Our alumni chapter here in town, MizzouNYC (the New York home of alums from the University of Missouri), has been growing a great deal over the last few years. We’re always looking for new ways to help people new to town and to advertise the great events that we host in the city.
There had been a brochure a while back for MU students that came to the city over the summer for internships, but it was out of date and difficult to print. So with the help of our board, I revised the brochure and posted it for anyone new to the city of New York.
We’d also been bouncing around the idea of yearbook, something that showed people the variety of activities we host in town, from watch parties to picnics to nights at the museum. So I took stories from our quarterly e-newsletter and put them in a print document that we could distribute and post on the site.
I’ve been working on the website for over a year now, and I’m proud of the robust site it’s become. When I started working on it, you couldn’t find it by searching on any of the standard search engines. After a year of properly tagging headers; adding photos, news and events frequently; streamlining its organization; and repeatedly pointing people to our site via social media and eblasts, it now comes up as the first search result for a variety of keywords related to our chapter. It’s proof that content and organization are the key components of any website, and that adding content frequently — and properly — is the best way to improve your search results.
A small bonus? I heard recently from a communications director of our alumni chapter in Dallas that our website is the envy of other alumni chapters across the country. While I know I didn’t design the site, I take pride in the fact that the work I’ve contributed to it is key to its success.