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Monthly video round-up for August 2014

September 2, 2014 by

Tyler Beck

Each month I highlight some of the videos posted to the Missouri State University YouTube channel. The goal of these monthly posts is to share the great production work being done by the staff and student videographers in the office of web and new media, as well as videos produced by other units on campus.

Please feel free to share and embed these videos on your websites and social media presences where appropriate.

President Smart’s Instagram video series

To welcome students back to campus this fall, the office of web and new media worked with President Smart to develop a short Instagram video series. The seven-video series focused on key Welcome Weekend activities and “must-do’s” for new and returning students alike.

See the videos on the President’s blog along with comments from students and others on campus.

What’s New at MSU 2013-14

2013-14 was a great year for Missouri State. From impressive new facilities to achievements of our students and faculty, we have a lot of good news to share.

This video was produced by Ozarks Public Television for the office of the president.

60 Seconds of Welcome Weekend

Three days and 15+ events in just 60 seconds. This video is a quick round-up of Welcome Weekend festivities.

This video was produced by web and new media for the office of student engagement.

Experience the MSU College of Business

When you’re in a place that’s right for you, you just know it. The Missouri State College of Business wants to help you find that feeling on our campus.

This video was produced by the office of web and new media for the College of Business.

Graduate student aids professor in grapevine research

While many students are passionate about the inner workings of plants, few get to work side-by-side with a professor and participate in groundbreaking research. LeAnn Hubbert, a plant science and agriculture graduate student, has been working closely with Dr. Wenping Qiu, a research professor in the William H. Darr School of Agriculture.

This video was produced by the division of marketing and communications for the spotlight system.

Taking a new look at the needs of cancer patients

Third time’s the charm for junior Kirby Williams – at least when it comes to deciding on a major. The former pre-law, political science major turned chemistry student has found a new place in the psychology department and within a new field: psycho-oncology.

This video was produced by the office of university communications for My Place at Missouri State.

Production services

Please visit our Video Services page if you are interested in having our office produce a video for your University unit or department.

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: agriculture, business, campus, college of business, facilities, graduate, instagram, my place, new, new media, new videos, News, president, production, psychology, research, smart, Social Media, spotlight, story, student, update, Video, welcome weekend, YouTube

Activity Streams

September 2, 2010 by

Activity Stream

One of the key components of the Missouri State website redesign is the new Activity Stream. It’s featured on both the Missouri State homepage and Current Students page. The activity stream combines content feeds from various campus providers – University Relations, Public Affairs, SGA, Athletics, SAC and the Bookstore to name just a few.

Not only does it pull in content from many different providers, it also pulls in content from different services such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious and various RSS feeds. This makes for a very dynamic and constantly changing stream of information.

Activity Stream

Here’s how it works:

  • Only one item is pulled per source every 30 minutes. This is to ensure that one content provider doesn’t overload the stream by posting a lot of content in a very short amount of time.
  • If content is posted on multiple sites it will only show the first entry. For example, if a link is posted on the Missouri State Facebook page and then the Missouri State Twitter account, only the first post from Facebook will show on the stream. This helps to reduce duplicated entries.
  • Only the 15 most recent items appear on the homepage (the 13 most recent appear on the current students page), but older items can be viewed by visiting the Full Stream, which shows the 100 most recent items.
  • From Facebook, only manual updates are pulled into the stream; this means that anything posted by an application (like Notes, RSS Graffiti, Twitter, etc.) does not appear. For content posted to Twitter, the stream ignores any items posted from Facebook, Twitterfeed and the Twitter Tools plugin on Missouri State blogs.

Some best practices you should be following when posting your content:

  • Don’t post a lot of content at once. There’s no need to post six months worth of events in the span of five minutes. Not only is this an ineffective way to promote your content, it also has the potential to alienate your followers, who will relate such activity with spam. Space out your content postings as much as you can, and if you do have more than one piece of content you need to post at the same time, wait at least 30 minutes to do so to ensure that all of the items appear on the activity stream.
  • Use tools that minimize copying and pasting your content into different sources. You should only need to post your update in one place, and then by setting up the correct tools, your content will disseminate automatically to your other accounts. Some great examples of these tools are the Facebook to Twitter option available to Facebook page administrators, or Twitterfeed for Twitter users. Last fall I presented on RSS and Social Media Coordination, and if you would like to see more of these tools in action I suggest you watch this video presentation. Not only does this coordination between your sites make the workload easier on you, it also streamlines how that content comes into the activity stream and helps reduce the possibilities of content duplication.
  • Similarly with blogs, take advantage of having notifications of new blog posts sent automatically to Facebook, using an application like Notes or RSS Graffiti, and Twitter using the Twitter Tools plugin available on Missouri State blogs.
  • When retweeting others’ content on Twitter, use the new retweet feature and do not put “RT” in front of the tweet. This will ensure that if you are retweeting content from another provider on the activity stream, that tweet will not be duplicated.

Features to be added in the future:

  • We will be adding an RSS feed of all the content from the activity stream, so users can subscribe to the feed and keep up to date with everything happening on campus without having to visit the website to see all the content from the activity stream.
  • We will be integrating a Like button on all activity stream content sourced from Facebook. At present you can see how many people like Facebook content, but once this button is added users will be able to like content without leaving the Missouri State website.
  • The full stream page will eventually go away and will be replaced with an expanding homepage that will show older content on the same page – similar to how the news stream works on Facebook. This will allow users to see older content without going to a different page.
  • There will be a button added that allows others in the campus community to submit their content sources to be added to the stream. For content to be considered for the homepage, it must have at least two audiences. For content to be considered for the current student page, the content must be relevant to current students.

Filed Under: Redesign, Social media, web strategy and development Tagged With: activity stream, content, events, facebook, flickr, homepage, News, Redesign, rss, Social Media, stream, Twitter, YouTube

Web Press publishing suspended August 6-9, 2010

August 5, 2010 by Brian Heaton

Publishing from Web Press will be suspended from 8:00 a.m. Friday, August 6, through noon, Monday, August 9, in conjunction with the web redesign project.

During this time you will be able to continue editing your website through Web Press. Any changes released from workflow will be published to your website when publication is resumed on Monday, August 9. This suspension of publication will not affect your live website—visitors will still be able to access your website normally.

The 2010 Web Redesign project includes upgrading the standard web template to HTML5, increasing the width by 23%, and a new full browser width masthead and footer.

If you have any questions or need a critical webpage update, please contact the Web Help Desk at webpress@missouristate.edu or 836-5271.

Filed Under: News, Redesign, Web Press, web strategy and development Tagged With: News, Redesign, Web, Web Press

Update to WordPress blogs

March 11, 2010 by

This morning we updated the Missouri State blogs to better work with the WordPress threaded commenting system. We have been using a third-party plugin to allow for threaded comments, but our themes now work with the integrated WordPress threaded comments and thus the plugin is no longer needed.

To turn on threaded comments on your blog:

  1. On your blog’s Dashboard, navigate to Settings > Discussion.
  2. Under ‘Other Comment Settings,’ check the box labeled ‘Enable threaded (nested) comments.’
  3. Select the number of levels deep you would like the threaded comments to go.
  4. Click the Save Changes button on the bottom of the page.

We have also integrated a Tiny MCE Comments plugin into all of the blogs, allowing for commenters to add links, format text, etc. This plugin works on both threaded and un-threaded comments.

Filed Under: WordPress blogs Tagged With: Blogs, News, Plugins, support, update, upgrade, WordPress

CASE awards given for Missouri State web sites

February 18, 2010 by

Missouri State University won eight awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District VI during the annual conference in St. Louis.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., with an office in London, CASE is the professional organization for advancement professionals at all levels who work in alumni relations, communications and development. CASE District VI includes colleges, universities and independent elementary and secondary schools throughout the Midwest, including Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Of the eight awards, three were given for Missouri State web sites:

newsA gold award was given to Brad Mitchell, new media producer in web and new media; Don Hendricks, director of university communications; Andrea Mostyn, assistant director of university communications; and Nicki Donnelson, public relations specialist in university communications; for Excellence in Multimedia: Web Site for the university’s news web site.

ourpromiseA silver award was given to Lindsay Winchester, web designer in web and new media; Michelle Rose, writer/editor in publications; and Ray Lehnhoff, student developer in web and new media; for Excellence in Multimedia: Web Site for the Our Promise: The Campaign for Missouri State University web site.
Go MaroonA bronze award was given to Veronica Adinegara, senior designer in publications, Tim Bohn, assistant director of athletics communication; Chad Killingsworth, assistant director of web and new media, Sara Clark, director of web and new media, Mitchell and Lehnhoff, for Excellence in Multimedia: Web Site for the Go Maroon web site.

Additionally, a bronze award was given to university relations (which includes web and new media) for Excellence in Institutional Relations: Institutional Branding Campaign for the Go Maroon Campaign.

Congratulations to everyone for a job well done.

Filed Under: web strategy and development Tagged With: awards, campaign, CASE, go maroon, News

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