Blog
ContentEd Conference… what’s it all about?
Find out what ContentEd Conference is all about, and how to get tickets!
Why alt text in football should be a wake-up call for education social media
In early May, Manchester United Football Club tweeted about Juan Mata García, asking its followers to read the alt text. In the functionality designed to describe imagery for assistive technology, their social media team shared a joke about how great the player is.
And, as you might expect, Twitter users were angry.
But what is alt text, why should you be using it - and why did Man Utd receive such a backlash?
Who cares about the REF?
Thursday May 11th was REF Day, the day on which UK universities found out how their research had been rated by independent assessment panels.
The Research Excellence Framework gets a decidedly mixed response from the higher education community, but there’s no denying that a lot of hard work has gone in to the submissions from every university, and it’s worth celebrating those efforts.
Find out why you should be focussing your efforts on a smaller audience.
ContentEd Awards are back!
ContentEd 2022 Awards are now open for submissions! Find out more about our new categories, previous winners and how to enter.
Website redesign: the planning starts now
There are very few things that I think are “wrong” in how we might approach any project. But today, I’m going to share ones that I have some pretty strong opinions about when it comes to website redesign, and why your planning for any redesign probably needs to start sooner than you think.
Meet Lucy, our new Content and experience designer
We are super excited to announce that this May, we’ll be welcoming Lucy Guest into the Pickle team as our new Content and experience designer!
We asked Lucy to answer a few questions for you to get to know her a bit better.
5 tips for your Canadian enrollment strategy based on Academica’s University/College Applicant Survey™ (UCAS™) 2021 results.
In this blog post, I share five strategic considerations for your Canadian enrollment strategy based on key aggregate findings from the Academica University/College Applicant Survey (UCAS).
Incorporating peer-to-peer into your conversion strategy
How can you make peer-to-peer a pillar of your conversion strategy? Try these three ways: outbound via SMS/texting, inbound through messaging, video or chat, and anonymously through reddit.
Teaching quality is hugely important to student decisions. That's why it needs more than just a rating.
We all know prospective students need a lot of information to help them make a decision about where and what to study. And it makes sense to provide that information in a manner that’s as useful as possible. But that means we need to make some informed decisions of our own about what information should be presented in what kind of format.
What getting lost in a building taught me about content design
The person that made this sign wanted to help their users (thank you!). But they did so from the context of the building/employees, not from the context of the user. Everyone in the building knows that’s the second floor. Not every user walking in the door does.
Five (easy) ways to innovate in higher ed
To innovate in higher ed, we just have to look at other industries. Copy these five lessons learned from real estate, food delivery, retail, and fitness.
Lead with Experience design
Rich explains how you can use Experience design to plan and create effective experiences for students, educators, researchers and administrators.
Hiring a consultant must mean that you’re bad at your job (and other myths about getting external help).
While many people see the power of a creative partnership with a consultancy, so people worry that using consultancy support must mean something bad about them. Here we explore the myths that get in the way of working with a consultancy.
Holistic experience design: the next frontier for education communications?
Throughout our company history we’ve always looked for and leaned into new frontiers in education communications. We see a truly holistic approach to experience design as the next of those, and so that’s where we’re headed. Join us?
Creating a content ecosystem map
Do you really understand the landscape in which your content exists? The systems, the people, the processes? Creating a content ecosystem map can help you to make sense of it all.
What does it look like to be truly curious about your audience?
What does it look like to be truly curious about your audience? In this blog Tracy talks about getting uncomfortably curious about your audience to create even better content.
Let’s chat frankly about those end of financial year projects
We’ve reached that time of year when we start to receive a flurry of project requests aligned to end of financial year spend. In this post we explore your options and offer advice on making the most of this time and those remaining pockets of budget.
The impact of COVID-19 on the events industry
The events industry has been hit particularly hard by COVID-19. How have we adapted to a more digital landscape? And will it recover?
Your analytics are not audience research
It’s very easy to assume that when we’re exploring our analytics and asking our audience whether they find our content useful that we’re doing audience research. But we’re barely scratching the surface.