The University Relations Digital Strategy Team at the University, serving as a central digital expert group, offers comprehensive digital support encompassing marketing, communication, and university relations.
Our mission is to elevate the standard of digital communications and marketing across the University, fostering a collaborative environment that spans all departments and disciplines.
In collaboration with our University partners, our team formulates digital guidelines and establishes best practices, as the centre for digital engagement. We spearhead various cross-university committees, initiatives, and projects, including the Web Governance Committee and the Digital Analytics Initiative.
Our responsibilities extend to creating educational materials, exploring emerging technologies, and delivering insightful trend analyses, ensuring an end-to-end digital strategy that is both innovative and effective.
WebPublish CMS for Queen's Websites
The UR Digital team and IT Services have a longstanding partnership in developing a centrally-supported content management system (CMS) for websites that we call "WebPublish." Broad adoption of this CMS ensures continuity of service and a unified and branded user experience across Queen's online presence.
The latest version of this CMS, WebPublish3, offers many options for formatting web content across several tiers of service – Basic, Custom, Advanced, and Academia – to units, departments, research groups and individual faculty members at no cost.
If you are you unsure of how to get started on a new website project or are looking to improve an existing WebPublish site, the Digital Strategy team can help.
Digital Asset Management
University Relations adopted a digital asset management (DAM) solution that is now available through IT Services as an enterprise-wide tool for marketing and communication teams across campus to store, tag, manage, and share digital assets all in one place.
Using this tool, University Relations shares a collection of Queen's photography called "Queen's Image Bank." Employees (faculty, staff and student-staff) can login with their NetID and search through a variety of campus images to use in Queen's marketing materials.
Website Governance
The Queen's Website Governance Committee is co-chaired by members from the UR Digital Strategy team and the ITS Service Development group and its members represent all areas of the university that manage public-facing websites.
The Committee aims to:
- encourage a unified, consistent approach and compliance with policies and best practices for publishing online
- clarify and processes, roles, and responsibilities in all aspects of Queen’s digital presence
- facilitate and encourage greater collaboration between portfolios on digital projects
- align user experience across Queen’s websites and strengthen Queen’s brand online
Digital Content Optimization
There is a lot to think about when trying to create great web content: how to use semantic html, how to write and format text for reading online, how to ensure accessibility, how to optimize images, how to structure URLs, how to managing links and redirects, and how to customize your metadata.
The Digital Strategy team can help you better understand these concepts so you can optimize your WebPublish for better search engine results and improve your site's user experience (UX) overall.
Digital Workforce Training
The Digital Strategy team is developing a series of workshops for staff and faculty who are new to or want to enhance their digital communication skills. Workshops will be geared to faculty and support staff who are publishing information on websites built on Queen’s WebPublish content management system.
An initial set of workshops will be offered through the HR Learning Catalogue in 2023 on topics such as semantic HTML for beginners, an introduction to writing for the web, and creating accessible web content.
For more information or to be notified when registration opens, contact URdigital@queensu.ca
Analytics and Insights
The UR Digital Strategy team uses quantitative and qualitative methods to measure and analyze Queen’s main digital properties, such as websites, social media profiles, newsletters, and campaigns.
We leverage our insights to inform decision making in marketing, communication, design, user experience, and content development.
Digital Enablement Services and Clinic
The Digital Strategy team enables faculty, department, and staff members to become digital communication savvy through digital clinics and cross-organization collaboration opportunities.
