Accessibility, or a11y for short, is all about making sure your website is a welcoming and inclusive space for everyone, regardless of their abilities. At its core, accessible web design ensures that people with disabilities, such as visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor impairments, can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with your website without any hiccups. …
A thoughtful, effective website can elevate your school district’s digital presence and build trust with your community. When redesigning your website, you may be tempted to have your new website provider migrate your content over 1:1—but website migration is a fantastic time to re-evaluate your website content, design and navigation to ensure it’s an enticing, …
Continue reading “Revamp Your School Website: Design, Content, and Accessibility“
“My favorite part of a project? Watching a brand come to life,” said Kelly May, CEL Design Director. “After all the hard work of research, brainstorming and focus groups, watching the brand develop and grow is incredibly rewarding.” Whether it’s a rough sketch on a napkin or refreshing an existing brand in need of expansion, …
Accessibility is about making sure that everyone can participate and contribute, regardless of their abilities. It’s about creating an inclusive world where everyone can access information, services, and opportunities. At CEL Marketing PR Design, we are committed to accessibility. We believe that everyone, regardless of their abilities, should be able to access our products, services, …
Continue reading "Why Alt Text is Not Optional: SEO and Accessibility"
Today is a pretty important day at CEL. It’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day and we pledge to continue to help provide web accessibility for all! What? You have never heard of Global Accessibility Awareness Day? That’s OK, because today is the day to learn about this awareness campaign. Now, if you’ve never thought about website …
Thank you for attending our Gold Mine session on Accessibility at the 2018 NSPRA Conference. Sorting out the website ADA compliance guidelines and requirements can be a daunting task for even the most seasoned school district communicators, but there are navigational steps to the accessibility puzzle. Whether or not your district has received a complaint, …
Continue reading "Making Valuable School District Landing Pages"
At CEL Marketing PR Design, we know that effective communication is at the heart of every successful school. Whether managing the school website, creating a newsletter, or interacting with your community on social media, the right tools can make all the difference. These five Chrome extensions are tools and resources that we love for enhancing …
Continue reading “5 Chrome Extensions We Love for School Communicators”
Continue reading "MMSD’s 5 to Thrive Mental Health Marketing"
Continue reading "8 Social Media Templates to Create Before School Starts"
For school districts, having clear and accessible board policies ensures your community can easily access information that governs the district. Too frequently, districts rely on Google Docs or PDF for publishing policies but neither are found when using the search feature on your site. Further, providing policies solely in PDF format is not compliant with …
Continue reading “Making Your School Board Policies Accessible”
Continue reading "Mobile-First vs. Responsive Website Design"
Is your school website enticing and useful, or more like navigating a maze blindfolded? Modernizing your website and staff intranet isn’t just about looking flashy; it’s about making life easier for families and staff. We asked Chelsea Janke, Vice President of Integrated Marketing at CEL, to provide her top six tips for an effective school …
Continue reading “6 Secrets to an Effective School Website with Chelsea Janke“
Customer service is more than being polite and helpful; it’s about elevating the customer experience. While some individuals naturally excel in this area, others can cultivate these qualities with the right guidance and support. Here are four key traits to look for and nurture in your customer service team: The Greeter: A warm and …
Continue reading “4 Traits of Exceptional Customer Service Employees”
Building a strong and trusting relationship between schools and parents is crucial for the development of students. School principals can establish this bond through effective communication. These seven tips will ensure your communications are practical and valuable for your school community. Communication is the cornerstone of any successful partnership. To ensure efficient and streamlined communication: …
Continue reading “7 Tips for Effective School-Parent Communication”
Whenever school breaks roll around, we promise ourselves that we’re going to chip away at our to-do list. Sometimes, it’s hard to know where to start. We’ve got your back with 12 quick wins you can accomplish over school breaks. Review and Update Website Content Your school website is more than a virtual space; it’s …
As we bid farewell to another remarkable year, we’re revisiting the wealth of insights, discoveries, and stories that graced our digital pages throughout 2023. We strive to make our blog a hub of knowledge on topics that matter to our community. In this 2023 year in review, we’re not only highlighting the top-performing blogs that …
Continue reading “Insights from 2023: A Recap of Our Top Blogs and Favorites”
The enrollment landscape isn’t what it was five years ago. The competition for enrollment marketing has expanded far beyond the traditional boundaries of local charter schools, private schools, or neighboring public schools. Schools now find themselves in a digital age where they not only compete with their geographical neighbors but also contend with online schools …
Continue reading “Help! My Superintendent Wants Ideas to Market Our Schools”
Balancing Nostalig and Innovation Are you familiar with pull-to-refresh on your mobile device? What about the meaning of “swipe right?” In the early days of digital design, developers often prioritized skeuomorphic design to ensure users could interact with their programming. But as comfort and experience with technology increases, many companies are moving away from skeuomorphic …
Creating accessible content is at your fingertips with alt text! With alt text, you’re creating more inclusive content and significantly impacting search engine rankings, increasing your website’s accessibility and content visibility. “We’re sculpting a digital realm that embraces everyone, fuels inclusivity, and propels us toward an interconnected future,” says Andrew A. Hagen, integrated communications coordinator …
Continue reading "Stafford Municipal School District Branding Journey"
Running from September 15 to October 15, Hispanic Heritage Month honors the rich history, traditions, and contributions of Hispanic and Latino communities in the United States. It provides an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the diverse cultures, languages, and achievements of individuals with Hispanic heritage. The observance originated as a week-long celebration in 1968 and …
Continue reading “Embracing Hispanic Heritage: Celebrating Diversity and Engagement in Schools”
Welcome to the world of Canva, where creativity and efficiency collide to transform the way you communicate in education. Make the most of your Canva for Education account to enhance visual communication, foster creativity, and streamline administrative processes. Canva is like a Swiss Army Knife, offering a wide array of features and templates to cater …
Continue reading "CEL-ebrating our 2023 NSPRA Award Winners!"
Summer break provides a perfect opportunity for school communicators to reflect and refresh their file management habits. An organized file management system saves time, reduces stress, and improves productivity. Master Your File Management Habits To improve your file management, develop good habits during the summer break. Consistency is key to staying organized and stress-free throughout …
Continue reading “Summer Refresh: Organizing Your Digital World”
Continue reading "Fox Valley Virtual: Branding to Connect, Empower and Grow"
Whether your summer plans include the beach, the cabin, or a staycation, don’t forget to carve out some time to enhance your website. This is an ideal time to review and refresh your content, ensure your website is accessible, showcase testimonials or reviews, tidy up old information, and perform a thorough website audit. By focusing …
Your brand is more than your logo – it’s the sum of how your internal and external audiences perceive your organization. It’s how others describe you. Brands must evolve to fit changing expectations, at the same time staying true to core values. So, as you develop, evolve, and maintain your brand, how do you ensure …
Workforce shortages. Burnout. Retention. Turnover. Hiring. Unrealistic Job Demands. You are not alone if you feel like you’ve been running on a hamster wheel for the last few years. Unprecedented levels of employee burnout emerging from the pandemic — combined with a national mental health crisis and labor shortages in most industries — are prompting many …
Continue reading “Five Employee Well-Being Strategies Your Organization Needs”
Workforce shortages. Burnout. Retention. Turnover. Hiring. Unrealistic Job Demands. If you feel like you’ve been running on a hamster wheel, you are not alone. It’s time to take a breath and think about workplace well-being. Unprecedented levels of employee burnout — combined with a national mental health crisis and labor shortages in most industries — …
Continue reading “Five Essential Employee Well-Being Strategies”
Take a minute to look at your personal inbox. What’s sitting in there that you haven’t looked at yet? A coupon, a bill or two, and undoubtedly a few spam emails about car warranties or tropical vacations. People get dozens of emails daily and must sift through them to find important messages. School-to-home communications are …
Continue reading "Salina Public Schools Enrollment Marketing"
From interactive websites to integrated campaigns that increased enrollment, our school partners are developing innovative projects that resonate with audiences. We applaud all of our school partners who received National School Public Relations Association awards in July. Learn more about their award-winning strategic communications work — and help us keep the CEL-ebration going. Enrollment Campaign …
Continue reading “CEL-ebrating Our 2022 NSPRA Award Winners”
Millennials are often known as a high-tech, high-convenience generation. When it comes to your school website, does it make the grade? Create a website experience that engages prospective families and current users. Small changes can make a big difference in the user experience, even without the budget for a total overhaul. Why Your Website Matters …
Continue reading “Millennial Parents and Your School Website”
Redesigning your website’s 404 error page (which signals broken or missing content) can be a quick win for your organization. Read on for best practices and learn how to transform your 404 page into a more useful, more beautiful (yes, really!) and more professional part of your website. Page Not Found Preparing to launch a …
Continue reading “Blog Not Found: Creating 404 Error Pages That Work”
Continue reading "San Diego County Office of Education Website"
They might not admit it at a staff meeting, but many marketers and communication teams actually love creating Canva digital designs just as much as their non-designer colleagues. After all, any design tool that allows us to create a quick-and-easy social media graphic in 10 minutes or less gets a thumbs up. What marketers and …
Continue reading "School Social Media: Best Practices vs. Trends"
Your website is the first point of entry for many families into your district. What kind of first impression do you want to make? Earlier this year, Finalsite CEO Jon Moser shared the benefits of great school website design. See why investing in a quality website this year may be the right choice for your …
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) a global pandemic. In the weeks and months that followed, school communicators and leaders have worked endlessly on COVID communications and response plans. In our conversations with leaders, we talked about a 12-24 month sustained crisis with no return to normal. We …
Continue reading “School Communications and COVID-19: A Pandemic Year in Review”
Continue reading "Branding: 3 Key Elements for Going Beyond Your Logo"
An effective school website is crucial to the success of your district. It is the first point of entry for many prospective families, faculty and staff as they search for districts. First impressions only happen once — and your website is an opportunity to make it positive and lasting. Communication with current stakeholders also depends …
Continue reading “What Makes a Great School Website in 2022?”
The final month of 2020 is drawing to an end. As you create your New Year’s resolutions, evaluate the website you want to have in 2021. And also, consider five website design practices to leave behind in 2020 and what you can be doing instead. Larger Headers Website design has shifted fully to mobile-first, and …
You’ve heard it…Zoom Fatigue…and your boss says we need to pivot and make our most successful annual event virtual! (UGH) Who isn’t holding virtual events these days? Better question…is anyone doing them well? Can you really achieve your goals? It takes planning and ingenuity, and YES, we’ve had great success with marketing virtual events during …
Keep your audience engaged and your customers happy with a few simple website maintenance tips. Here’s a 5-Point Inspection to keep your website working hard for you. How we navigate the web is evolving rapidly. So, assuring your website is mobile-friendly, optimized for search, ADA compliant and designed for the user experience (UX) will help …
If your organization receives federal funds or if you sell to federal agencies, your website needs to be ADA compliant. This includes (but is not limited to) alt tags on images and hyperlinks, closed captions for videos, and ensuring downloadable documents are accessible. Downloadable documents saved as PDFs can be made accessible by using Adobe Acrobat …
Continue reading “Are the PDFs on your website ADA Compliant?”
You may ask yourself, how can Flickr benefit a business marketing strategy? Maybe you have pictures of products, services and other portfolio work that you want to display. Whether that means you display it on a conference room TV, on a blog or in a Facebook post. Flickr allows accessibility, sharing and organization with your …
How do you maintain and sustain your brand in the marketplace? If you look at the land of the giants, there are common threads sewn into a history of consistency and clarity of message. The big brands know who they are and what they promise and they stick to it, from the visual to the …
Continue reading “5 Tips to Maintain and Sustain Your Brand”
Last week, Facebook announced posts would now have an embedding option for users. Following the example of Twitter and their own Instagram, Facebook is now allowing users to share a post containing a video, pictures or hashtags by using an embedding code. What does this mean for your online marketing strategy? This feature will give …
Continue reading “Embedding Facebook Posts Good For Businesses”
Throughout the recession, businesses of all sizes have been forced to increase their efforts to provide quality customer service to their clients. A strong and successful business may be passionate, hard-working and humble, but one key to keeping clients satisfied is accessibility. Clients want to know they will be addressed immediately or within a few …
Continue reading “Business Owners; Give Your Clients Full Access”
Social media is an incredibly convenient communication vehicle and a powerful business tool as well. One of its greatest features is its accessibility. You can Tweet, text or post from just about anywhere – at home, at the mall, in the car – as long as you’re not driving! As the Star Tribune reported today, …
Continue reading “Social Media is a Helpful Tool – But NOT Behind the Wheel!”
