exciting to see prospective students engaging with the content and sharing it with their online networks.

2) What is your favorite tool to use when working on content projects?

My favourite tool for social relationship management and reporting is a combination of Hootsuite Enterprise with a single Sprout Social account for reporting. I love Hootsuite Enterprise as a single tool for social listening, engagement and scheduling. As our university’s social media lead, it’s so helpful for me to assign content to colleagues in other units (e.g. Alumni, Recruitment, Student Services, etc). Though the reporting function is improving, I can’t let Sprout Social go. My ability to generate a quick report on a single Facebook page over time, or compare two Twitter accounts by engagement and influence, within minutes is invaluable.

3) What is the place of search engine optimization in your content creation and distribution process?

We aren’t doing as much as we should be for SEO, but our Digital Marketing team is less than 2-years old, so it’s a capacity we’re growing. For now, we’ve incorporated concepts like effective web writing, headings, tags and meta descriptions into our content training efforts in an effort to improve our click-through-rates (CTR).

4) Video has become a key format. Can you share the most successful video produced at your school?

We have really amped up our video production in the last year and we have a really talented Media Services team that we work with.

The We are UNB video that we produced for our brand launch was the most impactful video internally. I used our new brand foundation (which we developed after significant brand research), and inspiration from my own experience as an alumna to write the script and it was clear when we showed it that that experience was shared by mostly everyone in the audience. It has since been repurposed for several presentation and events because of the pride and affinity you feel when you watch it.

We had to edit and re-publish the video, so the quantitative metrics aren’t visible on YouTube. But we ultimately measured its success qualitatively (i.e. In goosebumps) – especially since it was created for an internal audience.

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.

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