Interact Communications: What is Interact and How Will it Help the College Web Redesign and Rebranding Initiative?

Mark Mastej from Interact leads a focus group with, left to right,
Jeff Davis, Mary Browning, Joel White, Cyrel Gable, & Lin Olson.

Interact Communications provides communication services that are specifically designed with two-year colleges in mind.

LBCC hired Interact to help redesign the college website and college brand around our audience needs, including unique navigation, graphics and content. The goal is to help the college to get our message out to the community, and shape our overall image. (read more about Interact: www.interactcom.com/)

This week, Interact Communications is conducting the last round of focus groups to help with the work of rebranding, including college messaging, taglines, slogans and generally how we communicate with our students and community members.

The four groups include: local high school students; current students; a combined group of faculty, staff and management; and a combined group of business leaders, community members, foundation friends and college alumni.

Interact first visited LBCC in August to conduct focus groups involving more than 120 individuals including recent high school graduates, current LBCC students, college employees, LBCC alumni, and local businesses.

A second phone and online survey was conducted in September to measure public awareness and opinion of the college, including our current image. This data will be used to help the college select messaging that leads to greater understanding of the college.

Feedback from the focus groups will be used by Interact to set recommendations for a navigational structure for the new college home page, as well as a general list of college descriptors, taglines, slogans and general web communications.

The new website is scheduled to be launched after the end of the 2012-2013 school year. As the project develops, it will be shared with the college community for further feedback prior to launch.

If you would like to learn more about Interact and the college web and branding redesign project, contact Dale Stowell in College Advancement, 541-917-4

Website Messaging Research Enters Second Round

A second round of public opinion research begins this week with a phone and on-line survey conducted by Interact Communications to help determine what messages to convey on the soon-to-be redesigned LBCC website and other college communication tools from print through social media.

A link to the online version of the survey will be posted on the college’s web site this week.

Interact visited LBCC in August to conduct focus groups involving more than 120 individuals including recent high school graduates, current LBCC students, college employees, LBCC alumni, and local businesses.

Feedback from those groups resulted in a preliminary set of recommendations for a navigational structure for the new college home page, as well as a general list of college descriptors that will be further refined during the second survey.

The second survey also will be used to measure levels of community awareness of LBCC, which will help determine our current public image and indicate how important the public currently considers LBCC to be to the community.

“The results from the first round are fascinating,” said Dale Stowell, executive director of Institutional Advancement. “For example, there is an extensive list of current links that each audience identified as being irrelevant to them. They said they would never look at them. Yet we currently bombard everyone with everything we’ve got. We cover our bases, but we make it hard for people to find what’s most important to them.”

The second survey will further clarify the findings of the first, and help the college select messaging that leads to greater understanding of the college. It also will help LBCC organize and label items on the web site so audiences have an easier time finding information relevant to them.

Researchers were surprised during the first round at the difficulty that all audiences had in identifying specific things that they liked about LBCC, even though they generally had good feelings about the college, Dale said.

“Everybody likes LBCC, but no one can say why,” he added. “It’s not a bad position to be in, but we need to address that if we’re going to move ahead where we can gain the community support we need to better serve our communities.”

The new website is schedule to be launched after the end of the school year. As the project develops, it will be shared broadly for further feedback prior to launch.