A Higher Education institution's website is often a primary recruiting and information tool, and the stakes for building a scalable, versatile and intuitive Content Management System (CMS) couldn't be higher. Making the right choice and making the CMS work for each institution's unique needs and goals can lead to a centralized and effective environment in which they can meet the ever-evolving demands of their target audiences. EMG and Ektron partner up to present the top 5 challenges Higher Education institutions face while managing web content and provide insights on how customizing your CMS can help to solve these issues while creating a better and more efficient user experience. From this webinar you will gain: 1. An overview of the most common challenges facing Higher Education institutions while managing web content 2. Insight into how customizing your CMS can help solve your issues and satisfy your specific needs 3. A look at how a prestigious liberal arts college used Ektron CMS400.net to meet their specific needs and better serve their audiences 4. An understanding of the capabilities of a Content Management System and what options are available to you

1. Customizing Your Content Management System to Work for Your Higher Education Institution Presented by Meredith Bunche EMG Client Services Director & Mike Pascucci Ektron Partner Alliance Manager Follow @EMGtheagency, #EMGhighered

3. Headquartered in Orange County, CA

4. Established in 1999

6. Webinar presentation will be recorded

7. Links to be sent to attendeesPresentation posted to EMG Knowledge Center

8. About Ektron Company Information Ektron Inc. brings innovative web technology to everyone. By combining web content management (WCM), marketing optimization and social software, Ektron gives companies a single platform that improves operational efficiency, drives revenue growth and builds customer loyalty. Ektron empowers marketers to create, publish and optimize web content that engages, converts and retains customers. Developers benefit from Ektron’s extensibility and commitment to the Microsoft .NET framework. Headquartered in Nashua, New Hampshire, with offices in Australia, Canada, Singapore and the United Kingdom, Ektron has more than 8,000 customers worldwide including AMC Theaters, Carnegie Hall, Kodak, Microsoft, NASDAQ, Texas Children’s Hospital and the University of Notre Dame. For more information, please visit: www.ektron.com. Executive Team Bill Rogers is Ektron’s president, founder and CEO; he previously founded two successful technology companies. Our executives are software and WCM industry veterans who have many years of experience building successful development, sales and financial organizations within technology companies. Key Ektron Highlights Founded in 1998 and is privately held and profitable. ~300 employees with a projection to have 345 by the end of 2011. All of Ektron’s executives and the majority of Ektron’s employees operate out of the corporate headquarters. Ektron does not outsource or offshore any product development or support. International support or implementation personnel work in Ektron-owned and managed offices that support other corporate locations and customers.

9. Presenter Introductions 5 Background in multiple areas of marketing: direct, branded content, social media and all things digital Focused on helping clients to think strategically and to maximize internal and external resources Experienced in managing end-to-end CMS implementations Works with clients in multiple verticals: Higher Education, Financial Services and Entertainment Extensive background in all aspects of online community building and social media Focused on assisting Ektron clients with their social media strategy to maximize outreach and increase satisfaction Works with all Ektron Partners to ensure proper end client satisfaction Meredith Bunche, EMG, Client Services Director Mike Pascucci Ektron, Partner Alliance Manager

10. What We Will Discuss Today An overview of the most common challenges facing Higher Education institutions while managing web content Insight into how customizing your CMS can help solve your issues and satisfy your specific needs A look at how EMG helped Hood College use Ektron CMS400.NET to meet their specific needs and better serve their audiences An understanding of the capabilities of a Content Management System and what options are available to you

11. Agenda Higher Education Websites: What is their purpose and how can a CMS help support that purpose? Top Six CMS Implementation Challenges: Reconciling Multiple Stakeholder Agendas Scalability and Relevancy Usability: Frontend and Backend Asset Management: Images, Videos, Etc. Social Media Integration and Management Customization Needs Key Learnings / Q&A 7

12. 8 Higher Education Websites: What is their purpose and how can a CMS help support that purpose?

13. What does a good Higher Education website accomplish? A Higher Education Institution's website is: The primary and most important recruiting and information tool A showcase to clearly illustrate its outstanding academic programs and unique selling proposition A delivery mechanism to communicate a well thought-out visual identity and messaging strategy A gateway to important functions such as admission, paying tuition and fees, making donations, accessing faculty The most visible and influential marketing collateral an institution can create

15. Housed too much content—pages were added without thought to site architecture

16. Required significant internal resources to update

18. 12 Top 6 Challenges & Solutions

19. Challenge #1: Reconciling Multiple Stakeholder Agendas Multiple web owners leads to frustration IT, Marketing and the Budget Committee don’t always see eye to eye Different needs and priorities Key stakeholders don’t feel like they have support in selling through the vision or budget The timeline for a major implementation can be long

20. Reconciling Multiple Stakeholder Agendas, Accomplished: Hood College EMG engaged in a deep Discovery, ensuring all needs were addressed In person meetings Stakeholder Interviews EMG and Ektron worked together to understand and blend Hood’s marketing needs with its IT needs Throughout the process, EMG provided training, demos and support for all levels of administration

21. Reconciling Multiple Stakeholder Agendas : Key Takeaways 15 Invest the time upfront to clearly delineate goals, roles and responsibilities, process and requirements. 1 Ensure all parties review and SIGN OFF on the above to avoid confusion down the road. 2 Understand the capabilities of your CMS so that you can maximize its value, as well as sell it through to your institution. 3 4 Face to face meetings are the best way to set the stage for a successful project—putting faces to names helps establish a good relationship, which is key for the long haul of a CMS implemention.

22. Challenge #2: Scalability and Relevancy After being live, a website should be malleable to evolve with the organization—many websites become static and outdated Do you feel like you are constantly doing redesigns? Higher Ed Institutions have constantly changing information—calendars, course catalogs, faculty, etc.—that needs to be easily updated and archived Having multiple contributors requires workflow for quality control

23. Scalability and Relevancy Solved: Hood College Ektron serves as a building block with the ability to grow and change shape Widgets/PageBuilder EktroneSync—automates the push from development environments to production Clean folder structures easily allow for duplication Course Catalog is live while a duplicate can be edited to prepare for next year Leverages Hood’s .NET expertise, which reduced ramp-up time Pre-designed workflow enables Hood to control published content

24. Scalability and Relevancy: Ektron Solutions Ektron ensures that clients are seamlessly transitioned to the newest versions

25. Scalability and Relevancy: Key Takeaways 19 A good CMS eliminates the need for constant redesigns. The investment is part of a strategy that will save $$ in the long term. 1 Look for a CMS that plays to your IT department’s strengths. Ask for their input. 2 Designate the gatekeeper(s) of your website, then work backwards to establish a workflow. 3 4 Your CMS is only as powerful as you configure it and as effective as how you organize it. Keep folder structures clean and intuitive.

26. Challenge #3: Frontend and Backend Usability Front End Usability The user experience needs to be intuitive There is a lot of content and actions to which a Higher Ed site must provide access—how do you present what is important on the homepage? Balancing information and images can be challenging—you don’t want to waste real estate There are many desired actions from your audience—how do you prioritize? Experience starts with content, the foundation of web engagement.

27. Frontend Usability, Addressed: Hood College EMG developed Start Pages, funneling each audience to relevant information Clear naming conventions allows for intuitive navigation Rotating, yet user controlled banner allows for multiple messages Tabbed Calendar & News widget keeps all audiences up to date

28. Challenge #3: Frontend and Backend Usability Back End Usability Many content editors are not programmers and are intimidated by the idea of a CMS Some IT professionals have kept a tight reign over editing rights for fear of one small error taking the site down You’ve invested all this money into a new CMS, and no one wants to adopt it

29. Backend Usability, Addressed: Hood College EMG conducted on-site training for various levels (admin through occasional user): teach the teacher A custom how-to guide was created Frankly, Ektron is easy—WYSIWYG editor Proper workflow eliminates the fear of mistakes going live or wreaking havoc

30. Frontend and Backend Usability : Ektron Solutions

31. Frontend and Backend Usability : Key Takeaways 25 Understand your audience and the segments you need to address and ensure at least their top level needs are addressed on the homepage. 1 Good navigation and site structure should marry your institution’s needs with your users’. 2 Proper training and documentation help users catch on quickly and feel they have a resource. 3 4 Stakeholders must propagate a “CMS Culture” to empower all levels to contribute.

32. Challenge #4: Asset Management Higher Education websites have a lot of assets to manage and host Images, documents, video Assets pile up in the backend, making it hard to find what a backend user is looking for Images are of varying sizes and don’t render properly when uploaded

33. Asset Management, Tackled : Hood College Ektron’s Library was tied to each content section, making it easy to find documents in their proper section Templates automatically resize images to the proper width and height Insertion of the image can also take place in the WYSIWGY editor The CMS holds myriad file types—video, PDFs, word documents, powerpoints and images (multiple file types)

34. Asset Management : Ektron Solutions

35. Asset Management : Key Takeaways 29 Do an inventory of your assets to understand your volume. CMS vendors offer different levels of asset management solutions to meet your needs. 1 Keep your assets organized. Even a great asset management system is only as good as your labeling/organization. 2 Migrating content from your old system to a new system gives you a chance to do some spring cleaning. 3

36. Challenge #5: Social Media Integration and Management Social Media is constantly evolving, how do you stay on top of it? Some stakeholders don’t understand Social Media’s place in academia It is cumbersome to update content across multiple channels

37. Social Media, Integrated: Hood College Content and pages are sharable to multiple social networking sites News and events create content that can be broadcast to the college’s Facebook and Twitter pages

38. Social Media Integration : Ektron Solutions

39. Social Media Integration : Key Takeaways 33 A good CMS will help you grow awareness for your institution by making syndication of content easy. 1 Social Media Integration can be tailored to meet you needs—it can be scaled up or down depending on your needs. 2 That being said, Social Media is important, and a CMS can make maximizing it seamless. 3 4 Designate content owners for all of your owned channels, and they should be in lock-step with your web editors (or the same people!).

40. Challenge #6: Customization Needs With all of the options that a CMS offers, there still may be additional needs The CMS you are looking at meets 80% of your criteria, is that good enough? Your in-house team doesn’t have the development skills to build on top of a platform

41. Customization: Hood College EMG customized the calendar element to match Hood’s requirements The homepage banner was custom created and templatized to increase the ease of updating Strategized and implemented a more user-friendly application with Ektron

43. Outreach to different demographics essential– alumni, students, donors, friends

44. Sharepoint integration for internal content management

46. Content, templates, images easily extracted and imported from legacy CMS into Ektron via Web Services within a few weeks, rather than 6-8 months

47. Create websites on the fly (w/ custom branding) to support an audience’s needshttp://ektron.com/Case-Studies/Education/Rice-University/

48. Customization Needs : Key Takeaways 1 A CMS that meets 80% of your needs out of the box is a good fit. 2 Talk about your additional needs with your CMS vendor or agency to see if the customization is possible. Don’t be afraid to invest time or money into customization—again it will save you money in the long term. 3 4 Have an in-house resource who knows the CMS language to increase efficiency.

49. 38 Key Takeaways / Q&A

50. Key Takeaways 39 Don’t be intimidated by Content Management Systems. Utilize the tools available, including EMG and Ektron to ask questions and to evaluate what CMS is best for your institution. 1 2 A good CMS is flexible. If a feature you are looking for isn't available out of the box, it doesn’t mean it can’t be created. Think about your CMS as part of your integrated marketing plan. It can tie into your Social Media, your CRM and other communication tools. 3 4 Most importantly, the right CMS for your institution will increase efficiency, relevancy, scalability and an improved user experience on both the frontend and backend.

51. Benefits of Working with an Agency 40 Strategic Partnership is Key Selecting an agency with an understanding and partnership with your selected CMS can help you identify and align your strategic goals. This will ensure that your overall marketing and branding strategy is not lost in your website. Improve Your Team’s Efficiency An agency partner can provide additional expertise, research and support. This allows your in-house team to focus on executing other parts of your marketing plan. Need help understanding what you need in a CMS? Need to redesign your website but aren't sure where to start? Need recommendations or support for improving your current CMS implementation? Need help integrating your website with other marketing initiatives such as CRM or Social Media? We’re here to help!

52. Questions? We’d love to hear from you. Let us know if you have any questions!

53. Q & A 42 Thank You! Contact us today to learn how EMG can apply its expertise in Ektron and CMS implementations to help you get started!Toll Free: (866) 62-EARTH www.visitemg.com Toll Free: (877) 4WEB-CMS www.ektron.com STAY CONNECTED WITH EKTRON: Twitter.com/Ektron Facebook.com/Ektron.Inc FULL WEBINAR AVAILABLE TOMORROW AT: Youtube.com/earthboundmediagroup Earthboundmediagroup.com/emg/home/ knowledge-center/webinars.html STAY CONNECTED WITH EMG: Twitter.com/EMGtheAgency Facebook.com/earthboundmediagroup