Key Takeaways from the CASE VIII Conference – Seattle WA
I had the opportunity to attend the ‘Council for the Advancement and Support of Education’ (CASE) District VIII Conference in Seattle. It was an inspiring conference of educators, technologists, communicators, and policy makers all dedicated to the support and advancement of higher education. I attended some wonderful sessions and made great new contacts.
Vital Few Takeaways
• Relevancy is a critical-success-factor; the world has been sped-up; time has compressed; we need to be timely and relevant.
• Importance of quality and being ‘best-in-class’ was continually reinforced.
• Social media efforts are becoming more ingrained in communication strategies and processes. Reach out to your audience and meet them where they are.
• Stay on message. Many attendees were sharing what they were learning on Twitter during the sessions. In today’s world, the moment we make a point or share an idea, it is essentially distributed worldwide.
Communication and Storytelling Takeaways
• Measure your content & stories against your goals.
• Ensure your brand story is being well-articulated.
• Regardless of the platform or medium, it’s essential that you stay on message.
• Repeated use of specific keywords can be powerful in reinforcing your brand message.
• Importance of engaging constituents where they are.
• There is a lot of improvement needed in reporting storytelling effectiveness to organizations.
Leadership and Creativity Takeaways
• There are conflicting demands between being creative and innovative and being seen as reliable, predictable, and consistent.
• Creative leaders are penalized for being perceived as ‘risky’.
• Most of today’s workplaces lack charismatic, creative leaders to inspire and lead employees.
• You can’t ‘fake’ charisma, you either have it or you don’t.
• Lesson from highly innovative companies. When taking a risk, if it’s going to fail, fail fast! Don’t let it drag out.
• Lead the believers | Convert the receptive | Forget the non-believers
• Leaders hang out in trusted-places.
Online Presence Takeaways
• When creating digital content focus on making it easily ‘shareable’. Allow your followers to be your brand-ambassadors.
• Digital content: What you can track, you can measure | What you can measure, you can improve upon.
• There was a noticeable lack of presence about leveraging mobile-technologies for relevant storytelling.
• Perform a full social-review session once a quarter. What is the world saying about your brand?
• Digital content does NOT mean saving-as-a-PDF. Utilize the technology.
• Strong marketing plan is the key for online distribution.
• The website is still the primary brand expression. Utilize this as your central hub of your online presence.
• Never underestimate the power of stunning imagery – specifically photography.
• The tools for analyzing e-communication efforts are becoming more powerful and able to generate tremendous amounts of data; Lots of room for improvement.
• Make sure content is tagged well when using social channels.