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Quarterly Community Update

September 2017

MarCom would like to extend an invitation to all faculty and staff to attend the Quarterly Community Update. The forum is designed as an opportunity to learn about what is happening currently within the SMU community and receive updates on future plans.

Who: Faculty, staff, and students

What: Quarterly Community Forum – The Quarterly Community Update is an opportunity to share updates and initiatives from the BOT meetings, including info around enrollment, fundraising, academic programs, and student affairs initiatives. The format will include an address from the President, deans, and small group info sessions led by a cabinet representative to address and answer specific questions.

When: Thursday, September 28 from 3:30-5:00pm

Where: Worthington Conference Center

Saint Martin’s Online Employee Directory

September 2017

The MarCom team (especially this web content manager) is working to improve the accuracy and functionality of our Saint Martin’s University online employee directory.

The directory has many functions, including:
– Resource for students (enrolled and perspective), faculty, staff, and alumni
– Professional/industry recognition and networking
– Communication

How can you ensure that your directory profile is helping to support the Saint Martin’s community?

1) Accurate information: Email, phone, official university title, office location, office/program associations
2) Picture: If you missed our last employee picture day, we will be having another one on September 20th. If you have a picture that you’d like to use on your profile, send it to the executive assistant of your school or Kyle Wohlenhaus (kwohlenhaus@stmartin.edu)
3) Professional/academic information: Allows you to showcase publications, research, etc.
4) Personal quotes/stories (faculty): These are fed into school and program pages

Next steps….

1) Check your profile for accuracy (or if you don’t have one, please send a request!)
2) Send any updates to the executive assistant of your school or to Kyle Wohlenhaus (kwohlenhaus@stmartin.edu)
3) Have your picture taken on September 20th from 11a-2p (at the top of Old Main grand staircase)

We appreciate all of the effort already underway (by the deans, executive assistants, multiple offices on campus, and you) to improve this system!

If you have any questions, please contact Kyle Wohlenhaus, (kwohlenhaus@stmartin.edu)

Example

 

 

 

 

Undergraduate Program Page Redesign

July 2017 –  As we welcome students to campus for orientations, we have been working hard to update and publish redesigned Undergraduate program pages for each of the schools. In order to provide a clearer picture as to how users are interacting with the program pages, we have redesigned the content to allow our department to collect more data to provide meaningful analytics to serve students better and represent your programs accurately. Below is an example of a page with changes. Note: we have shifted to expandable sections for reasons two-fold; 1) It will allow us to utilize our analytics software (SiteImprove) to see how users are interacting with the content and 2) It is more mobile responsive (less scrolling, more succinct content).  We have also linked Mission and Outcomes where that information is available. Here is a sample view:

sample

Next steps…

Our next step in the redesign process will be working with the individual schools to build content for the program pages that better reflects how those programs are unique and provide value at Saint Martin’s. We are aiming to work with the schools to ensure that messaging and content are accurate, correctly portraying and marketing to prospective and current students.

Introductions and MarCom Updates

Welcome back to the MarCom blog!

We hope you find this blog to be useful for news, tips, and other items that will help everyone in our community align as best as possible with SMU’s mission.

MarCom has recently welcomed two new members to the team!

Kevin Hyde: Media Relations Manager

As media relations manager, Kevin will work with faculty, staff, alumni, students and external media to identify stories to advance the visibility, goals and mission of Saint Martin’s. Kevin will work closely with Marki Carson on creative collateral projects and Carl Lew on web projects. Kevin will also take lead on our social media strategy and manage university publications, including our bi-annual Insights magazine.

Contact Kevin: khyde@stmartin.edu or (360) 412-6126

Kyle Wohlenhaus: Web Content Manager

Kyle will work with faculty and staff to ensure our web content is up-to-date and effectively advances the goals and mission of Saint Martin’s. As the web has become one of the most important marketing tools to recruit new students, Kyle will work closely with Carl Lew, Kevin Hyde (our new media relations manager), and Admissions on assessing, developing and publishing web stories with prospective students as our primary audience. Kyle will be the go-to person to train web assistants across campus on how to update their web pages via the Drupal-based content management system. He will also oversee and curate content on many of the website’s main pages, including the homepage, primary landing pages and the faculty and staff directory.

Contact Kyle: kwohlenhaus@stmartin.edu or (360) 486-8860

 

A Bear of a Web Directory

If you currently work at Saint Martin’s*, you should have your very own page in our web directory. This is your very own calling-card, your Saint Martin’s resume, your own hagiography, your digital bubble-gum baseball card, and your Pokédex listing, all in one! (Boy, that went downhill fast.)

This is your own space to talk about yourself, to share your mission and vision for the community and students, and to provide impressive statistics (don’t know your SLUG percentage? We can calculate the rate of article publication over time, and give more weight to articles written in direct response to your academic opponents! … Why are you looking at me that way?).

More than a yearbook

The website directory is the most-used and most-public-facing campus resource for staff and faculty contact information. Prospective grad students use it to see the research interests of their potential mentors. Accreditors may reference it to see how we talk about our teaching credentials. In order for it to play its part in the symphony of our website as a whole, each directory listing has to be as mission-focused and professional as the rest; at the same time, it’s your own space to show your creativity and unique set of experiences and skills that set you apart among your colleagues.

Give us the facts!

Your office number, phone number, and email address are critical so that your colleagues and students can reach you, and if the nature of your work keeps you out of the office during most business hours, feel free to provide your cell phone number, if you are comfortable with it.

unbearable

The whole point is making yourself not im-paws-ible to find

Give us some personality!

In order to express our sense of mission and purpose, you’re encouraged to share a personal mission statement that encapsulates your personal philosophy. It can be related to your teaching philosophy, how you embrace our Benedictine/Catholic mission, or even your objectives for your students or clients. A number of us already have one; check out Dr. Bode‘s as a good example:

quotable.JPG

You’re also encouraged to share information about your hobbies & interests, family, and personal history. By doing so, you create the potential to open new doors and make new connections, help new members of our community feel at home, and create bonds of trust before you’ve even met!

More official than LinkedIn

Your directory page is also your external proof of the amazing work you do here! We want you to use it to show off your amazing contribution to the university, the work you accomplished prior to arriving here, and the vision you have for your department’s (and for your students’) future.

There are sections in your directory page set aside for links to your personal website, your CV (which is a downloadable link), and we can create sections for you to list (and please hyperlink, if you can) your publications, your career history, your awards and accomplishments, major projects, or anything else you feel is relevant to your contribution and involvement at Saint Martin’s.

And, perhaps more importantly and most visibly, we’d like to see your fields and areas of specialization and your degrees:

creds

Another WWU alum? Vikings represent!!

Harder to update than all of your social media accounts

It’s true, but it’s not social media. This content is meant to live for a year or more, with only occasional updating as to mention major accomplishments (newly married? New publication? New promotion?) at your discretion.

But if any of your essential information is incorrect (such as your office location, your job title, your stmartin.edu email address, your office phone number unless you’re switching it to your personal cell number), this information is housed in several databases that govern payroll, benefits, etc., and not just the website.

When emailing me to notify me of such a mistake, please also include Human Resources (and the VPAA office if you are faculty), and include additionally Doug Troyer if the office phone number or room number is listed incorrectly.

Get a professional photo taken!

Many of us, myself included, need official marketing photos taken for web and other marketing assets. If you don’t yet have an official Saint Martin’s photo, stay tuned, we’ll have a photo shoot the week before classes begin in September. (In the meantime, you can send me a personal photo for the directory. It has to be 260px by 390px or larger and must only show you and no other persons in the photo). Otherwise, many of you will remain bears (how em-bear-assing):

bear

Meet Greg Davis. (I bearly see the resemblance)

Find your directory page and start brainstorming content today!

Faculty, please send your content directly to the Executive Assistant to the dean of your college. Staff can send your information directly to me.

In summary:

  • Check your directory page for the facts: office phone #, room #, email address, if you hold a PhD, does your name say so?
  • Tell me more about your creds: Research areas and fields of specialization in the program you teach; where you received your degrees and what degrees you hold
  • What is your personal mission statement? Share it!
  • Tell us all about yourself, personal interests, family life, career background and goals
  • List any publications, achievements, awards, honors, etc.
  • Give me photo
  • But send all of this through the EA to the dean of your college first, hopefully in one email

 

*If you don’t have a directory page and you’ve already shown up for your first day of work, please contact me and CC Human Resources! We’re only human (for the time being) and it’s entirely possible someone could have been missed.

The Blog Awakens

We’re back! After a seven-month hiatus, the MarCom blog is back—now with 50% more sci-fi references!

Why I need you to join my Jedi army

Now that the dust is starting to settle on the website, content we posted during the launch is quickly expiring. While it has been an important and incredible learning process for me to assist and implement all of your updates, a website of this magnitude cannot be withstood by a single person. To update it, I need an army.

JediGeonosisArena

Basically we need an army of Jedi and a Natalie Portman

That’s right! We’ll be bringing the web admin role back to the website!

This series of forthcoming blog posts is going to keep you apprised of our progress as we partition the website into ownable chunks. Even now, Jedi Master Carl Lew and Padawans Ellamae and Cole are hard at work testing our new levels of website segmentation so that you, the web content owner, can manage and update your things whenever you need.

But when will we be able to edit our own content??

By end of July we plan to begin training some offices in our new Drupal interface: Workbench. We’ll be contacting each of you to set up training meetings that are tailored to the specific needs and types of content your office will be working on.

By Septober-ish we should be finishing up our trainings. We’ll hold follow-up meetings and offer additional training in voice, style, and messaging throughout the Fall semester, as needed. Your web editing powers will soon become an unmatched power in the universe.

Basically, we’ll be able to give you the power of J.J. Abrams: the power of retcon!

startrekconned

Do you remember Captain Janeway? Neither do we! Horray retcons!

What to do until then?

In the meantime, in order to keep our website from turning into the awful wreck that was Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, our army of Vulcan Jedi web editors needs to be well-trained in the ways of Drupal, basic HTML, marketing/writing fundamentals, and content strategy.

Meanwhile, we’ll use this blog to be an important reference for SMU voice, style, and best practices. Stay tuned, true believers, as soon we’ll continue the blog with advice in writing, content (“as conversation” so they say), and visual grammar!

thatsnothowgrammarworks

Who are you and what have you done to the MarCom blog?

I’m your new MarCom web content manager! Brandon’s the name and Christian marketing is the game. Connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you haven’t met me or want to get to know me better, send me a meeting invite and we’ll meet up at St. Gertrude’s for lunch! I’ll talk your ear off about baseball, Star Wars, literature, spirituality, or beer, your choice.

I’m here to help tell the story of Saint Martin’s University using the internet as the medium. You guys are the characters that give this place its life, vibrancy, diversity, and joy. I’m your ghostwriter.

ghostwriter

Tell me I’m not the only one who watched this in the 90’s

 

Sliding into home … ish

Minion-Higgs-Boson

Our little minion heads were ‘splodin’

On Monday — as we rounded into the final week of the redesign project and were looking down the barrel of “There’s-still-so-much-content-to-be-migrated-and-a-bunch-of-bugs-to-be-fixed-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” — heads were exploding, limbs were falling off, neurons were firing in ways that even quantum physics couldn’t foresee (image the Higgs-Boson running in circles until it collapses … or maybe your three-year old child).

Sometimes its only by virtue of sheer exhaustion that you’re able to see the forest for the trees: “Hmmm. If the product isn’t ready, maybe we should push the launch date. What a novel idea.”

But then that darn Higgs-Boson starts running in circles again: “But. Nooooo! First we said Aug. 11, then we said Sept. 8, if we move the launch again, WE’LL BE FAILURES!!! Pant, pant, pant, pant, pant.”

Again, exhaustion. But the good kind of exhaustion. The kind where all resistance is removed. The kind you might actually call … surrender.

The heavens open. The light descends. Clarity pours forth.

Minions in awe

Us. Light-dawning.

It’s kind of a no-brainer: What are we in service to? A date? Or our community?

We’ve promised a product that is fresh, on-message and usable. If the stuff you need is not there and things are wonky, then the site is not usable. As it is, there’ll be a learning curve for everyone simply by virtue of the fact that its a completely restructured site. You don’t need to be worried about whether your stuff is there. You just need it to be there.

Integrity doesn’t lie in rigidity — in holding firm to an idea that no longer works — but in flexibility. Fluidity. Seeing what’s true and operating from what’s revealed in that truth in concert with a commitment to your original objective. Our objective from the get-go was to provide the best product we can to all our constituents.

So we ask for your patience as we once again shift our timeline in order to complete our task.

Sept. 4 – 11 Testing and debugging finalized
Sept. 4 – 13 Content migration finalized
Sept. 14 – 22 Content owners/web editors review
Sept. 14 – 24 MarCom edits site per owners/editors review
Sept. 25 – Launch (I’m not even going to begin to use any exclamation marks here as I’ve probably overplayed that hand … uh … uh … ah! OK, I can’t help it! I know, I know. I need to go to Exclamation Mark Over-users Anonymous)

When next we post, may it be to announce a shiny new website.

As ever,
Your devoted MarCom Minions