It's upgrade time here at the University of Bedfordshire! This week we'll be upgrading both Matrix and Funnelback to the latest versions on our servers. This will give us lots of new features to experiment with and also should make all of our sites run a bit faster.

While this takes place we'll need to have a short content freeze which we've been communicating to staff for the last few weeks. We're also using this opportunity to make one particularly significant upgrade to our system - Edit+!

Currently, we have an excellent editing platform for staff to amend their own pages (Easy Edit Suite) but we're going to be one of the first of Squiz's clients to upgrade to the latest version and make web editing even easier for our staff! Some of these new features will include:
  • A much simpler way to add images and link to pages
  • No need to run an HTML clean up when copying text from Microsoft Word
  • editing can now be done on tablet devices (e.g. ipad)
  • Much more sophisticated table creating and editing tools
In the Digital Marketing Team we are constantly striving to offer as good a service as possible. So, for the past week, we've been running demo sessions to staff and the feedback has been great! Hopefully, all this will mean a much more efficient product for us to support as well as greatly improved webpages.

We'll also be making use of the brilliant Accessibility Auditor which detects any issues on the page (relevant to WCAG 2.0 A, AA, or AAA standards), the exact location of each detected issue, advice for how to correct it and even automatic correction of the content. This will give our editors the ability to help us achieve a compliant and accessible website.

So, exciting times and another example of us trying our best to keep up with the latest developments and engage our users. According to our account manager at Squiz they have our work order for this framed as the first client to roll this out on a large scale!
This week has been a bit of a learning experience for me, so I thought I'd share my findings with you. As mentioned in a previous post by Hannah she's been working flat out on a new University film with our chosen agency Spectrecom. We received the first edit of this last week and are both very excited by how it's all looking. Early on, we decided that using a music track would really improve the overall quality and production values and here's where my input came in. I had some suggestions on the use of music and thought we easily secure usage rights through one of my connections. How naive I was...

I won't mention here the track we're hoping to get clearance to use (in case we don't get it!) but thought I'd go through our process of securing a music synchronization licence.

To licence a commercial track, you have to licence two separate parts:

1. a copyright in the actual sound recording (to use that exact rendition of it)
2. a separate copyright in the musical and lyrical composition (if you were wanting to do a cover version this would be all you need)

It seems the process is completely unregulated, so the record company can set the price for these at whatever they choose (anything from free, to tens of thousands of pounds) depending on usage.

So firstly, I got in contact with the band, who put me in contact with their management. They said we could have the rights to use the actual sound recording and were happy to match whatever price we agreed with the record label. So far so good...

None shall pass!
However, the record label was a lot more complicated. After being passed around about twenty different contacts we eventually got in touch with the relevant person and are in the process of some lengthy negotiations on price and usage.

The good thing is we're clear on our budget and the usage we want (the length of the licence, screenings at open days, embedding on our website and Facebook page and hosting on our YouTube channel). The latter of these is the sticking point as YouTube is a notoriously difficult thing to regulate and publishers know this.
What this also shows is that artists have very little or no control over where their music is used. They also have no control over how much they would like to charge for it! I guess this is something you sign away once the record label signs you and pays to produce your album.

At the moment we're waiting to hear if they're happy with our latest offer - we really hope they are as we'd love to use the track. Watch this space for a future post from Hannah with the full video (if we get the rights to embed it on blogs!)
The onslaught of our busy January continues... Therefore, I'm just snatching five minutes to update this blog with details of a new project which we supported last week.

"Our operators are standing by..."
Before Christmas, our Postgraduate Marketing team came up with the idea of running two Virtual Open Days for prospective students. This would involve them logging on to our website at specified times and then taking part in a selection of activities/virtual tours - and this is where we came in! We offered up some initial ideas of how we could support this, both in the lead up and on the days. To begin, we went about building a landing page for all attendees which gave answers to all of the basic questions we expected them to ask.

We then recommeded that we make use of our current live text chat service but take it to the next level by enlisting the expertise of our academics. This took a lot of organising - particularly from the PG team who had to ensure that each hour of the event was covered by a member of staff from each subject. Our job was to install the software and train over 30 staff in the space of a week! Thankfully, we have a great service which we currently use called ISL Pronto which has no limit on the amount of user accounts we can create!

Once everyone was suitibly happy with the software, it was time to help in promoting the event both on our Facebook pages, Twitter and via Google AdWords. This proved quite successful as over 150 people registered for the two afternoons it was running. Then the event began...

The PG team were excellent as the first port of call for all enquires, and the academics, support services and admissions teams were all ready to be transferred their relevant queries. Then people logged on! The first and second hours of the events were hectic, before a steady flow of enquires and finally a flurry of activity at the end. Even we were impressed by the knowledge and helpfulness of our staff, and the PG team are now preparing a detailed report on how it all went (with statistics provided by us) to help inform any similar events in the future.


Overall, these events were a great success and we've already got some very exciting ideas on how to ramp it up a gear when we run something similar again...!

PS. if you attended the events then please fill out our survey for a chance to win a £50 Amazon voucher.
Happy new year to all readers of this Blog - I hope that you all had a great Christmas break. We have some great news to start 2013 in that we've just advertised for two brand new roles within the team!

Both of these jobs are one year fixed term contracts and here are the details:
  • Marketing, Admissions, Recruitment and Communications (MARC)
  • Grade 6, £24,766 per annum
  • 37 hours per week
Digital Marketing Officer 
We are looking for an experienced Digital Marketing Officer to develop the University’s web content and day-to-day management and analysis. The post holder will be expected to implement innovative consumer focused digital marketing projects in relation to corporate strategic objectives. They will also be experienced in the use of Social Media, CMS, Analytics tools, Design (e.g. Photoshop) and HTML email software.

Web Content Officer
We are looking for a Web Content Officer to be responsible for developing and maintaining the structure and copy of the University’s web pages. The role holder will be required to oversee the content for all University websites and to deliver writing for the web training to various departments.

So if you're interested in joining our award winning team then it would be great to hear from you. To apply and for more details just following the links above through to our website.

For an informal discussion about either of these roles, please contact me on 01582 743987 or email: paul.fryer@beds.ac.uk
I thought I'd take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas! Today is our last day before the holidays and we're working on tying up lots of loose ends and making sure we're fully planned on our priorities for when we get back.

We've got some really exciting projects coming up in the new year (January is going to be VERY busy) so watch this space for regular updates.

To spread a bit of Christmas cheer here's a clip from my favourite Christmas film 'Scrooged' with a very interesting take on Marketing!

Exciting news here at Bedfordshire towers. We've been shortlisted for not one, but two Digital Marketing awards!

The first of these is at the CIM Marketing Excellence Awards 2012. We've been shortlisted in the Education category for our 2012 Digital Marketing Clearing campaign, which was managed in partnership with agency Statistics into Decisions. The award winner will be announced at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on 6 March 2013.

We've also just had some more good news (especially for a Monday morning) that we've been shortlisted in the CIPR LPS Awards 2012. This is also for our Digital Clearing campaign and is in the Digital Excellence category. The awards ceremony for this will be held in Bristol on 7 February 2013 (admittedly a bit further to travel!)

I was really pleased with all the work and achievements of my team during Clearing and this is testament to the fact that we're ahead of the game and are really at the forefront of Digital Marketing. I'm sure we can keep up the momentum and continue to provide an excellent service and hopefully take home some awards!

Now I have two excuses to dust off the dinner suit...

(Also, a shout out to the Postgraduate Marketing Team and their shortlisted entry at the CIPR awards for their brilliant Postgraduate Life e-zine - we're all looking to a well deserved night out at the ceremony).
December is here so it's now fine to start decorating your house, office or children - well, that's my opinion anyway. SOME have started the Christmas celebrations much earlier... (you know who you are... ;))

The bespoke design off trophy -
actual size!
One responsibility that usually rests with my team is the design of the yearly University Christmas card. This is then signed off by the Vice Chancellor before thousands of copies are printed and sent to all of our many stakeholders, partners and friends. We also build an eCard version of it for staff to send out. We've had some great designs over the past years and we were determined that 2012 wouldn't be any different.

Therefore, we came up with the idea of a healthy in-team compeition - the  Christmas Card Design Off 2012. This involved Mick, Hannah, myself and our other best friend (namely Photoshop...) The winner would then be decided by a democratic 'first past the post' system (i.e. the rest of the MARC office voted for their favourite and whoever got the most votes won).

Despite a bit of cheating on my part (loose deadlines and submitting two designs instead of one) the votes were cast and the winner was Hannah with this brilliant design:

Hannah's winning design showing our Putteridge Bury campus in the snow and some subtle
footprints leading up to it (which are actually the University of Bedfordshire logo)
Hannah was rewarded with the above trophy (which in no way is second hand...)

So, if you've worked with us over the last year or more you'll be getting a lovely printed copy of Hannah's design through the post in the next few weeks. I won't showcase the losing entries here yet - who knows, we might try re-submitting them next year?!
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