Web Marketing and Communications Officer

Job Purpose

This postholder will manage online marketing and communications activities for a number of Schools within the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. Combining technical know-how with an understanding of the content required for the School and College’s multiple audiences, the postholder will ensure the websites they are responsible for are a quality, relevant and up-to-date communication channel. In addition to a portfolio of academic Schools, the postholder will be responsible for implementing elements of the College Communications Strategy and will report to the Deputy Communications Manager.

Person Specification

This role takes responsibility for the news, events, research communications and public engagement elements of the College website, and manages the College intranet. This includes:
• Developing a strategy for ensuring the research, events and news on College and School websites are up-to-date, relevant, and represent the strength of research in the College.
• Proactively managing the appearance and content of all relevant content on the College websites and acting in advisory and guiding capacity for School-based web editors.
• Attending College research-related events (such as Inaugural lectures and Research conferences) to capture written and visual content for use on digital platforms.
• Undertake and / or commissioning copywriting on College research areas for publication on the website. This will include ensuring the College’s key research themes and facilities are highlighted and presented in an attractive and accessible way to its various stakeholders and seeking out stories to represent on relevant websites.
You will also provide advice as to how copy may be adapted for printed materials.
• Meeting academic staff in the College to understand their research and demonstrating the importance of portraying the detail, impact and relevance of their work online and providing specialist advice in this area.
• Making presentations at relevant fora to maintain the profile of web channels and to share best practice and update on the latest developments.

Take responsibility for the appearance, content and relevance of the websites of an agreed portfolio of Schools. This will include:

• Proactively managing the School’s websites and advising local School editors
• Ensuring the school home-pages are visually attractive, relevant and up-to-date with clear links to relevant sections of the website.
• Proactively seeking out news within the Schools, producing content and getting sign-off from relevant academic colleagues. This may involve establishing new processes and relationships with key staff to ensure there are routes through which content can be accessed and generated.
• Working in partnership with the Head of School and key academics to ensure the news section of websites is kept relevant and visually attractive
• Ensuring that rich media content is uploaded regularly to the School websites by working alongside academics in the School.
• Undertaking regular checks to ensure basic information and time-sensitive content is kept updated and accurate.
• Advising colleagues in schools on technical aspects of website management and recommending improvements and training requirements where appropriate.
• Keeping colleagues update to date on the latest trends and developments in relation to the website and communicating these to senior managers and local editors in Schools verbally and through written reports.
• Creating new websites as and when required.

Take responsibility for the College and School’s contribution to central research and communications web-pages and also to ensure the College is appropriately represented on external websites. This will include:

• Sourcing content from School-specific contributors and suggesting articles and news stories to the Deputy Communications Manager for use on College, University and External channels.
• Support the Deputy Communications Manager in developing the College Newsletter on a bi- monthly basis by proactively seeking out stories within the school, copywriting content and capturing digital content.

Provide advice, guidance and training to the local editors in Schools. This will include:

• Liaising with central web colleagues to organise training on the Content Management System
• Managing College-based web training in specific areas.
• Devising procedures to ensure large-scale updates to content in across the College to ensure consistency and coherence throughout the website. This will involve bringing together colleagues from across the College and acting as a key point of contact to manage such
processes.
• Co-chair a College web editors forum to share best practice and disseminate updates to the College web community. This will be key to maintaining a well-informed, motivated and enthusiastic group of web editors and ensuring the College’s web presence continues to be dynamic and evolving.

Produce rich-media content for the College and School pages. This will include:

• Proactively seek academic colleagues and students to develop digital content in support of strategically important areas in the College (such as specific recruitment or research areas)
• Working with the Digital Marketing Officer to film and edit basic ‘talking head’ videos of academics and students and other standard-types of video footage.
• Project-manage larger-scale digital productions and commission the support of colleagues in Creative Media to showcase premier areas of the College or to cover specific events.

Respond to ad-hoc requests for content to be updated on College and School websites. This will include:

• Developing processes whereby incoming requests for assistance on the content management system can be effectively managed
• Managing expectations on requests where there is a heavy load.
• Delegating where appropriate to editors in the Schools
• Balancing work on incoming requests with pre-planned activity.-

Work with colleagues in Marketing and Communications to ensure consistency and best practice is shared. This will include:

• Putting forward suggestions as to how the overall web community and practice may be improved.
• Piloting complex web strategies and initiating College adaptations to centrally-produced guidelines and processes.
• Responding to central web initiatives and ensuring any central changes are reflected on School-pages.

Measure and monitor website analytics in order to facilitate consistent improvement. This will include:

• Reporting on a monthly basis to the Deputy Communications Officer on general web analytics, in like-for-like time periods.
• Use analysis to produce suggestions for improvements and adaptation of strategy.
• Measuring specific online campaigns which may be related to student recruitment, research, events or reputational and determine success and return on investment.
• Devising strategies to act on campaign metrics