#PSEWEB

Todd Sanders to keynote at #PSEWEB 2013

Jessie — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:32:18 +0000

I literally couldn’t be more excited to introduce our newest keynote speaker, Todd Sanders! Todd is joining us from UWGB where he uses the social interweb to raise the bar on his own campus and also push the rest of us to hit every day out of the park and be passionate and proud about our online mission. Please extend a warm welcome to one of my favourite people, @tsand!

Socially Awkward: How Making the Brand More Human Can Change Everything

By Todd Sanders

The social web is a playground, yet most brands continue to show up in business attire. Not only are they overdressed and somewhat creepy, they are unable to experience what makes the playground so much fun. The humanization of the brand can help foster a new direction for your social web efforts and add new life to your realtime conversations. It’s time to unlock the magic of your campus, it’s time to respect your intuition.

About Todd

Todd Sanders is a social web specialist with more than 10 years experience in post-secondary education. He is currently a Senior Information Processing Consultant at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay where he is constantly exploring new ways to make old things sound more engaging to young people.

After spending time as a copywriter and graphic designer in the world of advertising, Todd found his passion online as a webmaster — perhaps the most awkward job title ever created.

He spent his first years in the university setting creating websites for an NCAA Division I athletics program and the departments within student affairs. As the web evolved, his focus switched to community building with the creation of an award-winning video blog series highlighting student life events. In 2011, he participated in the Mercedes-Benz Tweet Race, where his network of friends demonstrated how the power of quality relationships are able to overcome much larger networks on the social web. Soon after, he was given the opportunity to play on the social web in a full-time position — perhaps the most awesome job ever created.

He is happily married to the most beautiful woman in the world and has three children who constantly remind him that the value of a smile is priceless.

2013 #PSEWEB Speakers & Sessions Announced

Melissa Mae — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 01:50:59 +0000

The program for this year’s #PSEWEB has been released! Our sessions at this year’s conference in Vancouver will be:

Can You Pass the Social Media License Test? Social Media TOS Crash Course
By Karine Joly

Building Community: Supporting Distributed Web Publishing at BCIT
By Kenzie Woodbridge

The Pursuit of IA Perfection
By Jake Redekop

Content Strategy: Your Website’s Secret Weapon
By Jake Redekop

On The Go: Using Mobile to Support The Student Experience
By Janeen Alliston

Strategically Coordinating Digital Content Across Your Organization
By Jonathan Woodcock

Getting Accessibility Requirements Working for Your Organization
By Anna Beard and Jonathan Woodcock

Accessibility Demystified: Web Accessibility Compliance and Tools to Help Meet the Requirements
By Penny Kronz

An Army of Students: Leveraging Student Talents to Create Stellar Content and Showcase Campus Community
By Courtney Mallam

When The Lights Go Out: Crisis Communications and Social Media
By Tom Cochrane

Writing for Humans: From Bureaucratic Verbiage to Clear Communication
By Jared Lenover

Creating a Digital Measurement Plan: How to Define, Measure, and Communicate the Success of Your Digital Marketing
By Matt Cooper

You’re Not Alone: Being Solo In Higher Ed
By Ron Bronson

Panel Discussion on Social Media
By JP Rains, Melissa Cheater, Tom Cochrane, Kristina Doyle and Courtney Mallam

Social Media Content Strategy: Tips & Tools
By Andrea Karpala

Operation Transformation – Make Me Responsive!
By David Miller

IT vs Marketing, by IT & Marketing, A Match Made At PSEWEB.
By JP Rains and Marty Laferriere

Social Media Directories
By Kristina Doyle

Digital Marketing Best Practices for Higher Ed 2013
By Phillipe Taza

Extending Your Reach With Google Analytics Dashboards
By Alan Etkin

ResponsiveCSS3PolyfillBootstrapGrid.js – or What the Heck is This Stuff and Why Should You Care?
By Shahab Lashkari

The Digital Hand Off: Smooth Online Transitions Within A Decentralized Institution
By Kareem Rahaman, Hamza Khan and Samantha Read

Answering A Complicated Question With the Power of YouTube!
By Steve Krysak

Social Video Marketing: So you want to be cool, eh?
By Daphne Simone

Establishing a Social Media Program
By Mike McCready

Digital Kids on Branding, Privacy and Technology Bias
By Andrew Smyk

Visit our Sessions Page to read more about each session, and our Speakers Page to read more about our amazing speakers.

As always, we thank our early bird attendees for helping us pick the program – it is based entirely on the votes (and good taste) of early bird ticket holders.

With these speakers, Stewart Foss’ keynote, the first Canadian eduStyle awards and three additional speakers to be announced in the coming days (including our second keynote speaker), we hope you’ll agree that this looks to be the richest #PSEWEB to date and we can’t wait to share it with you!

Stewart Foss & eduStyle at #PSEWEB 2013

Melissa Mae — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 03:25:06 +0000

Good, better, best – raising the bar in higher-ed web design

We’re pleased to announce our first keynote speaker for #PSEWEB 2013, Stewart Foss! Stewart’s keynote will focus on ‘Student Experience Design.” What makes a website good? How can you make it better? What can we learn from the best? Stewart will share his thoughts about how we can raise the bar in higher-ed web design and how we can transition from good user experience design to good student experience design.

Stewart Foss has worked in higher ed web design for the last 10 years. Over those years he has held web management positions at Athabasca University and Grant MacEwan University and a faculty position at Lethbridge College. He is the founder of eduStyle and the eduStyle Awards and the co-author of the eduStyle Guide to Usable Higher Ed Homepage Design. He is currently the principle at Demand Creativity.

The Canadian eduStyle Awards

In addition to his keynote, we are beyond excited to announce that Stewart will be launching the first annual Canadian eduStyle Awards, which will culminate in the award ceremony at this year’s #PSEWEB Conference! The awards will cover web, social, mobile & email – submit your work, your co-workers work and share the news to help us generate enough submissions to put Canadian higher education digital marketing on the map at this year’s awards. Submit now at edustyle.net/awards/canada/2013/

That’s all for now but please stay tuned over the next few days for our second keynote announcement as well as the rest of our 2013 program of speakers – featuring more than 30 of your peers from across the country!

Book your #pseweb 2013 room at the Delta Vancouver Suites

Jessie — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:56:02 +0000

#PSEWEB 2013 will be at the Delta Vancouver Suites this year! There is a special conference rate of $169 / night, which will be available during the days of the conference as well as three days before and after!

Book online with our special conference booking page. You can also call (604) 689-8188 (toll-free 1-888-663-8811), fax (604) 605-8881 or e-mail: vancouversuites@deltahotels.com and ask for the PSEWEB rate.

#PSEWEB 2013 comes to Vancouver, BC on June 24 & 25

Melissa Mae — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:56:32 +0000

Here we come, Vancouver! #PSEWEB 2013 will be June 24 to June 25 in beautiful Vancouver, BC at the Delta Vancouver Suites.

With our location & date confirmed, our Call for Speakers is open and early bird tickets are now on sale!

Ready, set, here’s your to do list:

Tell our speakers what you want to see on the 2013 program
Register for your early bird ticket & program voting rights
Ask for our group rate (PSEWEB) at the Delta Vancouver Suites
Get excited!

Thank you to the amazing Vicky for leading our search for a 2013 home, and to our planning posse and community that have guided us to the decision to go to Vancouver!

See you in Vancouver,

Melissa (@mmbc)

All Call! What do you want to see at #PSEWEB 2013?

Melissa Mae — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:56:32 +0000

Last year, we had seen email missing on the program for year after year and as one of the highest return digital marketing methods, I threw it in the ring. One of my favourite aspects of the conference is that it ultimately doesn’t matter what I think should be onstage because the early bird ticket holders decide what they want to see. We also had several requests last year for more developer sessions, or even a dev/tech stream!

Our call for speakers is open and your peers are considering the last year of work for possible presentation topics. Use the comments of this post to tell our potential speakers what topics you want to see on the program! The #PSEWEB program is yours to shape – ask for presentations and then vote on the proposed presentations to influence our content in Vancouver this June!

2013 Call for Speakers is open! Add #PSEWEB to your portfolio

Melissa Mae — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:56:32 +0000

The Call for Speakers at #PSEWEB 2013 in Vancouver is now open! Sharing your experience with your #PSEWEB peers is the most meaningful and rewarding way to participate in the conference and we hope you will consider joining us onstage this year.

What was new for you this year? What was your biggest project? What did you wish you had time to really dig into and make a case for at your school? Presenting is a great way to add Speaker to your LinkedIn rap sheet and showcase a project you are proud of or a subject that the community needs to be thinking about.

See you onstage!

Melissa (@mmbc)

Wireless Internet Access

Melissa Mae — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 03:27:55 +0000

The wireless access code for our group is PSEWEB. This code will allow you to log in for one 24 hour period at a time. After the 24 hours, you will have to re-enter the same code.

Why Agile Marketing can no longer be ignored

Joel Dixon — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 07:00:49 +0000

Joel Dixon is a Senior Solutions Consultant with Hannon Hill. He focuses on the higher education community specializing in content strategy, content management, content analytics and agile marketing This blog content is also cross-posted on his company’s blog. Follow Joel on Twitter at @joelddixon.

“Marketing has fundamentally changed. I’m not talking about today compared to 10 years ago; everybody can see that. Rather, marketing is in a constant state of flux these days. It’s different today than it was 12 months ago. What works today might not work tomorrow. And it’s likely to keep changing at a rapid pace to keep up with the similarly frenetic pace of change in communications, business and technology.”

Although this may seem like a quote out of today’s online marketing blogs, this was actually from an online interview that posted in 2009—yes THREE years ago! Before Twitter had hit its stride, Foursquare was just beginning, and Pinterest wasn’t even a napkin idea yet.

Marketing channels are evolving rapidly and audience behaviors seem to change just as frequently. We have seen the impact of mobile on consumer consumption of content, the proliferation of social media tools, and the maturing of social channels in impacting audience sentiments about organizations, topics and decisions.

How organizations (that means you too higher ed) address this reality is at the heart of why agile marketing can no longer be ignored.

Those far wiser than me have great resources for a deep dive into Agile Marketing. However, pulling from several of these resources and a few of our own, here are key aspects of an Agile Marketing approach:

Shorter marketing campaigns - While 12-18 month marketing plans are important, your target audience and communications channels are changing too fast to wait a year before you know the impact of your marketing efforts. The concept of agile marketing focuses on developing shorter campaigns in order to maximize the marketer’s flexibility. Yes, this may mean creating weekly or even daily campaigns (such as a short Twitter-based survey). This way, the marketer can instantly and accurately measure the success of each campaign, which will then affect both the overall strategy and the immediate next steps.

Numerous small experiments over a few large bets – Agile marketing requires less large-scale Steve Jobs genius and greater emphasis on small, experimental bets that are faster and more iterative. Do you really want to take a year of analysis to come up with the perfect marketing strategy only to discover you had the right ideas but you’re now a year too late? Or why bet the farm on the chance of a single stroke of genius?

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” - Nobel Prize laureate Linus Pauling

Testing and data over expert opinions and conventional thinking – Content Analytics is inseparable from an agile marketing strategy. Marketing decisions will always have a level of “gut-feel” and intuition but the data helps cut through conventional thinking or buzzword trends to reveal what is working for YOUR goals and to objectively grade all these intuitive ideas. Rick Allen of MeetContent communicates the importance of content analytics nicely in this blog. Objective numbers also help settle arguments over what content appears on a homepage and what social media is really working for your efforts.

Constant measuring and adapting – We like to call this an “inspect and adjust” approach to marketing. In any agile environment, it’s crucial to analyze what worked and what didn’t work so that you can adjust your approach accordingly. If you skip this type of critical analysis and just stay the course, you will not only miss out on one of the main benefits of agile marketing (the ability to continuously optimize your campaigns), but you’ll also run the risk of not being able to recognize when your campaign is ineffective. Agile marketing is all about an iterative method to outstanding results.

Strong focus on fresh, effective content – Agile marketers have their fingers on the pulse of their target audience. Fresh, quality content is essential to today’s successful marketing campaigns and requires a focus on current trends, news and engagement in social media conversations. If content is king then a Content Strategy should be a no-brainer. Giving your content a solid direction is central to the success of your agile marketing efforts. By working with a central strategy, you can ensure that everyone on your team is working toward a common goal and that your outputs are coherent and relevant. There are a variety of key aspects involved in Content Strategy. While this blog can’t cover them in detail, here’s a great starting point.

Agile marketing is about more than just advertising, PR, communications and—well—marketing. It’s about an end-to-end customer experience that is as useful and satisfying as possible. The changing requirements of this experience require an agile marketing approach, which is better suited to rapid responsiveness.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin

If this concept is still very new to you, I’ll be leading a session at PSEWEB 2012 on Agile Marketing: Content Strategy and Content Analytics. If you’re already pursuing an agile marketing approach, I’d love you to join this conversation and share your thoughts…

Follow #PSEWEB on Twitter & Save a Unicorn

Melissa Mae — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 04:07:54 +0000

The #pseweb hashtag belongs to you and awesome people like you. We aren’t #pseweb2012 or #pseweb2013 because we are more than an annual conference – we are an ongoing, never ending conversation between peers that keeps going before and after the conference.

Follow #PSEWEB for Conference Updates

How to connect to the hotel wifi? What’s the best way to make it to the boat cruise on Monday night? Who’s up for dinner on Tuesday? Conference attendees and staff will use the #pseweb hashtag on twitter to answer all of the above. To stay in the loop, get yourself on Twitter and follow #pseweb and @psewebconf.

Tweet #PSEWEB and Fuel the Conversation

The “backchannel” of tweets is the best part of the conference, according to the attendees and the speakers. Hear something awesome? Tweet it out! Help us spread the content of the conference to our peers who aren’t with us and build the #pseweb community and keep it strong. We’ve trended every year of the conference so far and whether we trend in 2012 completely depends on you.