I mentioned Reddit in my digital engagement update last week. Reddit is literally the worst designed, most awesome social network on the web today. Seriously, it looks like something that I designed when I was an undergrad learning HTML in a random design class back in forever-ago.

However, Reddit is special. It's made up of the best, the worst, and the oh-so-super niche...and that's what makes it wonderfully valuable for higher education marketers, communicators, admissions pros, and a whole host of other functional areas. Reddit is for listening, learning, and cultivating.

According to Wikipedia (you know you use it on a daily basis, don't be a snob), Reddit is the 5th most visited website in the United States and is 13th for the entire world. In other words, it's a dynamic phenomenon that doesn't get nearly enough attention.

Recently, Liz Gross of Campus Sonar, posted an epic thread about Reddit (over on Twitter) from a presentation by fellow 'sonarian,' Stephen App, on The Enrollment Marketer's Guide to Reddit:

Look out Twitter, I'm going to live tweet @StephenApp's #NSCEC session: The Enrollment Marketer's Guide to Reddit. Settle in. — Dr. Liz Gross (@lizgross144) July 23, 2019

Campus Sonar is 100% dedicated to social listening...and Reddit provides plenty of meaningful intelligence for higher education.

Some of the highlight's from Liz's tweet thread from Stephen's presentation include:

Stephen's entire presentation (thanks to Liz for sharing) is a masterpiece / homage to Reddit for anyone who works in higher education:

And, this is one of the reasons why I love the web (community, connection, and creativity), so I have to close this post with a shout-out to an awesome blog post by Joel Goodman of Bravery Media (that was inspired by a tweet from Stephen about Reddit).

Stephen shared, by way of Reddit, about how unhappy prospective students are with university websites:

Good morning, #highered. Prospective students are unhappy with your website, and they're sharing their biggest frustrations on Reddit right now.



A few highlights:

- Finding majors is too difficult

- They hate PDFs

- Your site has too many 404 errorshttps://t.co/STL0p31EOx — Steve App (@StephenApp) July 16, 2019

Joel's follow-up blog provides 3 simple, actionable ideas for how to improve the student experience:

Make essential content easy to find Make your website's content accessible for all users Get rid of black holes (digital journeys that lead to nowhere)

Thanks for reading...and thanks to Campus Sonar, Liz Gross, Stephen App, and Joel Goodman for providing insights that matter.

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