Web Manager and Web Content Officer Jobs

Posted on 18 December, 2015 by

Regular readers will know that we’ve completed the first phase of a University-wide website transformation programme called Go Mobile.

This is to make all Newcastle University websites mobile responsive and to move them into our content management system (T4).

These are exciting times for Newcastle University’s Web Team – we’re looking for some digital content experts to join us in our quest for high quality web content that is mobile responsive.

We’ve secured funding for five posts to help us get through Phase 2 in a tightly run, year-long programme of work.

All posts are fixed term for 12 months.

Faculty Web Manager vacancies

We have two F grade posts available: one for the Faculty of Medical Sciences and one for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Let us know in your application which Faculty would best suit your experience and background.

These jobs require excellent project management skills (Agile experience would be ideal) and digital copywriting expertise. You will also line manage a Faculty Web Content Officer.

Apply for the Faculty Web Manager jobs now. The closing date is 25 January 2016.

Faculty Web Content Officer vacancies

We have three E grade posts available:

Faculty of Medical Sciences Content Officer
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Content Officer
Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering Content Officer

Let us know in your application which Faculty would best suit your experience and background.

You will be involved in planning, creating and editing effective and innovative digital content. You will provide key editorial support for Go Mobile projects and manage content workflow.

Apply for the Faculty Web Content Officer jobs now. The closing date is 11 January 2016. Interviews will be held on the the 22 January.

Image credit: Scrabble – Hiring by Flazingo on Flickr

Expert Approval for Our Content Strategy

Posted on 16 December, 2015 by nueconsoc

Our team has successfully implemented two huge content strategy projects (Undergraduate and more recently Postgraduate) yet we’re always looking to improve our skills in this area. Lisa and I attended the latest Nielsen Normal Group (NNG) training on Content Strategy to pick up even more pointers.

We weren’t disappointed. It was a really inspiring and practical course, full of great ideas for techniques to help with content creation, and client buy-in.

We came back fired-up with loads of ideas to improve our processes and firm up our strategy – I left with a long ‘to do list’.

And the even better news? Turns out that by following the guidance from NNG and other experts in content strategy, we’ve done a fantastic job at the University, and we can take pride in what we have achieved so far.

Approval from the experts

Affirmation from a room-full of content professionals that the work we are doing is; absolutely the right thing to do to improve our websites, pretty advanced and even admired – followed by requests to share our best practice with others…well, wow!

It sure felt like a pat on the back from our peers that understand what we are trying to achieve, and a real boost to the team just when we needed it.

Discover for yourself

If you’re interested in where we got our content strategy inspiration from – and more importantly why content strategy is so important for websites – there is a wealth of guidance available.

I’d recommend ‘Content Strategy for the Web’ by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach. It’s a really easy read, and pretty much a step by step guide that has lived on my bedside table for many a month.

Team update: 26 November – 9 December

Posted on 9 December, 2015 by Anne

Go Mobile programme

The Physics website went live on 2 December.

We’re working with the Alumni team to plan their new sitemap and content. The aim is to start the site development in the New Year.

The Accommodation Office are getting ahead by rewriting their content using Hemingway, reworking their sitemap and reviewing Google analytics.

Design and Technical developments

The Tech Team are supporting redevelopment of the enquiry and prospectus request forms. Providing information about mobile usability.

Catherine is looking at possible new layouts for our staff profile pages.

Peter has produced the proofing PDFs for the Student Profiles on the Undergraduate website.

Andy’s been working on a photo collection process that will help to identify quality photos for the Go Mobile transformation cycle. This process will also highlight where there are gaps in the photo assets. Andy’s also worked with Undergraduate Marketing on the updated Central Virtual Tour website.

Training and support

The feedback is in from our latest round of Go Mobile training and it’s overwhelmingly positive. We use the comments from this to continually adapt and improve the sessions, so thank you to everyone who completed the survey.

Linda and Lisa delivered training on planning and writing web content on Thursday 26 November. Anne delivered T4 CMS training on Monday 7 December, and is preparing to deliver a session for colleagues from our Newcastle London campus next week.

Catherine has been pulling together documentation covering all stages of website migration and setup into our Admin Handbook.

We’ve received 32 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 12 of them.

Nielsen Norman Group UX certification

Lisa has successfully passed her exams for the Content Strategy (days 1 and 2) course run by the Nielsen Norman Group. Well done Lisa!

Campaigns and web developments

Lisa wrote this month’s newsletter for the blog.

Plans for the next few weeks

We’ve got two Web Media Management training sessions coming up before Christmas. Both are fully booked.

The Undergraduate site is on track to go live just before Christmas. We’ve a lot of final checks over these next two weeks.

Writing Plain English Does Not Dumb Down Content

Posted on 3 December, 2015 by

The difficulty we face as a University web team is a fear that rewriting content for the web will somehow ‘dumb down’ the message.

“If we write in ‘plain English’ we’re in danger of making ourselves look stupid. People won’t expect this from a university”

“We’re writing for our academic peers: they understand the terms we use.”

We hear these sorts of comments a lot. If you are writing for a website you need to dismiss them right now.

This is not the content YOU are looking for

Anyone can visit our website. We shouldn’t be excluding audiences based on their understanding of English. Who are we to decide who can or can’t access our ideas?

Think about those students or (high-quality) researchers who may not have English as their first language. Don’t make it hard for them to understand your content.

What about those with dyslexia or those using assistive technologies (like screen readers) to access the site?

And hey, what about you, wouldn’t you rather read something you understood at first glance (even if you are a specialist in that area)?

Remember:

No one will ever complain that you’ve made things too simple to understand.
Ann Handley

Plain English and why it’s important

Plain English at Newcastle University

In our Writing for the Web training we introduce the idea of using plain English. We encourage our content editors to:

write clear and direct content
be concise
reduce (or at least explain) jargon
use simple words in short sentences
use the language of your reader

All of these things make reading online easier for our audiences. They are how to write plain English.

Plain English Campaign

There’s a campaign for Plain English. The problems of complex words and long sentences are found in all sorts of sectors not just academic circles:

marketing
business
law
sciences
medicine
government

The Plain English Campaign highlights areas where their work has had particular success.

What we don’t want is to be a recipient of the Golden Bull Award – each year the campaign highlights the worst written communication they’ve seen!

GOV.UK

The public face of government information has been transformed recently. GOV.UK is clear, well-written and helps people understand complex information. They are huge advocates of plain English.

They’ve published a blog post on using plain English: “It’s not dumbing down, it’s opening up“.

Writing to support plain English

We’ve written lots of blog posts on improving content – most have hints about using plain English in them:

Resources and articles

GOV.UK list of words to avoid
A-Z Alternative Words, Plain English Campaign
Guest Post: Clarity is king – the evidence that reveals the desperate need to re-think the way we write, Government Digital Service post on research into language used on the Department of Health website
Dumbing Down, Sarah J Richards (Former Head of Content Design at GOV.UK)

Introducing Our New Website Media Management Training

Posted on 27 November, 2015 by

In our team update from 1-14 October you will have seen a mention of a new module we’ve added to our Go Mobile training: Website Media Management. We developed this in response to requests from the first cohort of Go Mobile editors for more help managing images.

Our training on planning and writing web content, and using the T4 content management system, cover some of the ways images can be used in the new template. The new media training takes things a step further. It covers:

when to use images
sourcing images
selecting images
preparing images for publication
best practice for documents
uploading assets to T4’s Media Library

Sourcing and selecting images for your website

The primary source for images for your website should be the University photo library. In the library you can:

browse or search for photos
save relevant images to your lightbox so you can easily find them again
download the approved University logos
access student profiles

In the training we cover some tips for getting the most out of the photo library. These include using multiple lightboxes, browsing by keyword and viewing all photos from a selected photographer.

When it comes to selecting images, we provide guidance on how to select images for the four core themes identified in the University branding guidelines; student experience, sense of place, teaching and learning, and research.

The most important thing for image selection is to choose photos that are natural or appear to be observed, rather than staged. That means nobody looking directly into the camera!

Editing images for use on the web

We recommend that our editors use the free, online photo editing tool, Fotor. Its clean user interface makes it easy to upload, crop and resize images to the required dimensions.

Even if you have access to Photoshop, if you’re not a regular and proficient user it can be overwhelming. Fotor is a straightforward alternative.

I wrote a post earlier in the year that includes advice on editing images for use on your website.

Feedback from attendees

There have been three sessions so far, with more to follow in December. The feedback has been very positive:

‘Great information on the use of appropriate images in terms of context on the web page’

‘Really useful advice on when to use images and how to select the most appropriate ones’

‘Good to get practical, hands-on opportunity to edit and save images’

Further information

For Go Mobile editors, you’ll find lots of guidance on using images on our demo site.

Not yet part of the Go Mobile programme and want to improve the imagery on your website? Get further information from the image guide on our website (University login required). This includes a step-by-step guide for using Fotor.

And I’m always happy to take questions in the comments.

Go Mobile Blog