Pickle Jar Communications

It was definitely coming, wasn’t it? Prezi (www.prezi.com) had to be one of my Friday favorites sooner or later. Those who know me know that this is by far one of my favorite ‘tech’ tools and one that I think has really helped to make me stand out as a speaker at conferences. Okay, it’s [...]

NO! Please stop it! Okay, I should expand on that a little I guess. Here’s the thing… for months now I’ve been noticing a growing trend of some university and college ‘corporate’ Twitter accounts (ugh!) retweeting positive comments that people say about them. This can be anything from someone enjoying an open day to a [...]

I’m a great believer that the printed university or college prospectus is not dead, nor will it be so for a while yet. However, I think universities and colleges are increasingly becoming aware of the need for their print materials and online presence to interact with each other to enhance the student experience. However, to [...]

I’m doing various bits of work at the moment for universities looking at social media and student recruitment opportunities, and helping them to develop strategies for using it effectively to engage with potential students. Through my research into trends in the use of social media amongst young people I came across this report published by [...]

Here’s a little slidecast (31 mins 17 secs) that I’ve created for a couple of the Association of Colleges’ regional PR/marketing group meetings. Thought some of my blog readers might also find it interesting: Social media: new opportunities and challenges for FE college communications View more documents from Tracy Playle.

In response to an enquiry by London Business School, Hitwise has produced a list of the top 100 websites visited by students in May 2009. Quite a useful list for those of us working in Higher Education communications. It’s available to view here.

I attended a Higher Education External Relations Association (HEERA) meeting week before last as a representative of the CIPR’s Education and Skills group. They were chatting about different events that they might put on. Having recently become aware of Wilkes University’s highly targetted advertising campaign that ran in Spring 2007, I mentioned this to them [...]

The news that Facebook has finally launched a Chinese-language version of the site will undoubtedly excite many British universities. China is an important market for recruiting students and developing research partnerships. It is clear that British universities have over the past few years started to get to grips with the opportunities for communications (and dare [...]

Just following on from my recent Twitter addiction, here’s a great post today from Mashable on how to monitor ‘tweets’ and use them to manage your brand. Let’s consider the application of this, for example, for a university. Say a prospective student tweets that they’re trying to find information on a particular course, or trying [...]

The BBC reported this week that Liverpool John Moore’s University (LJMU) is hosting an open day for prospective students in Second Life. I have been involved in a number of conversations over the past couple of years with colleagues throughout the HE sector about hosting open days in Second Life. If truth be told, it’s [...]