The Week in Links

As always, thanks to everyone who stopped by the blog this week. Here's a collection of stuff that's better than anything I've posted here!

• Oh wow... the Web + Higher Ed Medium page curated by Ma'ayan Plaut is all the awesomeness. New articles from blog friends Hilary Frazier (on the age-old question of how to measure social ROI for higher ed) and Mike Petroff (a look at page views vs. engaged time) plus lots of other great stuff too. (Yours truly is also working on something for it! But I'm a slow typer.)

• Speaking of Ma'ayan Plaut... read her blog post about an admissions email that went viral, and then join me in silently weeping in the corner upon the realization that I'll never do anything this awesome. OMG KITTENS!!! (Also, I'm so, so, so super jealous that she gets to have input on admissions emails. I worked in admissions communications at a different college for a few years prior to my marketing gig at UP, and I miss it.)

• In case you missed my post about it earlier, be sure to not miss Varsity Outreach's four-part series on higher ed Facebook page in 2013. It's a staggering amount of work (analyzing hundreds of thousands of posts from hundreds of college FB pages), and there are some great insights plus a ranking of pages that achieved high "engagement scores" in several size categories. You could do a lot worse than checking out all the highly ranked pages and seeing the types of things they post and why they work so well.

• Don't miss this great rundown of #hesm Valentine's Day initiatives by Jen Doak-Mathewson on the CASE blog. Lots of great ideas and examples!

• A nice piece from Karine Joly of CollegeWebEditor, looking back on nine years of blogging about and working in higher ed.

• I enjoyed this feisty post by Augie Ray on Experience: The Blog, critiquing the #EsuranceSave30 campaign and those who think it was an effective social media promotion. He articulates well a good part of the reason I've really scaled back on doing mass giveaways and/or sweepstakes through UP's social media over the years.

• Here's a recap of this Tuesday's #casesmc Twitter chat that discussed community engagement from many different angles.

OK... that's it for now. Have a lovely weekend everyone!

I'll leave you with the latest entry for Dream Pop February, a brilliant track from the brilliant Stereolab. Enjoy!