News Roundup — Higher Education Digital Marketing

Source: The three words that make brainstorming sessions at Google, Facebook, and IDEO more productive. Via Quartz.

The latest roundup of articles and tools that our team hopes will be of value in your work as higher ed professionals:

Strategy

• Moving away from interruption #marketing — why Higher Ed needs to market content and not the interruption of content. Via Higher Ed Marketing.
• We've helped clients glean insights with a small research budget — here are some tips on how. Via InsideHigherEd.
• How might we help you brainstorm towards a better university or college website? The three words that make brainstorming sessions at Google, Facebook, and IDEO more productive. Via Quartz.
• Three Megatrends that will drive digital business into the next decade. Via Gartner.
• University web content & development is often devolved, and entities across campus need to collaborate — is it time to review your school’s digital guidelines? Via University of Bath.

Virtual reality / Augmented reality (VR/AR)

• Google Glass 2.0. The consumer version failed, but it's helping business — how might it add value to #highered? Via Wired.
• VR is bringing automotive designers and engineers together to speed up concepts and design. Via CNN.
• Hand-picked curation of the coolest stuff made with Apple's ARKit.
• Facebook boosts live 360 video to 4K for better VR. Via Engadget.
• AR for university acceptance letter. Although not welcomed by all, it shows how AR can make university communication more immersive, and it will be more powerful when offering real value to the student. Via Mashable.

Technology

• How to use a Meta Tag Strategy to look your best on social media. Via Princeton.
• Taking too long to load: Facebook announcement targets website optimization, hurting referral traffic to slow sites. Time for a checkup? Via Facebook News.
• Democratizing Security and Performance on the Open Web. Pantheon is one of our go-to hosting solutions for clients. Via Pantheon Blog.
• Having a hard time translating Google Analytic's raw data into visuals that school administration will care about? Google Data Studio makes it much easier.
• A Video Podcast to learn accessibility, demonstrating real-world accessibility problems and solutions to fix them. Via Google Chrome Developers.

For Fun

• CSS Grid Garden — grow carrots while you learn the basics of CSS Grid.
• "SVG can do THAT?!" is full of SVG experiments that bend the rules of what we thought is possible with scalable vector graphics. Via Sarah Drasner.
• 3 ways to make your OOO’s (out-of-office messages) more human. Via IDEO.
• "Adobe ending Flash support at the end of 2020." We haven't needed or used it for projects for some time, but it's still an interesting cultural artifact of web history. Via ARSTechnica.

Missed Last Roundup?

• Read the latest on how Google took over the classroom, how machine learning is transforming the nature of learning, making the switch to HTTPS, guides for designing for accessibility, and more.