A few weeks ago I attended the Case V Conference in Chicago (opens new window). They asked me to present Realigning your Redesign Process (opens new window), it went really well and the slides are now posted.

I mainly attended the Web track and wanted to run down some key takeaways from the conference. Below are my notes from each session, they are not proofed so please ignore incomplete sentences and typos.

Creating an Online Brand: From Buy-in to Execution

• Disney was the first integrated marketing company in the 30's
• Integrated Marketing is driven by data and customer centric, relationship building.
• Consistency is crucial to higher ed for integrated marketing
• Create a climate of openness to ensure the change sticks, Blamestorming gets you no where
• Make sure you value institutional history
• Hard numbers of results are what change the mind of senior management
• The primary focus of the homepage is always prospective students even tho the majority of traffic is internal
• Not every site needs to be on the homepage. If they are strategically placed they will get more traffic

It's the end of the Web as we Know It (And I Feel Fine!)

• Paradigm - Your set of experiences that shape how you see the web
• The way students use the web differently than you do
• Mobile as the 7th mass media, The mobile is as different from the internet as TV is from radio.
• QR code - 2d bar graphic - Add to print publications to send users to a URL
• The Horizon Reports - Good resource for upcoming trends - "Experimentation must be encouraged and supported by policy"
• The singularity is near - technology will change so fast you will not recognize as change anymore
• Information literacy - knowing how to determine the legitimacy of a source.
• Top 10 web trends
  1. The mobile web
  2. The social web
  3. The Real-time web
  4. End of the Web page paradigm
  5. Read/Write web
  6. Rich media
  7. The web as a platform
  8. Virtual reality
  9. The world network
  10. The end of print
• Slides available at: http://markgr.com/presentations/casev/ (opens new window)

Social Media and Student Recruitment

• North Central College Private Social Network
  • New touch point for relationship development
  • Everything pointed to a social network, two way communications
  • Be the Bird their network. bethebird.com (opens new window), built on abeedle.com (opens new window)
  • Approx 5 hours per week, One main staff member but there are others who interact
  • Every out of state student joined the group
  • The most valuable part is they can see conversations they otherwise would not have
  • Yield has been going up ~30% year after year
• The Ohio State University Facebook Ads
  • Targeting people on Facebook is very easy
  • ROI is potentially great
  • Goals were to increase traditional applications, then increase the regional application then lastly military personnel
  • Come up with something catchy to cut through all the other noise on FB
  • Headline then some up with all information in once sentence
  • Facebook is about faces - Ads need of have close ups of faces
  • If you can go directly from the online ad to the online app you won't loose people in the translation
  • Using the "create an ad" tool you can preview what the landscape is like before actually running an ad
  • Facebook bills you every day so you can start changing your strategy.
  • Just do one alteration at a time, increase the amount per click or keywords
  • Specific landing pages per audience
  • Paying per impression is a great way to get your ad out there before people who are paying for clicks

Why Twitter Matters

• Didn't really take notes on this one
• Slides available at: http://www.slideshare.net/karlynmorissette/why-twitter-matters-2714438 (opens new window)

Social Media: Ask the Experts

• Didn't take too many notes about the discussions taking place on the panel
• Using Yammer to get internal communications out
• Using Zinch to connect with student admissions office
• The first think you have to ask yourself is what problem you are trying to solve
• How likely is it that you would recommend this company (college) to another colleague or friend?

Realigning your Redesign Process

• My presentation
• Redesign is not all about pushing new pixels It’s about refining the user experience
• Not all sites need a complete redesign
• Signoff ’s - Make sure the “client” knows the signoff is a commitment and changes afterward will effect timeline and cost
• Discover your real users
• Talk to the people in charge, assess the primary goals early
• You need to make sure the person responsible for content knows it and are competent
• Training content contributors, not just on the CMS or how to physically update the site but more importantly how to structure web content
• The whiteboard is an invaluable tool
• Take all the visual elements and take 100 “points” to divide between them
• Copy and paste is NOT a content transition strategy, make sure every page gets looked at by at least one person
• Use the goals set for each page to influence the design
• If you have multiple options start with the worst, only decision makers should be in the meeting
• Make the site as light as possible. Attach Javascript actions after load, use sprites and combine/minify CSS and JS
• Walk the decision makers through the primary tasks of the site
• Send out an email or personally thank everyone involved for their hard work
• Maintenance - By far the toughest part of the redesign process, if your CMS has out dated page alerts use them
• Slides available at: http://wcs.wayne.edu/blog/2009/12/16/realigning-your-web-redesign-process-my-case-v-presentation/ (opens new window)

Putting Your U in YouTube

• Don't need an expensive camera
• Goal is to keep a buzz going about events and announcements
• Easy to setup, make sure central marketing has control of the main account
• Include the video in news releases
• Small TV stations may use your content during broadcast
• Make sure the content is timely
• "The science of Watchmen (opens new window)"
• Worked with the production company
• Student content is by far the best but hard to craft

Overall I thought CaseV was a great conference. The Web track was a little smaller than I hoped but the people who attended were very engaged and knowledgeable. The lack of free Wifi was another downside of the conference. It would have been great to live blog as the sessions were going on.

One big theme this year was social media. Since most admissions and marketing offices are already using it on a consistent basis it felt like all the alumni and development folks were just jumping on board. It's not a bad thing since most of the discussion was about strategy and tactics.

I am thankful to have been invited to the conference and hope I have the same opportunity in years to come.