Q&A with Staci Stickovich, SEO expert
As campus communicators, we put a lot of work into crafting the best stories we can about the University and what happens here. It’s always disappointing to publish a great feature, only to get lukewarm engagement rates.
A key strategy for making sure your content gets in front of the right audiences is search engine optimization, or SEO. For many communicators, though—including myself—SEO seems a little nebulous.
Luckily, Notre Dame has an expert in Staci Stickovich, a marketing strategist in Strategic Content who specializes in digital strategy, paid media, and SEO. She’s an SEO all-star who consistently impresses us with her insight on how best to get University stories in front of the right people.
“Within the University’s Office of Public Affairs and Communications, I use data-driven insights to amplify Notre Dame’s mission—helping the University reach key audiences, strengthen brand visibility, and support communicators across campus with their digital and paid strategies,” she said.
Staci and I put together an informative Q&A that covers:
- what SEO is,
- how campus communicators can effectively use it,
- a checklist for using SEO in your content, and
- coming trends.
To check it out, go to ndworks.nd.edu.
And, an Editor’s Note update: Starting next month, Staci will provide monthly SEO tips in this newsletter. I’m excited for her to share her expertise with readers!
DST ended Sunday!
Daylight saving time ended yesterday, on Sunday, November 2! Because we’re in the Eastern time zone, that means if you include the time zone for any event promotion, you’ll now want to use the abbreviation EST and not EDT.
EST = Eastern Standard Time
EDT = Eastern Daylight Time
These are not interchangeable, and this is one of the most common mistakes I see—not just on campus, but everywhere else, too. Remember, if you’re not sure which to use, you have some options:
- Default to ET and avoid the question about the S/D.
- Spell out Eastern time instead.
- Ask whether the time zone is even needed. Unless your event is open to people in other time zones—e.g., an international Zoom presentation—you really don’t need it at all. Readers assume events taking place on campus will be on local time.
I hope you all enjoyed that extra hour of sleep!
Pop quiz
Which shows the correct use of affect/effect in this sentence:
When the law goes into ____ next month, it will ____ our tax rate.
Click on your answer to submit your response. If you have the correct response, you’ll be entered into a drawing for a prize!
A note about the pop quiz
Please think of these monthly quizzes as open-book! I designed these quizzes to get readers more comfortable using the University Style Guide to find the answer. You are encouraged to consult that before submitting your answer.
September pop quiz winner
Congrats to the winner of the September pop quiz: Sharon Rankert, Advisory Council Program assistant director!
Which is the correct style for this term?
multimillion-dollar grant
This is a tricky one. Multimillion-dollar is what’s known as a compound modifier, or a modifier made up of multiple parts. In this case, we have the prefix multi- applying to million, and multimillion applying to dollar, and the whole phrase describing the grant.
Finding the answer for this question in the style guide will have required a little bit of sleuthing—due to the sheer number of prefixes, it’s just not practical to include every one in the guide. The best starting point would be to look at the entry for hyphens. There, you’ll find guidance to consult our preferred dictionary, m-w.com. And if you go there and look up multimillion, you’ll find that M-W styles it as all one word, no hyphen.
Now you know multimillion is the preference. Going back to the University Style Guide’s hyphens entry, you’ll see that compound modifiers should be hyphenated before the word they apply to. So you end up with: multimillion-dollar grant.
What we’re reading
These are stories that we found to be interesting, fun, or thought-provoking. The views are not necessarily endorsed. Want to share a story you found? Feel free to send it to me.
Brains Remember Stories Differently Based on How They Were Told
Scientific American
AI is everywhere. Editors should be, too.
Poynter
AI chatbots fail at accurate news, major study reveals
Deutsche Welle
Latest style guide updates
There are no updates this month. Have a suggestion for a new or updated entry? Please feel free to send it to me at bcollin8@nd.edu!
Editor’s Note is a monthly email for anyone who communicates on the University’s behalf.
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