Writing fundamentals

5 Steps to Brand & Align Your Professional Digital Footprint

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Many organizations are exploring the uses of social media to connect with their customers in new and more personal ways. These opportunities also extend to individuals seeking thought leader, entrepreneur or simply tech-savvy status. This is especially important for those who work in the digital communications field, but also for leadership looking to take a more proactive role in brand interaction. A great example in the higher education community is University of Cincinnati’s President Santa J. Ono.

While his background is in medicine, Ono is regarded as a social media trailblazer for making himself completely accessible to UC stakeholders. He actively tweets, posts and engages with students, parents, faculty, staff, alumni and fans. His success on social media demonstrates the power of digital platforms to foster strong and lasting connections with your community.

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2015 Adobe MAX Recap – Part 2

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Adobe MAX stage

Allow me to set the scene with the Adobe MAX stage that was always adorned with art from many creatives.

In my last post recapping the 2015 Adobe Max Conference, I provided personal reflection prompts to encourage exploring your creativity goals and hang ups. While I found these sessions and the resulting guidance to be extremely valuable, the Adobe MAX Conference wasn’t all creative soul searching. Let’s shift to brass tacks with some concrete professional recommendations around storytelling.

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2015 Adobe MAX Recap – Part 1

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Adobe Max design wall

Post-conference Haleigh does not approve of pre-conference Haleigh’s creative doubts.

I recently attended the 2015 Adobe Max Conference where creative brains from around the globe gathered to learn about the latest Adobe Creative Suite updates and the different ways to leverage these tools to create works of art, from photographs to illustrations and videos. As a communications professional and aspiring creative services manager, I attended the conference to hear the latest trends in visual communications and to learn some new techniques for eliminating pesky creativity barriers. I got all that and much more.

It was an action-packed three days at the Los Angeles Convention Center so I’m going to divide my top takeaways into two separate categories and blog posts. Those looking for personal reflection prompts to unleash creativity, you’re in the right place. Practical professional recommendation folks, stay tuned.

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Digital Storytelling for Social Change

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roberto-morales-digital-story

Roberto Morales’ digital story “Dónde estas…” shows the deep impact of a miscarriage on young parents.

Continuing my exploration of digital storytelling, the medium’s cost-effective production and strong potential for engaging audiences makes it an ideal tool for non-profit groups. Digital storytelling for social change focuses on raising the voices of subordinate groups who are directly affected by social issues but seldom heard in public deliberation. The two to four-minute video format – composed of primarily voice over and still images – serves as a feasible platform for subordinate groups to speak beyond their immediate communities and to contribute to broader public debates by challenging commonsense understandings.

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Digital Storytelling Best Practices

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Kaplan-YouTube-success-stories

Kaplan Higher Education shares student motivation and success with YouTube videos.

Today, there is a lot of hype in the communications community around the concept of storytelling as well as the importance of leveraging digital platforms to engage users. Combining these trends, we’re seeing more and more organizations incorporate forms of digital storytelling in social media campaigns as well as larger web strategies. Given my background in higher education, I recently partnered with a fellow DePaul Grad student (s/o to Kelsey Peters) to explore how colleges and universities are using digital storytelling to talk about college experience, success and affordability.

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Creating and Delivering Newsworthy Content

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Starbucks-newsroom

Starbucks’ online newsroom delivers engaging story packages that include photos, videos and downloads.

As I close the book on my Public Relations Writing course, I wanted to take a moment to share my key takeaways with my fellow communicators. To put it simply, our job is to create and deliver newsworthy content. While messaging and audiences will vary from role to role, all communications professionals must know how to craft a newsworthy story and how to effectively deliver stories to target audiences. Let’s take a closer look at what this means.

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