C.S....Nope Not Cinnamon Sweets...Its Content Strategy!

In Student Affairs, we find ourselves most often being a Jack-of-all-Trades: from student leadership conflict management to financial aid applications to academic advising and end with seeking out Psychological Services for a referral...and this is all with just the first student of the day. 

Now, on top of that, most of us touch social media or the website in one way or another on a daily basis. For myself, having a B.A. in Communication with an emphasis on Mass Media, website design wasn't exactly my strong point, however due to circumstances I was given the task of website and social media. Now, upon taking on this new task, I trotted along my merry little way with my pre-written codes and passwords and began organizing and planning our department sight. There was talk about this content strategy stuff and basing the website on student development theory, etc., but by day's end we would just create a page and put it out there so at least we can say "it's on the website". Launch and Leave syndrome was our content strategy. On our single department sight, by the time I left for Grad School, I was up to almost 1000 pages and many times 5 and 6 levels deep. 

Now, as I mentioned before I attended the High Ed Web Michigan Conference at the beginning of this week. And the kickoff keynote was all about content strategy. At the beginning I was a little nervous afraid it would be techy talk and above my head. But it wasn't and I got a shock of how much I could advance student development with well performed content strategy. That keynote set the tone really well for the conference: Be specific and strategic; Do not be afraid to say no, but do not be afraid of trying new things. 

As Student Affairs Professionals, we are always creative and do our best to serve our students in any way possible, whether we have a social media profile for every staff member or office or  perhaps a growing "Frankensite". However, as we move forward, and resources are getting more scarce and job responsibilities are growing, and unfortunately there is still only 24 hours in a day (Which BTW someone should fix...just saying) we need to really pay attention, analyze and strategize about our web content and social media. 

Online is the present and the future. It's here to stay and just having a page up is not serving our students any more. We cannot afford the Launch and Leave Syndrome to continue if we want to remain proactive and mold student affairs to our incoming generations. 

After the conference I decided to confirm the need for content strategy. And so I played on the web with my old job. I Google searched key words and tags for my department to see what would come up. It was astonishing. Pages from before I started my professional career popped up because no one had ever deleted the files and pages. They just deleted the links. Information was contradictory and confusing. There was old contact information, non-existent clubs, and old policies and handbooks. It was mad chaos. 

So I'd encourage you just for fun and info to see what there is out there on the web about your department or division or even school. But really consider making content strategy a key player in moving your functional area forward.