HEH 23: Don’t Let Your Dog Eat Poo

Tonight the topics center around outside vendors and products for various tasks at our universities. We cover digital marketing, scholarship searches, chat and events calendars. We also touch on strategic planning.

What outside vendors do you use?

• GVSU: Siteimprove
• GVSU: google and FB ads
  • consultant provide a report for digital advertising
• UALR: digital marketing buyer
  • Mainly for recruiting
• Iowa Admissions: digital media buyer
• Iowa Admissions: Search student development consultant
• UALR: Consultant recommends a position, but the position is only half implemented
• Iowa Libraries: Use a ton of vended products (search, springshare, libcal, libguides, chat)

Have you ever had a cold call from a consultant work out?

• GVSU: Scholarship search – AcademicWorks
  • The issue has been the culture change reviewing scholarships
  • Getting data back and forth between school and cloud service is the most difficult part. UALR uses WS02.com (an api to make it easier)

Chat?

• The biggest issue was trying to get people to monitor the chat – if you don’t monitor, it’s just a contact form
• The library is the primary user for chat.
• Iowa Admissions uses PHPLive Chat

Event Management Calendar

• Iowa uses localist – events.uiowa.edu

Strategic Planning Practices

• Iowa Admissions: every summer. What’s working, what’s not…
• GVSU: lost several developers recently and really brought the focus in on what works and what goes where.
• Iowa Library: New communications team sets the web surface of the library
• UALR: IT and Marketing are coming together for a collaborative relationship, and need to have a plan.