Three Questions: Georgy Cohen on Creating a Content Strategy in Higher Ed

Georgy Cohen is the web content and strategy manager for Tufts University and the co-founder of Meet Content.

I’ve been working in higher education for nearly seven years, all at Tufts University. Before that, I worked in the online newsroom for The Boston Globe / Boston.com for three years right out of college at Boston University, where I studied journalism. One of the reasons I sought a job in higher ed communications was because of my experience as a student employee in the Alumni Publications office at BU. It seemed like such a smart, collegial work environment. I also sought the opportunity to feel that a closer connection to the mission and purpose behind the work I did everyday, and working in higher ed has provided that in spades. It’s a great feeling.

I’m still a bit of a newshound, and I confess to missing the high-adrenaline atmosphere of a newsroom, but I have really embraced the challenge of bringing a mainstream media mindset to higher ed web communications.

 Can you tell me a little bit about your blog, Meet Content, and what motivated you to start it?

I co-founded Meet Content with Rick Allen in March of this year, but the idea formed at the end of last October. We had both presented on content-related topics at HighEdWeb and Stamats SIMTech, and we were energized by all the great conversations we had about content development and strategy at those conferences. It seemed to us that people in higher ed wanted to talk and learn about content-specific topics, and while we saw these topics get covered occasionally in other higher ed blogs, we felt there was a niche that we could fill.

Rick and I live in the same town outside of Boston, so literally on the cab ride home from the airport on the way back from SIMTech, we began cooking up the idea of what eventually became Meet Content. The response has been tremendous. From the feedback we’re getting, it seems like people have been hungry for a chance to focus on how to make better content in higher ed.

What would you recommend to someone in Higher Education that is just developing his or her content marketing and/or social media marketing strategy?

Listen, listen, listen. That includes listening to your constituents, your stakeholders, your colleagues, your industry peers. Listen and learn to find out what works, what doesn’t, what’s necessary, what’s possible, what’s not possible. Relatedly, make it a big tent. Find the other social media and/or content practitioners at your institution and creating a learning community. Help each other out, share resources and information, create efficiencies, learn from each other’s successes and failures.

My other bit of advice would be to think holistically. Don’t flesh out your big Twitter/Facebook/Foursquare strategy without thinking about how it impacts your website, how you promote it via your newsletter, and so on. We can’t think about these things in separate buckets anymore. Every channel, whether it’s a magazine or a Twitter account, is a spoke off of the common hub of getting out message out there. They’ve all got to work together to get the wheel turning.

What is the one misconception about content marketing and/or social media marketing in Higher Education that you would like people to understand?

This stuff is harder than it looks! It may not take long to actually craft a 140-character tweet (or 120-character if you want to leave room for retweeting :-)) but what does take time is thinking about how social media fits into your broader online communications strategy, how Twitter specifically helps execute those goals, building your editorial calendar, determining what resources are committed to maintaining that presence, monitoring and engaging and all the accordant responsibilities of community management… the list goes on!

It also takes a while for our efforts to pay dividends. A community isn’t built overnight. We can’t measure the effectiveness of our engagement on Twitter after a few weeks (and the whole question of measurement is another sticky wicket — my Reader’s Digest answer is that we need to identify the key stats we want to track, have a sense of why they’re important, track them over time and contextualize the numbers with exemplary anecdotes). We need to be patient, and implore our superiors to be patient. It’s not magic, despite what some may believe. But you know what? When it all comes together, it does add up to something pretty darned special.