I would like to thank the university for the opportunity and if you want to continue to keep connected with me, I’ll be blogging at http://donschindlerblog.wordpress.com.

You can also connect with me at:

• don.schindler at gmail.com
• Twitter: @donschindler
• Linkedin: donschindler

It’s been a great run and I’m sorry to have to go but it’s what is best for both me, my family and the university.

GO IRISH!

What a great bunch of people!

First, I’m grateful to my time here at the university and I believe that the last three and half years have been an amazing adventure in my life. I love ND and I’m so proud to have both gone to school here as a student and come back to work here as staff. It’s definitely been one of the highlights of my career.

Second, there is an fantastic marketing communications team in place to take the university to much greater heights. I’m a firm believer in David Ogilvy’s philosophy in hiring much, much smarter people than yourself.

“If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we should become a company of giants.” – Ogilvy on Advertising

When I was hired, I was challenged to fix the issues with the agency. We missed deadlines, we were expensive, our creative was good but it took too long, etc… My first weeks were spent meeting with internal clients, apologizing, and then adjusting our invoices to share the costs because of the problems.

The top 25 responsive sites of 2012

Now I rarely ever have an issue with a client.  I believe a lot of this was changed by the right hires, adjusts to people’s positions and new technology. We added the right people (both account managers and project managers – the backbone of great agency relationships) so the production people could do great creative. We added project management software to keep us on deadlines and clear up any miscommunications. We added and adjusted our processes and briefs so things moved quickly along the pipeline. I’m very proud of how this team runs and how many projects we produce for the university (1,350 individual projects last year). It shows in happy clients, affordable budgets, quick turnarounds and great creative that wins awards.  We just won an award via .net magazine for one the top responsive design websites.

There are four teams right now ran by extraordinary people.

Accounts, Print, Web and Multimedia.

Accounts is still fairly new with Amy, Andy, Ava and Britt but all of them understand client relations and how to think strategically about communications. I know people would debate me on whether their jobs are the hardest in the agency but I believe accounts are always torn between making sure the client is happy and the creatives are happy. That’s difficult to do and all three of these people make it look easy.

The Print team has gone through many changes over the past couple of years – all the designers are new since I’ve come on board but Tim and Amy have done an amazing job of keeping the quality and standards as high as they were before while getting the trains to run on time. I’ve never seen jobs moved through the shop so quickly and it’s proof of good processes, sticking to them and great leadership. Elissa, Kat and Maria are phenomenal talents and easy to work with. Dar makes sure the copy is correct (which I struggle with daily) and, unfortunately, we lost Mike, our great copywriter. But life moves on and we’re definitely happy for him and his new position.

The Web Team has gone through much over the past three years and I probably haven’t helped with my constant shifting of priorities but now that we have Nick and Stephanie in place, it’s running like a top and winning lots of awards. This would not be possible without the amazing leadership and production team skills of Erik, Philip, Alec, Kate, Taylor and Cristin. The new nd.edu is such an great example of the level of skill that this team has. I’m so proud of them and the support they give the university every day.

The multimedia team has grown so much over the past couple of years. Under Beth’s strong leadership and the awesome talents of Matt, Barbara, Tony and Michael, this group will only get better. They’ve been able to bring both athletics and archives into the fold of our online photography store – not an easy task. I predict it will become the most profitable center of our team over time and it’s all due to their entrepreneur spirit, energy and teamwork.

Again, I can’t tell you how proud I am of these groups and where they are going. I can’t wait to see where they take it.

Third, I’m one of those guys that needs a challenge. Not that ND communications isn’t challenging, for it is, every day. But I see that many things I wanted to do are now moving in right direction. And what direction is that, you ask?

The direction that I’ve always seen for University Communications is one of open communications. My philosophy for a large entity like a university is to get the right tools in place, make them as affordable (if not free) to use, and then educate as many people as possible on how to use them.

Communications has gone through a lot in the past couple of decades. From print brochures and paid advertising to websites and social media – anyone with a voice can now have a voice if he or she is so inclined to do so.

I believe that University Communications is now providing those communication tools for faculty, staff and students as well as the education to go with it.

For example, if you want a website, you can have one. When I first got here our conductor websites were $5,000 to $25,000 to produce and normally it took six months to produce one. Now you can have one in two days and it costs $300. Back then, the tools to build a website were Dreamweaver (and you needed training to understand how to do some serious html coding) and Contribute. Now you don’t need to know coding – you can have conductor or a wordpress blog. We had just over 100 websites in conductor in Aug 09. Now we have over 300 in conductor and almost as 300 blogs in our system.

Another great example is our brand standard templates for producing clean powerpoint presentations and print posters. We’ve gone through a lot to get the brand standards where they are and I’m proud of how campus communicators are adopting them for their needs. It makes us all look professional and cohesive though we might not all have the same roof over our heads.

And, finally, offering free professional photos through our photos.nd.edu system. Having high end photography from our amazingly talented photographers takes all communications up a level. This is the way it should be.

When it comes to education, I’m going to miss the linkedin campus communicators group, the brown bags, the social media classes in endeavor and the communicator summits that brought us all together. I’m going to miss this blog as well. It was awesome to be able to share my thoughts and get great feedback from everyone. I hope these education pieces continue after I’m gone as I’m sure they will.

Fifth, I’m moving on to greener pastures. Literally. If you don’t know, I’m going to DMI (Dairy Management, Inc) leading their digital initiatives. I’m so excited for the new challenge and new location (Chicago). Cows on Facebook? Maybe. Definitely on Twitter.

The last thing about leaving ND – there are so many more people to thank.

The administration for both supporting and challenging how we did our communications.

The other groups in communications like Julie’s PR teams and internal communications, for Kerry’s magazine and for Dennis’ crisis leadership. I loved being able to work with you all.

And last but not least, I really want to thank my family for supporting me through both the good and challenging times here and now giving me the support I need to move on. It’s been an amazing run here and I’m so proud to have been on campus twice in my lifetime. I look forward to coming back here as an alum and a fan of Notre Dame.

GO IRISH! BEAT BAMA!

You can leave comments if you want but after Jan 4th, I won’t have access to approve.  Thanks for all your support.  It’s been a grand time.

These are questions that I answered yesterday in my session with Chicago United.  A great organization, BTW.  If you don’t know about them, you should check them out.

Where should you spend more time?  There’s a balancing act to it but I believe that your digital life can amplify and enhance your real life – but if you aren’t prepared to shape that digital life it can do some serious damage to you and your personal brand.

Of course, your real life will be over someday and hopefully you are leaving lasting memories with everyone you come into contact with – but your digital life will probably last forever so you should treat it like that.  A scrapbook that others will look through when you are gone.  Treat it accordingly.

How do you keep your personal life separate?  I honestly don’t think it’s possible right now.  Digital is so ingrained in our lives.  If you want to protect yourself, buy the right tools to do it.  Anyway, it was a great group.  We talked for about five hours on this so it’s a long PPT.

But here’s the content for my blogging course.  If you disappointed that there isn’t more slides or help, it’s because almost all of the course was done live in class.  That’s why it’s a workshop and not just a presentation.  If you missed, you’ll have a chance to go again in the spring semester.

What’s your best kept secret? via hansvanrijnberk (Flickr CC)

I dislike when people tell me they are the “best kept secret”.  You are not.  Unless you want to be.  If you say you are the best kept secret, it’s because you don’t know how to tell anyone about what you are doing.  And don’t blame your website.  It’s not it’s fault.

Well sometimes it is. Sometimes your website can be invisible to the search engines and that is something you need to change right away.

How to know if your website is invisible? Check it with http://webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php. Run the simple test. If the spider simulator can see your website, then it’s probably not the website’s fault that you aren’t being noticed. I would also recommend linking your website up with Google’s webmaster tools.

If you do have a website problem, we can help you solve it. We have a great web content management system here at Notre Dame. It’s very affordable and we’ve got a great system on getting a website up and running in no time.  Or you can set up a blog at blogs.nd.edu. Contact Nick Johnson, our web director, he would be happy to chat with you about it.

Best kept secrets can be solved simply.  And here’s the most likely problem. You aren’t producing enough content (text, photography, video, etc…). Or let me rephrase, you aren’t producing enough original content and then taking the steps to make sure people know about it (doing enough outreach).

So if I was in charge of program, dept, school, etc… and I needed people to know who we are and what we do, I would put together a strategic plan and then an editorial calendar.

Strategic plans are not brain surgery. They take some work but it’s nothing too hard. Some of the research on your target audience may take some time or if you don’t have time, then it will take some money. But having that research is invaluable to your strategic plan and ultimately your communication efforts. If you want to create that strategic plan or get some marketing research done, then I recommend you reach out to Amy Murrin, our head of accounts. She’s great at putting together a plan for you. Or you can reach out to me. I’d be happy to do it as well.

Here’s what I believe should be in your strategic plan or at least these basics.

What would you consider a communication success? This is your marketing goal or goals.

Who would you like to communicate with? This is your target audience. Can you describe them in detail? What do you want them to know and when? Given what you want them to do, what do you think is the best way to tell them about it? This is your messaging. Keep your message short and simple so people do not get confuse about what you are trying to communicate.

What would you like them to do? This is your call to action. Be specific.

Is someone else out there doing the same thing you are? These are the people that are in direct competition for the attention of your target audience. This is your competition. If you want to call this a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis you can.

Where do you think they get their information? Thinking of your target audience, where do you think they get information about your subject?  The things you do here are the tactics like your website, brochures, business cards, flyers, email, advertising, etc…

How are you going to measure if it’s working? Each tactic should have a way to measure it to see if it is working. Remember all measurement must point back to your overall communication goals.

Again, this isn’t hard but it does take some time and energy. But once it is done, it will help to guide you on all the decisions you need to make when it comes to communications.

And believe me, it can help tremendously when you are trying to make decisions about getting into social media.

Did I miss anything? Do you have anything to add?

The next blog post will be about daily communications and how it’s like a workout or more like how I workout.  You need to do it daily.

Hot Chocolate via Pinterest

So I had my first official accident with a computer of mine. I split an entire cup of hot cocoa on my laptop. Back in the day, I would have been devastated.

Granted I wasn’t happy (love my Mac air) but it wasn’t the end of the world. In fact, I just grabbed another laptop and I was up and running (and working) like not much had happened.

Back in the day, I would have lost a ton of work and been down for several days trying to rebuild everything I had lost. But today, with working in the cloud and keeping a backup at home, it was a blip in an otherwise bumpy week.

How do I do this?

First, I don’t use email with only outlook. I have my email connected to gmail which is all web-based. Yes, I pay five bucks a year for storage but I haven’t had to delete an important email since 2006. I know that’s a lot of email but the search is awesome and I don’t have to worry about deleting out old files (which you have to with outlook when you reach your limit). That reminds me, I need to purge again.

Second, I use dropbox and notredame.box.com to store important documents. This way I can get to them anytime. Anything I have to share I use with Google Drive and Docs.

Third, my programs like Coda and Photoshop are based in the App Store and through the University’s shared program. I just downloaded them again and I’m up and running.

Fourth, we use several web-based project management systems. Again, once I’m logged in. It’s all there.

Fifth, for my photos – I use flickr. For my music, I use Pandora and Spotify. My downloaded music is all backed up at home on my time machine so again, nothing is lost.

It’s a very different world since the days when a killed computer could ruin your life.  BTW, it’ll be probably a few weeks before I get my computer back – but I’ll be ok.  Would you?

Link-building should only be done with relevant websites

Recent many of our nd.edu websites have been contacted by outside entities and people asking if they will review their “resource” and put a link on their website to the “resource”.

They may have included some text like the below in an email to you:

Dear Website Owner,

I was actually hoping to collaborate with you to find a way to incorporate my project as a resource link on your site. The resource that I’ve written EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE ARTICLE, was created to address the growing concern of BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, especially as more companies start to rely on outsourcing their work. The piece attempts to weave a narrative to suggest that no information is truly safe over the Internet, and it goes on to list hand-picked educational case studies, reports, and other academic reading on security systems management and innovations in this space today.

I think this is a resource that could be of some interest to you and to people who visit your site — I’m really curious to hear what you think. If you’re interested and find it valuable, it would be great to see it listed as a resource for others to learn from and to ponder over time. What do you think?

I look forward to hearing from you.

FRIENDLY SOUNDING NAME like Don or Jennifer

What they’re actually looking for is just a link.

This is a form of SEO or search engine optimization called link-building.

.edu sites are very good sites for link building because search engines trust them and if you put them on your website, you are passing along that trust.

Please do not link to these websites or link to anyone that you don’t know or isn’t associated with the university in a relevant way.  Especially don’t get paid to do it.

Most likely these websites are not trusted and that’s why they are approaching you in this way.  This made news in a big way last year as a major retailer got caught doing it.

Have you been reached out to recently? If so just send the e-mail my way and I will take care of it.

Here’s how I did it.

Start by syncing your Outlook 2011 with Calendar (iCal).

Go to Outlook -> Preferences -> Sync Services -> Checkbox “On My Computer”

This got my Outlook 2011 to sync with Calendar.

Then I added Notre Dame’s Exchange services to my Calendar (iCal) – I’m on Mountain Lion.

It took a while for exchange and calendar to sync up.

Once they did, I went to Doodle and downloaded the Doodle Mac Connector and fired it up.

A little “d” shows up at the top of your Mac, right click and open Preferences.

Sign up for Doodle’s services or log in, then select the calendars from your calendar that you want to display for the public.

Make sure you click “upload free/busy information only”.

It’s great to have my calendar out in public view again.  I hated not being able to just share a link.