#110 - What College Parents Actually Need From Your Website, and What Higher Ed Is Getting Wrong w/ Laura Rudolph

#110 - What College Parents Actually Need From Your Website, and What Higher Ed Is Getting Wrong w/ Laura Rudolph

Most college parent pages were built by someone who ran out of time and dumped every link they didn't know what to do with into a pile. Laura Rudolph has spent a decade trying to fix that. Laura is the founder of Square One Consulting, where she helps colleges communicate more clearly and — as she puts it — speak more human. She started her career as a journalist with a crime beat, fell into enrollment marketing, and eventually realized that the audience nobody was talking to — parents — was the one she was most drawn to write for. Turns out, skeptical Gen X parents who want honesty and hate marketing fluff are basically the ideal audience for a former investigative journalist. In this episode, Laura breaks down why most parent pages fail, what good actually looks like, and the three pieces of content she'd build first if she were starting from scratch. We also walk through real examples from University of Washington, UT Austin, Hamilton, and Wake Forest — and Laura shares a free AI-powered tool she just launched that lets you drop in a URL or paste a parent email and get an honest assessment of whether it's actually working. In this episode: * Why most parent pages are "informationally present but emotionally absent" — and what that costs you * The filing cabinet problem: why organizing your site around your org chart is failing families who don't know what a bursar does * The three content pieces Laura would build first: a "Start Here" guide, a "What Families Worry About" hub, and a "How to Support Without Taking Over" section * Why telling parents why you want their contact info resulted in a dramatic increase in opt-ins at Laura's former institution * What University of Washington, UT Austin, Hamilton, and Wake Forest are doing right — and what makes each of them a model worth studying * The parent-to-parent trust play most schools are completely ignoring * Why there's a middle ground between helicopter parenting and institutional silence — and how your content can actually help create it The free tool: Laura's AI-powered Parent & Family Communication Analyst is live at squareoneky.com [http://squareoneky.com]. Drop in a URL or paste an email and get a scored, tiered review of how well your communication is actually working for a parent audience. It's free. Good parent page examples mentioned: * University of Washington: https://www.washington.edu/parents/ [https://www.washington.edu/parents/] * University of Texas at Austin: https://parents.utexas.edu/ [https://parents.utexas.edu/] * Hamilton College: https://www.hamilton.edu/parents [https://www.hamilton.edu/parents] * Wake Forest University: https://parents.wfu.edu/ [https://parents.wfu.edu/] * Providence College (honorable mention for parent blog): https://parents.providence.edu/ [https://parents.providence.edu/] Connect with Laura: * Website: squareoneky.com [http://squareoneky.com] * LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/laurakrudolph [http://linkedin.com/in/laurakrudolph] Connect with John: * LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnazoni [http://linkedin.com/in/johnazoni] * Website: unveild.tv [http://unveild.tv] * Newsletter: unveild.tv/newsletter [http://unveild.tv/newsletter]

#109 - "May 1st Is Halftime, Not the Finish Line": A Yield and Melt Survival Guide w/ Rita Winthrop

If your school just came off a yield season that didn't go the way you hoped — or if you're staring down summer melt and wondering what to actually do about it — this episode is for you. Rita Winthrop is a marketing consultant with 15 years in higher ed and edtech who helps institutions and brands build content that actually moves people. She runs Rita Winthrop Consulting out of Newport, Rhode Island, specializing in enrollment email campaigns, LinkedIn ghostwriting for higher ed executives, and content strategy that doesn't just fill a calendar. She also has a lot of feelings about yield season — which is exactly why I wanted to get her on the show. Rita has a rare background: she was both an admissions counselor and the person writing the MarCom for her team at the same time. That dual perspective shapes everything she talks about in this episode — why the disconnect between admissions and MarCom is so damaging, what actually moves students from accepted to enrolled, and why May 1st is halftime, not the finish line. In this episode: * Why the personalized experience students get with their admissions counselor so often evaporates the moment they deposit — and what a good handoff actually looks like * What bad yield communication strategy looks like in practice: too much volume, too many CTAs, and content that forgets it's talking to a 17-year-old making the biggest financial decision of their life * Why parent communications deserve their own dedicated strategy with its own tone, cadence, and content — and why most schools treat parents as an afterthought * What you can still do right now if you didn't make your class — including how to re-engage fence sitters without looking desperate * Why silence is the biggest driver of summer melt, and what a smart anti-melt campaign looks like from May through August * Transfer students as an underutilized population — why they should be a year-round conversation, not a backup plan * What EdTech vendors consistently get wrong about the people they're selling to (and why cold emailing admissions counselors in April will get you yelled at) Resources mentioned: * Mailed It! by Day Kibilds and Ashley Budd:https://emailbook.co/ [https://emailbook.co/]  Connect with Rita: * LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rita-winthrop/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rita-winthrop/] * Website: https://ritawinthrop.com [https://ritawinthrop.com/] Connect with John: * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni] * Website: https://unveild.tv [https://unveild.tv/] * Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter [https://unveild.tv/newsletter]

#108 - AI Findability: How to Structure Your College’s Website to Answer Questions (Without The FAQ Dump Page)

If you've been feeling the pressure to overhaul your entire web presence for AI search, this episode is your permission slip to take a breath. Georgy Cohen is a content strategist who has spent her career in and around higher ed — in-house at universities, at agencies, and as an independent consultant. She joined the show to talk about one of the most practical and overlooked problems in higher ed marketing: how to actually structure your website so it answers the questions prospective students are asking — without relying on the sprawling, ungovernable FAQ page that becomes a dumping ground the moment you create it. Georgy brings a content strategy and information architecture lens to a conversation that usually stays at the surface level of SEO and branding. The result is a genuinely useful framework for thinking about your web content on two levels at once — what the human sees and what the bots are crawling — and why attending to both doesn't have to mean starting from scratch. In this episode: * Why FAQ pages are well-intentioned but create more problems than they solve — and what to do instead * The difference between the "viewable web" and the "semantic web," and why higher ed is mostly only thinking about one of them * Why clear communication fundamentals will get you most of the way to AI findability — and why panicking won't * How to bridge the gap between subject matter experts (faculty, financial aid staff) and the content strategists who know how to structure information * Why higher ed's reluctance to have a point of view is hurting both their brand and their findability * The role user research should be playing — and why it's underused * Two short books Georgy recommends for anyone who wants to build a foundational understanding of content strategy and information architecture Resources mentioned: * Everyday Information Architecture [https://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Information-Architecture-Maria-Marquis/dp/B0DP5JDBPN/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2GTG866P7KPRS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.37rr5Bry0oT7htgbalrpYSYxFFtWvirntV37qSPfKXlCPCuz77IX_lMj4rLkoZSTFlAtMtJmPfU6IUFxxjUCTBmBhXForx5UNSjikIwGqhlrSOcT04sS3UUtbwng_TaQ0Fo4sRCxv-wyuxZIYPK8-Yz0BVwHREzitCnGaSLd7BtGKWV94PDRre1B8fAKOtL8UTrAQFnsFAto3fT_ygVNUg_Wfw0gkwhhh_ZKIxZKtJg.oOflBZh5Uazi-zDXPYGsqJg7AMBR1RYjRHPaT6KjcgY&dib_tag=se&keywords=everyday+information+architecture&qid=1777546843&sbo=RZvfv%2F%2FHxDF%2BO5021pAnSA%3D%3D&sprefix=everyday+information+%2Caps%2C182&sr=8-1] by Lisa Maria Marquis:  * The Elements of Content Strategy [https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Content-Strategy-People-Websites/dp/B004ZRFJ4G/ref=sr_1_1?crid=48Y8IBVE35PS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.vuDQraxv35VFMxAvEQn5QhnQOTUKQvt0bvs71DeFlPoIRCEQlxb9n--cExyFrpxzL-8oi0zJcUxuJhL7-vSGe4Eda_wo4OYx47ImDP43g4w2EorDk7Retr-nMWof3YMrw15uXKh_KL3S2Er2oz2ko4nESORf_HS9hGwbAv0YoKeYodB3v03WjUReOIBIQlDlGNqn5LoQQWf9AZI4XpQkjTFYQGC2MiVOeSLNlTG4rMU.IacMlRejRKSGN5vu6PinXKp-wvgmm56jtFnwqbGdZPU&dib_tag=se&keywords=elements+of+content+strategy&qid=1777546888&sbo=RZvfv%2F%2FHxDF%2BO5021pAnSA%3D%3D&sprefix=elements+of+content+strategy%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-1] by Erin Kissane * About Schema Markup:  * https://schema.org/docs/schemas.html [https://schema.org/docs/schemas.html] * https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/ [https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/] * https://search.google.com/test/rich-results [https://search.google.com/test/rich-results] * https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/higher-education-schema-how-your-school-can-win-google [https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/higher-education-schema-how-your-school-can-win-google] Connect with Georgy: * LinkedIn: Georgy Cohen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgy/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgy/] * georgycohen.com [http://georgycohen.com]

#107 - Higher Ed Videography 101 for In-House Teams: A Crash Course in Elevating Your Videos

In this solo episode, John breaks down the fundamental camera settings and workflow decisions that can immediately elevate your video quality—whether you're brand new to video or looking to refine your technical foundation as an in-house higher ed videographer. Key takeaways: * The four critical camera settings: frame rate (shoot 24fps for cinematic look), aperture (lowest f-stop for background blur), shutter speed (set to 2x your frame rate), and ISO (keep as low as possible to avoid grain) * Why shooting in 4K but editing in 1080p gives you flexibility without unnecessary file sizes * The case for auto white balance in run-and-gun scenarios to avoid color correction nightmares * Why shooting in LOG color profiles often creates more problems than it solves for in-house teams * How to avoid the two biggest stabilization mistakes: micro-jitter from handheld shooting and overusing gimbal shots * Audio quality matters more than video quality—record directly into your camera and hide those lav mics * Think about workflow and asset management, not just the single video you're making right now Connect with John: * Email: john@unveild.tv * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni] * Website: https://unveild.tv [https://unveild.tv] * Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter [https://unveild.tv/newsletter]

#106 - CRUSH Yield Season With a Simple Google Doc w/ John Azoni

In this solo episode, John addresses a critical gap in how colleges use video content during yield season. Most institutions have great video content scattered across platforms, but admissions counselors often don't have easy access to share it in one-on-one conversations with prospective students—exactly when it could make the biggest impact. Key takeaways: * Video shouldn't just be a broadcast tool measured by views—it's a powerful one-to-one communication asset * Five strategic views from an admissions counselor to fence-sitting students may be more valuable than 5,000 algorithm-driven views * Marketing, social media, and admissions teams often operate in silos, missing opportunities to leverage existing content * A simple Google Doc library organized by student questions can bridge this gap in an afternoon * Don't just rely on the algorithm to deliver your content—be the algorithm by hand-delivering the right video at the right moment * Measure success not just through broadcast metrics, but through counselor feedback on whether videos helped close enrollment gaps Resources mentioned: * Free Google Doc template: https://unveild.tv/strategytoolbox [https://unveild.tv/strategytoolbox] Connect with John: * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni] * Email: john@unveild.tv * Website: https://unveild.tv [https://unveild.tv] * Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter [https://unveild.tv/newsletter]