Apparently late June is a time that makes me reflective and feel compelled to write blog posts, but…only every five years or so. Late June marks my work anniversary at William & Mary, and this year will mark another milestone, 15(!) years. Putting that time into context… that’s longer than I spent getting a K-12 education. Friends of mine who began having children when we were just starting off in the working world are now preparing to deal with teenagers holding drivers licenses. Geez.

UMAC to UMark

A lot has changed in the five years since I last opined about a work anniversary. In July 2021 my office transitioned from one focused solely on marketing and communications for Advancement to one that is responsible for marketing for the whole university, adding in responsibilities for enrollment, institutional reputation and branding.

While I had dabbled in enrollment-related things helping admission make updates to their website when I was a web developer with University Communications, this new charge brought things to a whole new level. We are partnering with our enrollment colleagues and other communicators throughout campus to develop and implement a comprehensive and integrated marketing strategy for enrollment, incorporating paid marketing, email, web, social media, events and more (which has not existed at such a level before)…and we’re still responsible for advancement and institutional reputation too. ::phew::

A sequence of musings

This work anniversary has prompted a lot of thoughts, so rather than one gigantic blog post I’ve broken things up into two additional posts:

Some things change…but not the root of it all

Despite evolving technologies, responsibilities and audiences, my work in higher ed marcomm still boils down to clearly and effectively providing the information that our audiences are looking for and making sure that it can be found where they’re looking for it. 15 years ago, the new hotness in the marketing technology world was SEO and mobile devices; 10 years ago, it was social media, then paid ads on those same platforms; now, it’s AI. The tools change, but the goals are the same, and I’m very curious to see what the next five years will bring.