My guest today is Kristin Nichols, a higher education marketing consultant with over 20 years of experience at top universities in the Northeast. In this episode, Kristin discusses how implementing project management tools like Trello helped unite her marketing teams, facilitated cross-pollination between departments, and enabled an efficient "internal agency" approach.

Kristin shares how she successfully implemented Trello at UMass Lowell, creating dedicated workspaces for each college, enrollment marketing, editorial, and more. This centralized system allowed teams to see all active projects, easily identify content to repurpose across channels, and ensure brand consistency.

Key Takeaways:

• Don't get bogged down as an order-taker. Position your marketing team as strategic brand stewards using an "internal agency" model.
• Establish a streamlined project request and approval process, limiting feedback rounds to 3 max to drive efficiency.
• Create content templates and approved vendor lists to empower distributed teams while protecting brand standards.
• Surface storylines and assets from across campus to repurpose content and create consistent thematic campaigns.
• Buy-in from leadership and practitioners is crucial. Forcing new processes without buy-in leads to failure.
• Use project management tools to showcase your team's work, justify budgets, and pull insightful analytics.
• Mental health storylines resonate; look for authentic examples showcasing how your university supports students holistically.

Connect With Kristin:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholskristin/
• Nichols Higher Education: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nicholshighered/

Resources Mentioned:

• Trello - Project management tool used at UMass Lowell Basecamp.
• Loom - Another popular project management platform. A screen recording tool for documenting processes.

Connect With John:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
• Website: https://unveild.tv
• Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter

My guest today is R. Ethan Braden, Vice President and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Texas A&M University. In this episode, Ethan shares his vision for building a world-class marketing team and developing a national earned media strategy to amplify Texas A&M's brand.

Ethan discusses the five priorities he's established for his team: building a world-class marketing team, establishing a comprehensive insight-based brand platform, providing brand assets for the campus to execute the vision, cultivating a united marketing community, and pursuing a national earned media strategy.

Key Takeaways:

• Building a world-class marketing team involves hiring emotive storytellers, content strategists, and earned media experts who can "enchant" audiences with Texas A&M's stories.
• Having a distinct, insight-based brand platform allows everyone to "get in character" and consistently express the brand's essence across touchpoints.
• Providing a centralized library of high-quality branded assets (photos, videos, guidelines) enables campus partners to localize and execute marketing plans efficiently.
• Cultivating a united "marketing community" across campus fosters synergies, best practices, and a harmonious brand voice.
• Pursuing a national earned media strategy ensures Texas A&M is part of relevant national conversations, beyond just a regional reputation.
• Focus content creation on owning key subject matter spaces (e.g. Texas A&M's meat sciences department owning BBQ/smoking content on YouTube).

Connect With Ethan:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertethanbraden/
• Texas A&M University: https://www.tamu.edu/

Connect With John:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
• Website: https://unveild.tv
• Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter

My guest today is Joshua Charles, a senior marketing and communications leader at Rutgers Business School and board member for HighEdWeb, a professional development network for digital professionals in higher education.

In this episode, we discuss Joshua's role at Rutgers, the structure and collaboration within his marketing team, their content strategy, use of marketing technology, and breaking down organizational silos. Joshua shares insights on the following topics.

Key Takeaways:

• Keeping the web and marketing teams integrated rather than separating web under IT to maintain a cohesive vision and workflow
• The importance of clearly defining roles, responsibilities, and processes for team collaboration and morale
• Their approach to the marketing tech stack spanning web hosting, CMS, CRM, marketing automation, advertising platforms and more
• Aligning content strategy by talking directly with students to understand their needs and journeys
• Managing changes and budget considerations when incorporating new marketing technology platforms
• Building relationships and lines of communication across student-facing departments to break down silos

On The Future of Higher Ed Marketing:

Joshua sees opportunities in continuing to learn from others in the higher ed community, carefully exploring AI applications while keeping the focus on the student experience, and positively influencing the narrative around the transformative value of higher education.

Connect with Joshua:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuacharles/

Connect with HighEdWeb:

Website: https://www.highedweb.org/

HighEdWeb 2024 Annual Conference: https://events.highedweb.org/heweb24

Connect with John:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni

Website: https://unveild.tv