Shiro Hatori:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to today’s Higher Ed Demand Gen Video Podcast! Hosted by Concept3D. A little bit about Concept3D. We have served the online education community for over a decade with our award-winning interactive maps and virtual tours. Improve your campus communications, engagement, and recruitment with our powerful visual communication solutions. My name’s Shiro and I will be your host today. I’m a demand gen marketer at Concept3D. And I’m speaking from my home in Silverthorn, Colorado, which is a little mountain town an hour west of Denver. Today. I am joined by Ashley Golledge. She is the director of marketing and communications at the University of the Pacific, specifically the McGeorge School of Law. She’s an experienced writer and editor with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. Ashley, thanks for joining us today.
Ashley Golledge
Thanks for having me, Shiro, I’m very excited to be a part of the podcast. As Shiro mentioned, I, my name is Ashley Golledge and I’m the Director of Marketing and Communications for McGeorge School of Law. I’m located here in Sacramento, California. So I am in the capital of California which is perfectly located for our school because we have a, a large emphasis in government law.
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. Do you wanna start off with a quick fun fact?
Ashley Golledge
I’d love to, so my fun fact is that I have been a vegetarian for over 20 years. I that’s, I became a vegetarian at a very young age and it stuck.
Shiro Hatori:
I remember this from our conversation now. I was like, how did you make that decision? So young? Yeah,
Ashley Golledge
Yeah, actually, it’s an interesting story, but I had a substitute teacher who basically who showed us a video of, of how they slaughter animals. And I was very young and impressionable at the time. And so I kind of just made a, a, a decision to make an ethical stance on it. And I have not eaten meat since, and, you know, especially living in a, a wonderful state like California, there’s a lot of wonderful options for vegetarians and vegans and all kinds of dietary restrictions.
Shiro Hatori:
Right. It makes it easier right for you. Great. Well, do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself, you know, your journey and your career, as well as University of the Pacific and specifically the McGeorge School of Law?
Ashley Golledge
I would love to so I guess I can start off a little bit before I got to here at McGeorge School of Law. So I grew up in Kansas. I got my, my bachelor’s degree from the university of Kansas, and then I also got my master’s degree from there as well in digital content strategy. After finishing up my undergrad degree, I was working full-time at the law school, the university of Kansas school of law while going grad school full time. So I kind of got into the niche field of doing higher ed marketing for a law school and I learned a lot of the, the really important institutional and niche knowledge you need to know to be able to be successful as a communicator for the law school community. And I worked as the communications specialist at KU law for three years. Then I had a brief stint where I was the sole communications professional at a law firm at K and L Gates in their Portland office.
Ashley Golledge
And then I came here to McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. I’m loving the transition from the Midwest over to the west coast. But I, I have enjoyed that a lot of, of similarities that I’ve got to do from working at, at two different institutions. So at both institutions, I had the opportunity to craft and implement marketing strategy. I am able to develop our strategic communications plans and of our key messaging. I write magazine articles, I write blog posts and news releases. I help with our on campus podcast, I do all of our web content and e-newsletters and email marketing as well as all of our printed marketing materials. So brochures and pamphlets and flyer and postcards and anything that you could dream of. I have my hands on it at some point, and then a big chunk of my job is social media.
Ashley Golledge
So I oversee our LinkedIn, our Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts. And so I, when I was at KU, I was kind of like the second highest ranking part in our department. And now at MC George, I am the director of my department and I lead a team. I have an assistant director, a graphic designer, and I have two students who work for my department. So, and I, you know, I only started in my role in July. So I’m about eight months in, I believe. So my, my current role, and I’ve really enjoyed hitting the ground running and getting to, to do the strategic planning around a lot of different things.
Shiro Hatori:
You mentioned social media and like the multiple channel channels you’re managing. Is there one specifically that works best for you? I know that you’re with the school of law. So things might be a little different than like the central marketing team. How is that going for you?
Ashley Golledge
Yeah, so, so we the University of the Pacific has their own main university accounts that is primarily for our undergraduate students. So they, they kind of have a different audience. So they’re, we also have, so most of our graduate programs are in Sacramento. So about 45 minutes away from Stockton for those people who might be listening and are not as year with the, this, the towns in California. So undergrad is like a 45 minute drive away from us. They’re all in one central location. And then over in Sacramento, we have health sciences and we have education and we have law. So we have a beautiful 13 acre campus. And so our social media, our marketing, our news releases are all different from the University of the Pacific that’s things that we do in house to, to really promote what our, our faculty are up to, what our students are up to, what our alumni are up to. And that’s kind of some skills that I have developed throughout, you know, learning this niche. I don’t have a law degree. I do not intend to go to law school at any point, but I love to tell the stories of what made people interested in law school and what makes them want to join the legal profession. How, how do they wanna to help fix the problems that they see in the criminal justice system?
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. And in your social channels, where, where do you get the most engagement and activity with your audience specifically?
Ashley Golledge
Linkedin is our most popular. We, I think we have like 12,000 ish followers on LinkedIn. Nice. So it, it makes sense, you know, because we’re in higher ed a lot of those followers are students in our alumni. We have a about 14,000 alumni all over the world in every state in the us. And I think people use it primarily for, you know, like professional networking. So if our school gets a good ranking, then it’s very likely that our alumni are, you know, proud of that ranking and, you know, they’re Alma mater and they’re willing to share it. We also have like smaller LinkedIn groups where we, you know, share news with our alumni. Our students are very engaged and especially our current students, like when they’re looking for a summer position or they’re looking for their first job after taking the bar exam they’re very involved on LinkedIn, so that that’s where our primary audience tends to be.
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. I was gonna bet my money on LinkedIn, so I’m glad you said it. That’s great. Cool. Well, let’s jump into some of the questions we talked about last time. I know you’re really passionate about accessibility. I know some of the things we talked about was like making your website accessible and making all the communication as accessible as possible. Do you want to go into a little more detail about the, that?
Ashley Golledge
Yeah, so I, in all of the professional work that I do, I always strive to make everything as accessible as possible. It’s really important to me that all of the content that we produce is as accessible as it can possibly be. So if somebody is visually impaired we add alt texts to all of the images. It’s a general description of what is being displayed in that piece of artwork or that graphic, so that someone who’s visually impaired can understand that without having to physically see the, the image or the video. And we, we do close captioning for all of our videos, so on our YouTube channel that is a change that I implemented when I started in my role is that it takes its extra work to take the time, to sit down and make sure that the captioning is one even provided for these videos.
And two it’s correct. So someone who might be hard of hearing can, if they are intuitively just listening and able to access this content and the same way we have the captioning, then they’re able to to act to. In an effort to be as inclusive as possible. Everyone can access our content similarly. So every video that we produce on YouTube we’re getting into Instagram reels as well. So it’s been really important to me. So even if we’re just sharing on our stories, like on Instagram, and we have a video, we, we always add close captioning.
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. And so with YouTube, you never use like the auto close caption feature. Right. You write up the script underneath. Yeah. And
Ashley Golledge
Something we do in premier pro.
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. Very cool.
Ashley Golledge
So we, we burn the captions onto the actual video file, and then we upload it to YouTube. So we don’t use the auto captions cause they’re not always accurate.
Shiro Hatori:
Exactly. Yeah. I was saying that you’re trying to be as accurate possible. So I figured you, you don’t want to use that option, correct?
Ashley Golledge
Yeah. So that, that’s
Shiro Hatori:
Something that we always,
Ashley Golledge
We do manually in premier. So it is not just me. I’m not the only one who uploads the videos, but right. I remember my team is equally committed to accessibility. So that’s something that we do in all of the video content that we produce.
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. What about other forms of content, your, your website how are you making that more accessible as well?
Ashley Golledge
So our website actually went through a redesign about a year and a half ago. And so one of the, the key things that our university in information technology team really put at the forefront of our design processes was accessibility. So we can’t even, it is not possible to upload an image and not add alt text. We, we get an error message. So it, it it’s a requirement to if we ever add a picture. So the, you know, as I mentioned, the alt text, it describes what’s in the image. So every single page of our website, every image and every video has alternative text, it has close captioning. So all of our content especially our website, you know, the it’s primary function is to help recruit perspective student and probably secondarily to, you know, recruit some perspective faculty who might be at other institutions and they’re interested in working here or even staff. They’re, I’m sure that people do their research before they, you know, switch to a different job, but if it’s a recruitment tool and we’re not making our content as accessible as possibly can be, we could be excluding potential students or faculty. And that’s not something we wanna do. So every, every single page on our website is as inclusive as we possib as it possibly can be.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. Yep. And just so everyone knows that’s accessibility is also something we really try to stay true with, with our platform as well, both our interactive map and tours. So let’s shift gears a little bit. I know we also talked about, you know, getting your audience engaged now that the world has obviously changed and I won’t go into details there, but ever since 2020, the world has changed. Right. And we talked about some ways that you’re keeping your audience engaged in 2022, specifically to alumni and current students for attending events and keeping interest in the community, both in person and online. Do you want to talk about some of the methods that you’re using to do that?
Ashley Golledge
Yeah. So, you know, we, as you mentioned, we’re kind of living in an interesting time where we kind of have a mix of in person and virtual events. You know, there was a good two years where we weren’t able to have in person events, everything shifted to virtual, but you know, with, as, as things have progressed we were able to have more in person events. We have an, so our director of alumni relations and events, she works directly next door to me. So we collaborate on a lot of our, our different event planning. So I, you know, I do the marketing for the events and I help get the word out to our alumni. So we, we kind of tag team some of our, our efforts to get alumni involved, but I think that having a good mix of virtual events and in-person events is really key for us engaging our target audience.
Ashley Golledge
Because I mean, physically not all of them are in California, you know, they’re in every state in the US and then lots of different countries all over the world. So by having things virtually we’re able to engage people from all over the world and it’s not necessarily only our alumni. So yesterday actually we had an event for our capital center for law and policy. So we, we held it in person. It was on our, our beautiful campus. And then we also live streamed it and we had a couple hundred people watching it, you know, as it happened from their homes.
Shiro Hatori:
Wow. Couple hundred on the screen. Wow. Okay.
Ashley Golledge
So, you know, we, we did a lot of we do email marketing, we do a lot of social media marketing, and then we have a, a separate platform called McGeorge Connect, which is kind of like our own social media platform that’s specific to alumni. So you have to be an alumni to engage with with it, but we, you know, there’s job postings. Professors are always in there, you know, mentioning, you know, if they publish a new book or a new article if we, you know, if there’s just jobs in the legal field and these alumni want us to hire other McGeorge or, you know, like they want other McGeorge graduates to be applying for these jobs, it’s just a, a singular platform for everyone to connect on.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s awesome. Is there, is there any like specific type of event, both in person and, or online that’s, you’ve been testing or working on that’s been working well for, for your school?
Ashley Golledge
Yeah, I think kind of just like the event that I just mentioned, I think that kind of have a hybrid events is really important for our diff like for our niche audience. So for the people who are able to be there in person right. That’s wonderful. So if they’re here in Sacramento, if they’re even just nearby, they have that option, but maybe if they wanna, you know, watch tune in to a lecture or do networking from the, the comfort of their own home, whether that’s in California or beyond. I think that it’s nice to have the option. And luckily we have a very supportive, you know, IT team who’s able to help make that happen so we can live stream our events on, we do it through our YouTube platform. So we make sure that the links are very accessible to everyone who registers for the free events. And right, we we’ve had a really good turnout so far, and we’re happy to keep that even, you know, even when eventually the pandemic reaches a, a close, I think that’s gonna be something that we, we have learned we’ve saw that it works and that we’re gonna keep implementing that to keep our entire alumni base engaged with us
Shiro Hatori:
Are the virtual attendees also able to engage pretty seamlessly with the event that’s going on in person as well?
Ashley Golledge
Yeah, so it, on the, so when we live livestream on YouTube, they’re able to comment in real time, we have someone monitoring the comment section. So if they have questions so, you know, in person, you can walk up to the microphone and ask a question, or if you’re online, you can ask a question and then the person monitoring can make sure your, that your question gets asked so that they haven’t able an ability to participate as well.
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. Yeah. I’ve just seen like those both hybrid of a where it feels like, you know, the virtual audience just like is, is kind of in the background, but it looks like you’re able to solve that problem with having a dedicated person and looking at all the comments. That’s great. I know, you know, and as another aspect of keeping your audience engaged, we talked a little bit about direct mail campaigns. What’s going on there? Is it still alive or are people still doing it?
Ashley Golledge
Maybe, maybe the, the law school space is a little different from some other higher ed spaces. Right. but so I think that I’ve seen a resurgence of is QR codes. So a QR code is basically you it’s generated online and it’s just like a little square space with different pixels that you scan it with a smartphone, and then it will take you directly to a webpage of your choosing. So we’ve been using those on a lot of postcards and a lot of brochures especially for various event registrations. So we recently did one for prospective students for an open house. So we put the QR code on the back and we asked them to scan it to register. And we saw an increase in the number of people who registered for that open house, because we’re not making them type in each individual letter of, you know, maybe a lengthy URL or even like a shortened link. All they have to do is open the camera on their phone and they can register right away.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s awesome. That’s like using, you know, something, an outcome of the pandemic and using it to your advantage. It’s pretty witty. It’s the first time I’ve heard it, which is why I was so excited. Dunno.
Ashley Golledge
I don’t know if I would’ve invested in QR codes, you know, prior to the pandemic cause
Shiro Hatori:
Right.
Ashley Golledge
It, it seems to be something that’s taking a resurgence.
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. That’s really cool. I’d love to think of what is to, to use QR codes in our marketing, cause I think it’s it’s they made a comeback, they made a full comeback and so, you know, how could I use them? Very cool. Okay. Switch, switching gears again a little bit. So you’ve, you’ve really been specific and unique to working for a school law. How is it really different from the central campus or other higher ed marketing communication jobs? You know, what are some of the unique points about it?
Ashley Golledge
Sure. so we have a central university, they have their own marketing and communications team, so they kind of set a lot of like the brand standards and guidelines. So someone like the recurring design elements that will show up like the specific like typography that we use, we have a style guide. So we, we adhere to the university standards. But we also, we are a kind of a dedicated teams just to tell the stories about our specific community. So our alumni, our students, our faculty so we can kind of get a little bit more into the weeds about the specific areas of law that they practice or the specific clerkships that they’re doing, the, the books that they’re publishing, the research that they’re doing. So someone who might not have experienced understanding some legalese or legal jargon that’s something that I’ve been able to pick up.
Ashley Golledge
So a good example of that is moot court and mock trial. So that is essentially like practice court. So it, so we send our students to competitions all over the country, so it all kind of falls under the realm of trial advocacy. So we’re training them to be trial lawyers okay. From mock trial specifically. And so they go all over the country and they compete in mock trial competitions. And then they can win awards. We even have like an on campus courtroom where they get to practice these skills. So when they graduate that they’re ready to, you know, go into trial day one if they want to. So I think that that’s something a little bit, so I don’t know if competitions are, you know, like as big of a selling point, you know for undergrad universities. So like just kind of understanding like the things that happen cyclically like, right. This does happen for, for undergrad universities is like every, like I know to expect what time for US news and world report rankings to come out. I also, like, I, I have learned the specific like magazines that like are widely like circulated among perspective students, the specific platforms, the places that they’re looking to learn more about law schools
Shiro Hatori:
Got it. So you can really, you have an opportunity to really be like more hyper targeted and specific with the things you’re learning from your, your education base on learning more about law school of law in the students and alumni as well. Yeah.
Ashley Golledge
And I do think I also kind of have the additional challenge of understand, so I don’t have a law degree, but a lot of times I talk to our faculty, you know, kind of about like their, like if they publish constantly there, there’s always a professor publishing a new book or a book chapter or a law review article. So I will sit down and talk to them about their research and what they’ve been learning. And so I think it’s a really important skill to have is to be able to, you know, sit down with them and like comprehend what their research is about and then summarize it. So to not take away from like so to not take away from the meaning of their research, but to also make it so that the general public can understand what they’re talking about
Shiro Hatori:
That makes sense, yeah. So instead of just learning about higher ed marketing communications, you’re also learning to become an unofficial law associate unofficially. I said, got it. That’s cool. Do you think you’ll ever make a switch to a central team or do you really like being a part of this smaller niche?
Ashley Golledge
I like being a part of this smaller niche. I am relatively young and new in my career, but I think that, that I have really found my passion. I think this is where I want to, to spend the rest of my career developing and learning and growing. I love working at a law school and I, I hope they’ll have me for a very long time.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. Thank you. Just one last question. Do you have any advice for those just entering the marketing communications field in higher ed? It could be for central and general or very specific with a niche like a school of law, like you.
Ashley Golledge
I think that while you’re in college, it’s really important to do internships, get hands on experience. So when I was in college, I worked at a newspaper in my hometown which, so my, my hometown is also a college town. Got it. So I, I was able to work on the copy desk of a, of a large newspaper. I was able to study abroad in London, England at a digital branding agency. I was able to work at our on campus TV station. I was the executive director for a couple different shows on our, our student run TV station. And then I also worked at our student newspaper. So I just kind of got a wide range of experience working in different areas of journalism, but I was able to put all of those on my resume. As you know, I’ve already done broadcast, I’ve done copy editing. You know, I’ve, I’ve worked with reporters, I’ve taken pictures professionally for a newspaper. I have this relevant hands on experience and I’m, you know, ready to hit the ground running. And so I actually got my first job in higher ed, three months AF or three weeks. Sorry, sorry. I actually got my, my first job in higher ed three weeks after I graduated from college. So I, I had my college graduation ceremony and then a few, a few short weeks later, I started working at KU law. That was my first full-time job.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. That’s super quick. I must have been the shortest summer.
Ashley Golledge
Yeah. It, it very much worked out for me that they had a job opening at that time. And then, you know, while I was working in a, at a institution of higher education, I was able to get my master’s degree at a discounted rate, which was really wonderful. It was, I always planned to get my master’s degree. I wasn’t necessarily planning to do it, you know, back to back.
Shiro Hatori:
Got It.
Ashley Golledge
I was glad that I did. And I was,
Shiro Hatori:
You did that, those in tandem, you did those two in, you did your masters. So
Ashley Golledge
I worked full time and I did my master’s full time at the same, like concurrently. I was also planning a wedding for about a year of that. So I really didn’t sleep for about a year there.
Shiro Hatori:
Oh my goodness. Well, I hope you get a little more rest now. That’s
Ashley Golledge
Crazy now, you know, I just have the one full-time job. Nice. Calm down a little bit.
Shiro Hatori:
That’s amazing. Well, you know, thank you so much for joining us today and thank you for all your insight, an amazing conversation. One last question, where can our listeners connect with you? Linkedin website, whatever you wanna share here.
Ashley Golledge
Yeah. so my email is agolledge@pacific.edu. So that is A G O L L E D G dot com. And you can also find me on linkedin if you look up Ashley Golledge.
Shiro Hatori:
Amazing. Thank you again for joining us today.
Ashley Golledge
Thank you for having me. Thank you. Have a great rest of your day.