No, I Don’t Get Summers Off!
Posted: June 21, 2012 Filed under: Content Marketing, Social Media | Tags: college, college PR, higher education, professors, summer semester Leave a comment »Fantasy
Fact
Leaving the K-12ers out of this, higher education institutions work all year-long, and no, they don’t get out at 3 o’clock either. In fact, with all of the writing, media monitoring, event planning and attending, crisis communications, and addressing breaking news, many college and university communicators work well over 40 hours per week.
Admittedly, summertime tends to be less eventful, but thoughtful experimentation and strategic planning have campus communicators plugging away. To support this humble opinion, I quickly Googled, “Higher ed gets summer off,” and surprise, surprise, I came across a number of recent articles that address the old platitudes:
- Dr. Ray Pastore, blogs about teaching, researching, and preparing this summer.
- Kristine M. Khire, identifies the stereotypes and misconceptions about higher ed PR in a PRSA article.
- Dr. Lora Helvie-Mason, braces herself whenever someone asks her what she does for a living. Her recent blog post addresses what she does each summer, and provides a laundry list of summertime faculty development opportunities for schools on a budget.
What all three authors have in common, they use the summer interval to improve what they do, so they can make higher education better! While I wish I could shield the cogs of higher ed from these stereotypes, I come armed with only two tools, 1) this newsletter and 2) this blog.
Our June newsletter is dedicated to all the summer time workers in higher ed; may you continue to take this time to make higher ed better for your institution and its stakeholders, and may we have the privilege of giving you the resources you need to succeed.
Carpe Diem: Creating Commencement Hype
Posted: May 15, 2012 Filed under: Announcements, Social Media | Tags: college PR, commencement, graduation, student achievement Leave a comment »It’s that time of year again; time to celebrate Graduation and recognize your students for everything they have achieved.
If you’re a readMedia client and you haven’t sent out your first badge, now it the time! All readMedia clients have the ability to publish and email a personalized achievement for every Graduation candidate. Each student’s tailored achievement comes with a super cool badge that they can easily share on Facebook, Twitter, or any social media network. These achievements and badges can be created, emailed, and posted online with very little effort.
Our Best Practices post gives you tips, benefits, and useful how-to guides for:
- Adding distinctions or “Honors” to your Commencement template
- Dressing up your Commencement story
- Preparing back-to-back Achievements
- Including Mom and Dad
Additionally, we encourage any client looking for a basic overview on how to send an Achievement to register for our 30 minute “readMedia Refresher.” The webinar will cover:
- importing a spreadsheet,
- composing a template,
- sending your Achievement (to every student, parent, and hometown newspaper), and
- viewing your Report, Web Statistics, and tracking traffic and social media shares.
Register now:
If you need inspiration, take a gander at this impressive selection of past and present Graduation announcements:
- Eastern Connecticut State University >>
- Armstrong Atlantic State University >>
- Ashland University >>
- Herkimer County Community College >>
In closing, we’re of the philosophy, “It’s better to have and not need, than want and not have.” So, we’ve compiled a list of popular links that will ensure you have what you need to succeed.
- Editorial Checklist >>
- Learn from peer institutions >>
- Training and videos >>
- readMedia Guide >>
- readabout.me Guide >>
If we’ve missed anything or you’re just plain overwhelmed, contact us, we live for helping you – and we’re not being facetious. On the flip-side, feel free to reach out and let us know how much you love readMedia.
Happy Commencement,
- The readMedia Team
