A plethora of projects

This blog is quickly becoming just a list of awards ceremonies we're either shortlisted for or have attended! Therefore, I'm going to make the first part of this post as brief as possible before moving on to write about some of the work we've been doing...

We found out on Friday that we have been shortlisted in two categories of the CIPR PRide Awards 2013 (for 'Best Use of Social Media' and 'Best Use of Digital'). Obviously, we're very excited about this so roll on the 1st November 2013 at Sopwell house in (conveniently local) St. Albans! Also, a big shout out to our colleagues in the marketing team who are up for 'Best External Publication'.

Now to write about the work we've been doing over the last few weeks - apologies if it's all a bit brief as each one could easily warrant a blog post of their own!

Staff Conference presentation - 8th July 2013

Early this month I submitted a proposal to present at the annual University staff conference. The theme of the conference was 'The Student Experience' and I thought this would be a great opportunity to educate staff on our use of social media. I was particularly encouraged that 85 people signed up to attend my 45min session meaning that people internally are waking up to the importance of social media. It all went pretty well and there were some great questions at the end. As always, I was preaching to the converted but the fact this number is growing can only be a good thing!

Believe it or not, this is one of Luton's
more aesthetically pleasing buildings
aside for the University's ones of course!

Office move - 10th July 2013 

We're now settled into our new office (necessitated by the building of a new Library) and it's like we've always been here. Despite being open plan and closely resembling a call centre it's been all good and a very easy transition. The air-con has been particularly welcome in the hot weather we've been having!   

This move was made much easier by us in the Digital team just picking up our iMacs or MacBook Air and then wandering across the road. The same is not true of some colleagues who seem wedded to paper and files in this now digital age - all of our files are stored in Dropbox! It's a good job the office is also much more spacious, to accommodate the new additions to our team...

Team interviews - 22nd & 24th July 2013

We've recently advertised for two roles to complete the team. A Digital Marketing Officer to replace Hannah and a Web Content Officer. I'm now in a position where I feel I've interviewed the entire office at some point or another but was particularly looking forward to these as we had two strong fields. I'm pleased to say that we've managed to recruit for both roles and one of them may be familiar to regular readers of this blog (introductions later). Both were tough decisions but we're confident we chose correctly.  They are due to start in time for Clearing so they'll be straight in the deep end no doubt...

Blogs and Graduations - W/B 22nd July 2013

Finally, just a quick note that our blogs (including this one!) have now been plugged into our website search. We're really pleased with this development (thanks Funnelback) and by looking at the analytics it's clearing had an affect on our viewing figures as well. Now to further educate our authors on correctly tagging up their content!

Olympian Greg Rutherford at our
Bedford graduation ceremony.
We also made a big step this week by live streaming all of our graduations. This proved a big hit and we could watch from our desks the likes of Greg Rutherford, Kriss Akabusi, Darren Gough and Kevin Whately receive their honorary doctorates. It looked pretty hot in the marquee at our first ever Putteridge Bury graduation!

That's all from me for the time being. My next few posts will focus on the rollout of our new CRM which has been taking up a lot of our time. Also, we're frantically putting the finishing touches to our online Clearing campaign which is more detailed than ever before.
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