University College organized and presented a panel discussion at the LGBT Marketing Summit hosted by Out Front Magazine on January 19 covering the topic of effective content and digital communication. Dr. Magdelana Red, academic director and assistant professor, moderated the panel and adjunct faculty Cindy Cragg, Kate Johnson, and Victoria O’Malley gave tips to produce and measure content. Here are the top five takeaways from the event:
1. Know Your Goals
In order to measure the effectiveness of your content, you need to establish your goals for each channel. Are you building awareness? Driving traffic? Generating sales? Choose your goals before you measure or try to determine ROI.
2. Conduct a Content Audit
Know your content! Fill out a spreadsheet with every page, every photo, and every piece of content on your website and ensure content is relevant, on brand, and up-to-date.
3. Schedule Your Content. Have a sense of what events or news you need to spread for the year and maintain a content calendar. Take 30 minutes at the start of each week to schedule out your social media posts using a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.
4. Be Authentic
As we engage with social listening and respond to questions or concerns from our audience, ensure you’re being authentic as you add to the discussion. Find your own voice and use it!
5. Test and Measure
We live in an age of data and it’s important to measure what matters as you develop your content strategy. Test your content to see what resonates and choose your key performance indicators wisely as you assess performance.