Stephen App

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been hard at work building the second season of the Hashtag Higher Ed Podcast. This podcast has become a real labor of love for me in my daily role at eCity. Podcasting is more than a medium for me; it is a valuable opportunity to meet new colleagues, build…

Welp, we’re a few weeks into 2018, which means headlines and social status updates abound about new year’s resolutions, Oprah for president, new marketing trends, and already-broken new year’s resolutions. In some ways, January always feels like an oddly specific time to write about marketing trends. I wrote about this last year when I documented…

When Celia Cameron joined then Cabrini College in January 2015 as Vice President of Marketing and Communications, she immediately noticed that the college was missing something: a brand. “The college, at the time, had very little brand awareness,” says Cameron. “There were a lot of brand misconceptions out there. A lot of people thought we…

It’s been a little more than two weeks since we packed our bags and left the AMA Higher Education Symposium in Atlanta, but the lessons learned from the conference are still fresh in our minds. AMA Higher Ed is one of the largest higher education conferences of the year, with over 1,200 administrators in attendance.…

If you read our blog with any degree of regularity, you know we’re kind of bullish on podcasting. We’ve talked about its use for storytelling and why we decided to start our own podcast in previous articles. But while podcasting continues to grow in popularity — Forrester’s 2017 Podcast Consumer report shows monthly listeners growing from 21%…

On November 12, American Marketing Association’s Symposium for Marketing in Higher Education invades Atlanta. AMA Higher Ed is one of the largest higher education conferences of the year, with over 1,200 administrators in attendance. Last year, this conference took place in the middle of an eCity office move and I missed out. But this year,…

Back in 2011, George Washington University embarked on a long journey with a lofty goal. Its “Making History” campaign would be the school’s third major comprehensive campaign and its first campaign to raise one billion (yes, with a b) dollars. Six years later, and one year earlier than expected, George Washington University successfully closed the…

The weather may still feel like summer, but according to the calendar, fall has officially begun. And while it may be hard to believe, it’s likely that many alumni and donor relations departments are already planning for Giving Tuesday. Last year, $177 million was raised on Giving Tuesday, and 2,399,092 total social media engagements occurred,…

Like so many terms and phrases before it, storytelling has officially become a buzzword within the marketing world. Storytelling has seemingly permeated every marketing agency website and Linkedin profile — quickly checks own Linkedin Profile. Guilty. And like every buzzword before it, it has become difficult to tell who is authentically telling a story, and who…

For higher education marketers, social media takeovers have transitioned from an innovative twist on social publishing to an integral part of any professional’s social media strategy. That’s because at a time when authenticity is everything, content for and from your current students and alumni trumps anything your marketing team can conceptualize and create. (Highlight to…