#108 - AI Findability: How to Structure Your College’s Website to Answer Questions (Without The FAQ Dump Page)
With Georgy Cohen
Join the newsletter
📫 Get insights and inspiration on higher ed content creation and strategy every Wednesday morning.
SHOW NOTES
If you've been feeling the pressure to overhaul your entire web presence for AI search, this episode is your permission slip to take a breath.
Georgy Cohen is a content strategist who has spent her career in and around higher ed — in-house at universities, at agencies, and as an independent consultant. She joined the show to talk about one of the most practical and overlooked problems in higher ed marketing: how to actually structure your website so it answers the questions prospective students are asking — without relying on the sprawling, ungovernable FAQ page that becomes a dumping ground the moment you create it.
Georgy brings a content strategy and information architecture lens to a conversation that usually stays at the surface level of SEO and branding. The result is a genuinely useful framework for thinking about your web content on two levels at once — what the human sees and what the bots are crawling — and why attending to both doesn't have to mean starting from scratch.
In this episode:
Why FAQ pages are well-intentioned but create more problems than they solve — and what to do instead
The difference between the "viewable web" and the "semantic web," and why higher ed is mostly only thinking about one of them
Why clear communication fundamentals will get you most of the way to AI findability — and why panicking won't
How to bridge the gap between subject matter experts (faculty, financial aid staff) and the content strategists who know how to structure information
Why higher ed's reluctance to have a point of view is hurting both their brand and their findability
The role user research should be playing — and why it's underused
Two short books Georgy recommends for anyone who wants to build a foundational understanding of content strategy and information architecture
Resources mentioned:
Everyday Information Architecture by Lisa Maria Marquis:
The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane
About Schema Markup:
Connect with Georgy:
LinkedIn: Georgy Cohen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgy/
-
(Done with AI so only about 95% accurate)
00;00;00;09 - 00;00;20;15
John Azoni
Today's episode hits on something I've been thinking a lot about lately and honestly, something I've been kind of confused about, which is how do you actually structure your website content to answer questions without just having a big fake page with a bunch of unrelated questions that nobody's actually going to comb through and read and get any value out of.
00;00;20;15 - 00;00;43;05
John Azoni
So my guest today is Georgie Cohen, a digital strategy leader with more than 20 years of experience working in and with higher ed, she led website strategy at Tufts University and Suffolk University before spending 11 years at Ojo, a digital agency serving higher education, where she founded the Content Strategy Practice and led a team of strategist as VP of Digital Strategy.
00;00;43;21 - 00;01;04;14
John Azoni
And a few things came up in this conversation that I think are going to stick with you because they stuck with me. She makes the case that the biggest mistake people are making right now with AI search optimization is that they're in panic mode. They're trying to do too much. They're feeling behind the curve and they're being told this new wave of advice, of stuff that they're supposed to be paying attention to, and they're trying to do all the things at once.
00;01;04;23 - 00;01;30;20
John Azoni
And she has a really grounding way of reframing this whole thing that I think a lot of over text marketers are going to appreciate hearing. She also gets pretty direct about how higher Ed's tendency to play it safe and be generic online is costing them the actual find ability that they're looking for. And we also talk about this need to balance what AI is looking for without losing sight of just being a normal human and writing for the humans that are visiting your website.
00;01;31;00 - 00;01;37;24
John Azoni
She has a very human forward perspective that I think will help make a lot of sense out of this really great conversation. Let's get into it.
00;01;40;25 - 00;01;45;13
Georgy Cohen
Thank you, John. I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me on.
00;01;49;20 - 00;01;50;26
John Azoni
I love it.
00;01;51;09 - 00;02;17;28
Georgy Cohen
Always, huh? Well, so something about me is that I like to give myself little quests. Like I live in Boston, right? So I love exploring the city, but I don't like to say wandering aimlessly, only to have little sort of quests. Like, I'm going to go here and have breakfast, so I'm going to go to that part of town and go to that place.
00;02;18;07 - 00;02;49;15
Georgy Cohen
So one of my quest recently, which has been sort of an ongoing series of quests, is finding mini art vending machines. So I never heard of the automat, but basically automat. And there's a website where basically they take old cigaret vending machines and fill them with art. And there's art, romance all over the country. And I'll show you one of my first art on that pieces that I ever got, which is this little ray and it's inverted on that thing but a little David Bowie woodcut thing.
00;02;50;14 - 00;03;09;06
Georgy Cohen
And that then it's like it's like wood. And then like the canvas is put on the wood. And so I've had been fortunate enough to encounter three aftermaths in my life. And whenever I travel, I always go see if there's an art event where I'm traveling. And it recently at the Boston Contemporary Art Museum, they had another mini art vending machine.
00;03;09;18 - 00;03;26;07
Georgy Cohen
And I got these two little prints that I framed them. They were crazy when I got them, and they're a dollar each. And I'm like, This is so amazing because I love art, but I dislike the quirkiness of the mini art vending machine. So if anyone knows of any mini art vending machines in the New England area, please find me.
00;03;26;07 - 00;03;45;01
Georgy Cohen
Message me. I will go on a quest and I will get some more mini art to add to my walls. But the three I've been to have been in Boston Alford, New York and Las Vegas. So it's three different locations in the country if you could possibly have.
00;03;45;18 - 00;04;01;21
John Azoni
But maybe just. Yeah.
00;04;04;11 - 00;04;11;17
Georgy Cohen
Oh, cool.
00;04;11;17 - 00;04;19;21
John Azoni
Yeah, great.
00;04;21;21 - 00;04;29;08
John Azoni
Yeah.
00;04;29;08 - 00;04;52;03
Georgy Cohen
Yeah, sure. So I went to school for journalism and I ended up working at the Boston Globe right out of college. And the big newspaper in Boston. I worked on the breaking news desk for the sort of the online version of the paper. And that was a wild, wild time. It was during the war in Afghanistan and the Patriots versus Super Bowl and lots of amazing milestones.
00;04;52;03 - 00;05;14;10
Georgy Cohen
It was really a unique time. And I kind of, you know, had a better first job, I think. But I actually went to work in higher ed because there wasn't really any room for growth at the paper. And when I been in college, I'd worked a studio job in the alumni publications office where I got to write articles for like the School of Education newsletter and things like that.
00;05;14;10 - 00;05;34;20
Georgy Cohen
And I just really liked the vibe. I wanted to write more. So I got a job at Tufts University and I was there for seven years. By the time I left. That was kind of leading the web there. It was social media like originated. So it was a wild time where it's like weird social Twitter account, what we do and no one higher up cared.
00;05;34;21 - 00;05;52;00
Georgy Cohen
Like everyone was like, well, either it's unimportant or whatever. So I just kind of did whatever I wanted. And so that kind of wild West time of like, I'm just going to do stuff and have fun. And it was really fun. But also, you know, you learn a lot. And then I, you know, as I'm going through that, like I sort of I think a writer, right?
00;05;52;00 - 00;06;11;21
Georgy Cohen
But then sort of grew into this, you know, sense of like, well, what am I writing? Why am I writing it? What's going to happen to it? Right? I'm going to write this article like, how are you going to promote it? Like, where is it going to go? Like, so, you know, the evolution to, you know, from like, I write stuff, I have a journalism background to like content strategy.
00;06;12;00 - 00;06;34;24
Georgy Cohen
Essentially working in a sort of digital context was beginning to really think about, you know, not just the creative act like that's just a creation. The writing, but how things are published, who's involved in that process, how you're publishing it on the web, how people are finding it, how you organizing it, how you're structuring it. So and I'm a deeply nerdy person, so all that really, really appealed to me.
00;06;35;03 - 00;07;03;09
Georgy Cohen
Then I, you know, had left Tufts and went out on my own for a year. And then I went back in-house, another university, and then I worked at an agency for 11 years where I sort of originated the content strategy, practice and all that. So you know how I got to where I am today. It's really just it's been this sense of like continuing to want to nerd out about this stuff and wanting to be in an opportunity to grow.
00;07;03;22 - 00;07;35;04
Georgy Cohen
And, you know, I know, like your newsletter talks like higher ed storytelling and, you know, you do a great job. I think, of really making some really important points. And, you know, it's really easy to be trite about something. They tell stories, But, you know, I think that there's so many interesting and important layers to that act. And I think that I think that, you know, my approach has always been wanting to tell stories, but think about it really robustly, like a real kind of 360 view of what does that mean?
00;07;35;04 - 00;07;55;23
Georgy Cohen
Right from the I have an idea to, you know, how it's being distributed, how it's being structured, how it's being found, how are we managing this? Like all of those kind of like that, the context around like the idea of a story. And so that's really a key aspect, I think, of of how content strategy has played out in my career.
00;07;55;23 - 00;08;13;22
Georgy Cohen
And, you know, working in higher ed. It's just been tremendously rewarding, both in-house and as like a like a vendor partner because I really believe in the mission. It really means a lot to me. And higher ed, you know, the the thing I would say like higher ed is full of stories. You throw a rock on campus, you're going to hit 12 stories like instantly.
00;08;13;22 - 00;08;35;10
Georgy Cohen
They're just all around you. But then there's this interesting challenge like, well, I can't tell them all which ones are going to, you know, are the most meaningful to what end and how do I go about doing that? And that's always been a great challenge for me to help for me to, you know, on behalf of institutions I work down to sort of help, you know, partners sort through.
00;08;35;10 - 00;09;02;27
Georgy Cohen
So it's just been continually finding challenge and trying to find better ways to empower these great stories to support the mission of this great institution of higher education.
00;09;02;27 - 00;09;03;04
John Azoni
Right?
00;09;05;12 - 00;09;28;02
Georgy Cohen
Yeah.
00;09;28;02 - 00;09;33;12
John Azoni
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
00;09;36;13 - 00;10;04;02
John Azoni
Mm hmm. Yeah. One.
00;10;04;02 - 00;10;25;22
Georgy Cohen
Yeah. And I think a lot of times, you know, when I work with schools, they're like, storytelling is important. We need more stories on our site. And whenever, like, little alarm goes off, my kind of, like, that's an amazing sentiment. But immediately I have three questions to ask about where are we finding these? Who's writing them? How do you create, you know, and that's what I love to do, is to sort of figure out how we can do that.
00;10;25;26 - 00;10;48;04
Georgy Cohen
We know like higher ed, it's a tougher challenge of staff and resources and like, But this is an important thing because I think when you have that well-structured information, you still need some context around that. So it's like, here's the financial aid process or here's the tuition, but here's a story of someone who, you know, one of the early go to college out to support that This will get them through financial aid and look at them now.
00;10;48;04 - 00;11;06;13
Georgy Cohen
Right. So or even a stat that says like hey like you know through our aid packages, like, you know, X percent, this happened like, you know, a piece of data can tell a story, too. So I think, you know, I think you make a really great point. It's like not everything has to be it's like floral, beautiful like, you know, emotional enterprise.
00;11;06;13 - 00;11;25;29
Georgy Cohen
But I think the two can work hand-in-hand because a lot of these decisions are you need clear processes and well structured information. You know, it just needs to be very, very clear and functional. But they're emotional decisions. They are emotional transactions. Should I go to the school? Do I want to pay this much money? Can I afford this or great, here's this clear information, explains it to me.
00;11;26;09 - 00;11;44;28
Georgy Cohen
And here's some context. That response, that emotional to yourself. You know, I think it all goes together.
00;11;44;28 - 00;11;45;24
John Azoni
Yeah, it's it.
00;12;04;08 - 00;12;25;07
Georgy Cohen
Yeah, it's fun. I think my answer would be less about sort of like the ins and outs of I find the ability and more about that noise piece is that, you know, there's so much panic out there and so much like, oh my God, like what are we going to do? And I think it's unfortunate. I think the last thing the higher ed marketers need is one more thing to feel behind the curve on and one more thing to feel guilty about.
00;12;25;07 - 00;12;42;21
Georgy Cohen
Is it important? Yes. Like, do we have to plan for it? Yes. But when everyone is more busy and overworked than ever, I think it can feel really like you feel pressure to like, well, I have to panic. I have to stop everything else and focus on this. I have to you know, buy this tool or buy this audit or do whatever.
00;12;42;21 - 00;13;03;07
Georgy Cohen
And what I would think is like, all right, the good news is that the fundamental principles of clear communications are going to get you a long way. They're right. They're going to get you most of the way there. And I think, like, you know, hiring has a very unfortunate history of buying reports and audits and studies and having them sit on a desk.
00;13;04;06 - 00;13;23;29
Georgy Cohen
So I think what I would say the biggest mistake is panicking and freaking out and stopping other and, you know, it's like, okay, we need to focus on this. But I think, you know, pick one area to focus on, pick select key pages on your site, you know, focus on for 5 minutes, you said whatever. It's like, you know, I'm going to focus on this important information.
00;13;24;08 - 00;13;44;08
Georgy Cohen
What can I do to make this clearer and better organized? What can I do to structure this more effectively? You know, I'm going to do some searches and see how we play out. So I think just being methodical and thoughtful and, you know, the world isn't going to end tomorrow. Like I feel for the hired marketers who, you know, are always just like, Oh, God, here's one more thing I have to do that I have to learn.
00;13;44;08 - 00;13;55;18
Georgy Cohen
And it's like, okay, take a breath. Let's just start here. Don't get boiled ocean. Just start right here and make this one thing better and then we can move on to the next thing. The next.
00;13;55;18 - 00;14;04;19
John Azoni
Thing which.
00;14;25;18 - 00;14;41;22
Georgy Cohen
Like, Oh, crap, I'm not.
00;14;41;22 - 00;15;38;29
John Azoni
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm. Right. Yeah, yeah.
00;15;40;24 - 00;15;54;20
Georgy Cohen
And prioritization. You get a thousand things, but really, these 23 are the most important. So I'm going to set aside the other 1970, whatever this book is that needs 23 first. Right. And then the other 1000 or so.
00;15;55;02 - 00;15;57;28
John Azoni
Hold on.
00;15;57;28 - 00;16;20;08
John Azoni
So few pages I had discovered you've long before and I've been following you for a while, but this is the post that you posted that that caught my attention. I'm talking about fake pages and how to structure those on your website. So what are people in Higher ed getting wrong about fake spaces? Because we've talked about that number of times on my podcast and I see it all over the internet.
00;16;20;08 - 00;16;40;07
John Azoni
It's like your website should be an answer engine. And the question that always goes through my mind as someone that's not a web developer, I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to SEO. I know enough to be dangerous, probably screw up somebody is complete SEO, but it's never really registered to me. Like, how do you do that?
00;16;40;07 - 00;16;43;00
John Azoni
How should you answer? Question So tell me about that.
00;16;43;19 - 00;17;02;07
Georgy Cohen
Yeah, I think like I think Hughes had just been this hot button topic for like, forever. Like, it's all I've I've been in this industry. There's always all sorts of handwringing about fake queues and yeah, I think that the, the intention is good. I'm going to give credit recruits like, yes, we want to, you know, provide information that addresses people's questions.
00;17;02;16 - 00;17;20;07
Georgy Cohen
Here's a really sort of logical way to present that. Right. But it has this habit of becoming a dumping ground that just simply uses usability. You know, what you put it makes you fake. It's not in a logical place. It's in kind of a catch all place. So how do I know where it lives? How do I know what's there?
00;17;20;15 - 00;17;41;28
Georgy Cohen
If it's also on another page, in another context? Now I have two instances of the same information. How does the user reliably know where to find it and according to whom? Is it a frequently asked questions? So when you're saying like, okay, but it's important, especially in this age of conversational search experiences where people are using AI tools to ask questions and expect answers, right?
00;17;42;10 - 00;18;08;00
Georgy Cohen
How do we do this? And I think, you know, there's been sort of a resurgence of like, well, I think Hughes justifies their existence because it's going to naturally match that kind of question and answer dynamic that the user has to chat bot and that's what we should establish is do that. So you know, yes and no. You know, I think that there can be a value to reflecting that dynamic, I'll call it within your content.
00;18;08;00 - 00;18;29;28
Georgy Cohen
But you know, keep in mind that, you know, right now web experience is more than ever are kind of playing on two levels. There's kind of like the human level, like you and I. I'm looking at my computer, I'm looking over here. Okay, here's a Web page. I see some stuff, ideas, information. I'm looking at it with my eyes cool, like it's communicating to me.
00;18;30;10 - 00;19;01;23
Georgy Cohen
But then, like, there's this other layer of structure of structured data that is being found by search engine, by air tools, by all these other kind of like robots that are out there looking for content. And it's like going fishing. It's like, you know, you want to snag on how can you make your information snackable and structured such that these tools can find it and it will, you know, when your son asks like, you know, what are some MBA program options in my town that are part time that I can go to after work?
00;19;01;23 - 00;19;25;27
Georgy Cohen
How are they going to find your information as relevant to that query? So when you're thinking about how to sort of build those experiences and you can think about it in terms of for a simple structural sort of frame of mind is like, you know, headers and copy making sure that you have keywords. You're using language essentially in like those header tags which are really have high semantic value for search engines to say you could phrase that's a question.
00;19;25;27 - 00;19;54;00
Georgy Cohen
You can be like, you know, what is this? What is that? And have that kind of like interrogative, epic ish type feel. But I think the most important thing is to think about the words themselves and how you're structuring them both visibly and then, you know, sort of like below the surface there and making sure that the information is, you know, in a context where, you know, it's going to have relevance to other information.
00;19;54;00 - 00;20;16;12
Georgy Cohen
We have pathways to relevant actions and other relevant pages on your site and things like that. So you're not like you get to I think, you know, your region is there. But there's three other questions being answered also in addition to mine. Yeah. And it's also kind of like maybe like a dead end. It's like, well, where does this live contextually in the flow of information, in the hierarchy of information, it just kind of sits there as like a repository.
00;20;16;26 - 00;20;41;07
Georgy Cohen
So I think, you know, it's really about the language and the structure that creates the fine ability. The question mark is not as meaningful as I think people want it to be, but I think we just have to start thinking about, you know, understand there's different levels that which is information is operating. We have to attend to the human experience and the robotic I'll call it experience.
00;20;41;22 - 00;21;01;14
John Azoni
Yeah. And I find comfort in that because it seems like any time the Internet evolves, it always kind of comes back around to just make good content for humans. Yeah, you know, and kind of like what you're saying earlier, just like just the fundamentals of clear communication, you know? And yeah, it's like a new thing we should do.
00;21;01;24 - 00;21;34;07
John Azoni
Everyone kind of goes, sidesteps and goes, How do we hack the algorithm? Yeah, let's make a big fake new page. And then we always come back around to like, okay, this has to actually work for the person visiting the website. So you're saying kind of just more like what I'm hearing is give priority to the human experience and that natural flow of how somebody consumes information on your website, but also kind of like keep in mind some of the things that, you know, AI is looking for like the headers and you know, maybe how you structure some things.
00;21;34;07 - 00;21;35;18
John Azoni
Yeah. Is there more to it than that?
00;21;35;18 - 00;21;55;10
Georgy Cohen
You can have that information and you can present it, but, you know, so I know something that, you know, came up actually in the comments that LinkedIn poses the idea of schema markup, which sounds like we're going like full tech head here, but but not really. It's thinking about you can have language that to me the human I'm just reading it and it's fine.
00;21;55;10 - 00;22;16;00
Georgy Cohen
But in the background there's markup that is helping that information stand out. So the way I think about that is like, you know, it's you know, it's not a programing language. You're not building apps with HTML, it's markup. I can put bold tags or strong tags around the word. The word is not change. The words around the word are not changed.
00;22;16;00 - 00;22;42;14
Georgy Cohen
But now has emphasis. Right? That's markup. I kind of applied a style to it. So schema tagging, which is really the product of kind of the big boys like Google and Yahoo coming together to create kind of like a shared vocabulary of structure for data and information on the web. The way that it works is, you know, being able to turn that content, that word, let's say, into structured data that could be more easily found.
00;22;42;22 - 00;23;06;26
Georgy Cohen
And it's not necessarily visible to me, the visual web user, but it's visible on that kind of like that search layer. So basically it means that we're sort of defining common information types like events or articles or recipes, for example. So think about like a recipe. We can label carrot as ingredient. We can label cuisine as Thai, right?
00;23;07;05 - 00;23;26;09
Georgy Cohen
We can even label 30 minutes as cook time, right? So I could be ready to be like, Oh, we're going to have this carrot dish. And it's a staple of Thai cuisine, and you can have dinner in under 30 minutes. But and that feels like a natural language sentence to me, the human. But on the end, we're kind of providing emphasis to those language.
00;23;26;09 - 00;23;48;05
Georgy Cohen
So if someone searches for like what are easy Thai meals to cook in under 30 minutes, you know, I can find that. So it helps with that sort of you know, I can read that as a human and makes sense to me. But there's also this tagging and turning that information into structured data that is really visible and clear to those search engines.
00;23;48;05 - 00;24;14;18
Georgy Cohen
And there's a bunch of sites and I can share some links with you if you want to include them in your notes that I can help people just kind of give a space to kind of play and learn more about this stuff. It sounds like deep nerdery, at least to some degree, but I like that. But I think it's an important like kind of next step to be thinking about how to, you know, as we think about striking that balance between, you know, content that is clear to the human but findable by the machines.
00;24;14;18 - 00;24;22;04
Georgy Cohen
Like there's a way to do that. We can sort of just, you know, add that element to our content planning process. Again, not finding out what we can chew.
00;24;22;21 - 00;24;34;04
John Azoni
Yeah, definitely. We'll put those links in the description. And there was also in our pre call you mentioned an author that you follow that talks a lot about. So while we're talking resources, do you want to talk about her?
00;24;34;19 - 00;24;53;19
Georgy Cohen
Your name's Karen McGrane so there's a lot of like you know you talk to my content strategy origin story there's a lot of, you know, parallel to my like immersion in the higher ed community. I also am deeply immersed in sort of like the content strategy mean there's certain folks who have been kind of like bellwethers of knowledge and insight in that field.
00;24;53;26 - 00;25;13;29
Georgy Cohen
And Karen McGrane is one of the first people who really started talking about structured content because, you know, I think, you know, in the early days, the Internet people, you know, open a page and type words and set it and upload it to their site and to call it like a blob. Like like I hear some words, but we apply structure, you know, for the human.
00;25;13;29 - 00;25;42;04
Georgy Cohen
It can create hierarchy and create organization, right? It provides some an organization connotes meaning. And then that's valuable to both again, the humans and the robots as well. So I think that the post I had seen from her recently to basically say like it's the same thing, like how we were saying earlier always goes out to good content, like these fundamentals of like content strategy and information architecture, or just really thinking about how to manage and plan and organize and structure content effectively.
00;25;42;15 - 00;26;06;09
Georgy Cohen
You know, everything old is new again. And, you know, these fundamental skills continue to show their their value and their importance by even in this, you know, okay, oh, now we're all worried about like getting our content ready for high visibility. It's like, cool, okay, this isn't like totally new. Like we're just kind of adapting some of these principles to this new context, kind of tweaking the approach a little bit.
00;26;06;09 - 00;26;26;00
Georgy Cohen
So I can't I'm like, have a foot in both worlds. But I think that there's a lot of those. And as I try to bring over to the higher ed discourse, can give a lot of valuable insight beyond like, you know, kind of like, you know, marketing the brand. And I think that's where a lot of the higher ed dialog around communications and marketing is focused.
00;26;26;00 - 00;26;47;01
Georgy Cohen
And I'm like, we need to talk more about the structural pieces and the governance pieces and the strategic pieces, because that's where all the great ideas and brand and those marketing goals, that's going to be the engine that really helps all that sort of move forward. Those are the inner workings that are going to help propel that content to be successful towards those marketing end.
00;26;47;01 - 00;26;51;06
Georgy Cohen
So we really got to bring those conversations together. So I like trying to do that.
00;26;51;23 - 00;27;14;03
John Azoni
Great, perfect. And so I want to talk about I don't know if this would be considered governance, but this gap between like the fact that there are important web pages often owned by subject matter experts, not content strategists. And I think a lot of people, you know, maybe marketing directors listening to this might be have a vested interest in a landing page about, you know, like a program landing page or something like that.
00;27;14;11 - 00;27;26;25
John Azoni
And I've heard from folks that, you know, they'll get maybe a faculty member to write the content for that, but then like, how do we bridge that gap to like, making sure that that stuff is structured properly? How do you work that?
00;27;27;08 - 00;27;45;18
Georgy Cohen
Yeah, I think you're right to sort of introduce that question in the context of governance because it's really like who owns what part of this, right? I see a partnership. I can't go in a cave and write a landing page about the new MBA program, and neither should the dean or the faculty chair go in a cave and write that page.
00;27;45;18 - 00;28;07;09
Georgy Cohen
We need each other. And, you know, I'm sure you've heard the stories that, you know, within some institutions, people can be like, well, I'm very smart from a Ph.D. and what are you you have a bachelor's degree, like, I should write this because whatever it's like you are the expert on economics or cybersecurity or whatever, but I am the expert on strategy and marketing, so we're only going to get to get this done if we work together.
00;28;07;19 - 00;28;30;07
Georgy Cohen
So I think in thinking about creating those partnerships, I think it's really the relationships that you build as a marketer within your institution are critical to making those moments. We need to create this landing page, be as friction free as possible, and those relationships often mean talking to the leadership, talking to the deans, building relationships between the CMO and the provost.
00;28;30;07 - 00;29;01;11
Georgy Cohen
So everyone's on the same page about how this needs to go. So when that, oh, you know, landing page for this new program, all it comes down. There is an understanding that, okay, the marketing team, they're going to own the design and the writing. We have the brand, we're going to apply it in this way. Cyber security, subject matter, expert, you know, come here like we have these questions, like what are the outcomes, what are the differentiators, What's notable, what are students are like, you know, get that information and then frame it in that marketing framework.
00;29;01;11 - 00;29;21;05
Georgy Cohen
But it has to be a partnership. And I think the stronger the relationships are at all levels, right? I think there's three marketing teams that, you know, for whatever reason, whether it's due to like weird history or just the way that they work, you know, artists connected to the academic enterprise as they should be, there's some animosity there.
00;29;21;05 - 00;29;49;03
Georgy Cohen
And it really starts at the top and sort of like, you know, cultivating a sense of like, okay, here's how we're going to get these things done. And it's also really important, I think, to show the value of that approach. So bringing in the analytics data, bring in the conversion data, showing examples of user testing where it's like, Well, here's the page that you wrote and here's like ten students who did not know what you're talking about or what it that right here's here's the video of them struggling to be able to sort of show empirically whether something is working or not working.
00;29;49;03 - 00;30;04;19
Georgy Cohen
So having that kind of empirical evidence can be really valuable when you're working those academic subject matter experts. But I think the crux is relationships up and down the chain, sort of, you know, lay the foundation for a strong partnership to get that really important work done.
00;30;05;12 - 00;30;27;01
John Azoni
Yeah, it reminds me of so my wife is a trauma therapist and she studied the effects of trauma on the brain. And she's very good at what she does, almost too good, because when she talks about it, it's so academic. And so she has a website, you know, she has a her own private practice, and then she has a scholarship fund to like, raise money for people who need trauma therapy that their insurance won't cover it.
00;30;27;01 - 00;30;48;23
John Azoni
So there's a lot of marketing that goes into that side of the thing, too, like, you know, for fundraising and stuff like that. And so every year we'll do a video or like kind of like a year end. Here's what we did kind of thing, here's the impact we made. And like I always have to like, filter out her script because it's so academic and so wordy and we just laugh because we'll be filming and I'll be like, Laura, no one knows what that means.
00;30;49;20 - 00;30;50;00
John Azoni
Yeah.
00;30;50;12 - 00;31;03;27
John Azoni
You know, you're talking to like, these really academic people. Your funders are just normal people. So it's just like you really do need multiple people in the room with different disciplines that can translate for each other. Yes.
00;31;03;27 - 00;31;25;23
Georgy Cohen
And having a sense of mutual respect that is reinforced by the leadership to be like, we're going to work together like everyone has an important role. Here's how this is going to get done. As subject matter expert, you can review for accuracy, not for style or brand or things like that. And having that be really clear that everyone is sort of like aware of that and there's investment from the top on that.
00;31;25;23 - 00;31;29;02
Georgy Cohen
This is how this is going to go and all that. So totally.
00;31;29;04 - 00;31;46;24
John Azoni
Yeah, that's important to like this is to say what it is that we're looking for your feedback on because like, I don't like when I send someone something I wrote for feedback and they're like, I just want like general, like, does this make sense or is this compelling? And they're like, No, you put a comma in the wrong place and they're like, restructuring this.
00;31;46;24 - 00;31;50;20
Georgy Cohen
I want to copy it. What are you doing?
00;31;51;13 - 00;32;10;16
John Azoni
Yeah, okay. So next question is, are tools are actually looking for point of view when deciding what to surface. A lot of higher ed puts it very safe and generic with their content and a lot of like explaining like this is what this program is about and I think we often leave point of view on the back burner.
00;32;10;18 - 00;32;24;15
John Azoni
How do you recommend schools address that attention or should that even be part of the higher ed, I don't know strategy to have a point of view about a certain industry when you're discussing a program about that industry.
00;32;24;27 - 00;32;54;15
Georgy Cohen
I think that's a really interesting question. So I can have a point of view about a lot of things, but what is the most relevant point of view? And I think the most relevant point of view to have is about yourself and, you know, being able to say not just generically like, you know, can you express where you have a strength, can you validate that with statistics, like for many reasons, beyond like I find ability, like so many institutions need to get over this reluctance to have a point of view or have an attitude or have a project.
00;32;54;15 - 00;33;20;15
Georgy Cohen
We don't do it this way. We do it that way. Because when you play it safe and try to be everything to everybody are quickly going to become this this generic mush. And, you know, so, so many reasons higher ed needs to, you know, find a way to balance clarity with identity. Right. You don't want to go over the top in terms of like, oh, we're this way rather than I don't actually know, like more information, like you're talking about yourself too much.
00;33;20;15 - 00;33;46;02
Georgy Cohen
So it's like balancing a sense of like, hey, here's the information, here's some some clarity, but also, you know, here's why we're special and how we do this or, you know, we have this attitude or, you know, we do it this way. And, you know, Tracy Halvorson, she created this interesting tool about looking at like the blending as opposed to the branding of higher ed, where everyone's like, you know, we have a rigorous this and we are best in class this.
00;33;46;02 - 00;34;15;06
Georgy Cohen
And it's like, Oh my God, like say something meaningful, say something distinctive, use language that not everyone else is using. Like talk to me about you. What makes you different Is it that you're in Manhattan and wow, that really the energy and the connections infuse everything we do? Or is it that you're in the country, you're are rural and be distinct of, you know, in this highly competitive climate that we're in where so many schools are just like fighting to hold on.
00;34;15;06 - 00;34;38;04
Georgy Cohen
And demographically in all this stuff, it's like you have to find a way to stand out. And that plays in both in terms of like the I find the ability piece, but also just in your sort of visible marketing and be something distinctive in the people to whom that matters were like, Whoa, that's what I want. They're going to build that affinity and gravitate towards, you know, people for whom it would be a good fit.
00;34;38;04 - 00;35;00;03
Georgy Cohen
Like you're qualifying them out, but you're qualifying the folks that are going to resonate. So for like 1,000,010 reasons, I think higher needs to move away from the safety of sameness and lean into who they are and start being a little bit unapologetic about that. It's really hard in this day age, in this climate to feel unapologetic about yourself sometimes.
00;35;00;03 - 00;35;10;19
Georgy Cohen
But, you know, I think that that's really the kicker of a lot of institutions just veer away from that. I think it's to their detriment that they do that on 100 different levels.
00;35;11;05 - 00;35;30;23
John Azoni
Yeah, I feel like business schools and data science schools probably have an easier time selling AI as having a point of view on it. You know, they're probably able to write about like AI is the future and we need to equip our students for this kind of world and all this stuff. So it kind of naturally lends itself to a belief about the subject matter.
00;35;31;02 - 00;35;55;16
John Azoni
But, you know, it's different if you're like a political science program or something where it's like you don't want to now take a side right or left necessarily as an entire institution, but like finding ways to maybe, I would assume, talk about what you believe about the world that would resonate with all people that goes beyond just like not so much what you believe about the student experience.
00;35;55;16 - 00;36;08;07
John Azoni
Like we believe in small class sizes and we believe in rigorous, you know, academic performance and whatever else. But it's like, what do you believe about the way the world should work with from the context of this program?
00;36;08;10 - 00;36;29;19
Georgy Cohen
And every school has values. It has roots like faith based institutions, have a whole faith identity that they're based on. You know, small liberal arts colleges have the ideals of a founder that are like imbued into like, I started the school so that, you know, people may have X, Y, Z types of opportunities. Great. Let's infuse that into every program.
00;36;29;19 - 00;36;47;26
Georgy Cohen
And how does that come out right? Like, it's not about like I believe in X and if you believe in Y, you're all at that point of you that way it's just like we are different. Like we have a way of doing things that is this and it's unique to us and leading with that and tying these things together.
00;36;47;26 - 00;36;59;11
Georgy Cohen
Like, you know, you don't want to see a biology predicate. It's like, according to Webster's Dictionary, definition of biology is a study of human life. It's like, what are so many program pages that like, start like that, basically. And it's like.
00;36;59;24 - 00;37;07;13
John Azoni
The Webster's Dictionary opener drives me crazy. I used to film weddings for a living at the very beginning of my career, and every.
00;37;07;15 - 00;37;09;09
Georgy Cohen
Bridesmaid that's I love.
00;37;09;18 - 00;37;16;16
John Azoni
The definition of love is, Oh my God, Just like I couldn't help but roll my eyes. I have to, like, watch my face, you know.
00;37;16;24 - 00;37;18;09
John Azoni
Like what these guys.
00;37;18;12 - 00;37;19;20
Georgy Cohen
Did for six years.
00;37;19;28 - 00;37;20;11
John Azoni
Yeah.
00;37;21;18 - 00;37;36;27
Georgy Cohen
But, yeah, it's like, okay, like, no, that's not why I'm here. I'm here to be sold. Like, why you? Why this? Why now? Like, Webster's not going to do it for me. Like, tell me what's special about this. You got 10 seconds.
00;37;37;07 - 00;37;49;13
John Azoni
Yeah. Oh, that's great. And then user research is an important component to you and the work that you do. Tell me, like, what you feel about user research. How should that be done? How does it factor into building content that answers questions?
00;37;49;21 - 00;38;16;03
Georgy Cohen
I think, you know, it's really easy even in this industry for a long time to be like, I know what they want. Like either deep understanding prospective students, like clearly they want this and that. Yeah, I think it's really easy to sort of assume needed intent and generally the right ideas mostly. But prospects are not a monolith. So there are segments within their subsegments, different needs and questions.
00;38;16;15 - 00;38;37;15
Georgy Cohen
And also those questions evolve over time. Like think about where we are this moment economically, politically, socially, culturally, etc.. There were five years ago consent to students, whether you're graduate, undergraduate, whatever, you're in a different place than your peer was, you know, five years ago. So the things you're asking about are concerned about are going to be a little bit different.
00;38;37;15 - 00;38;58;09
Georgy Cohen
Some concerns are consistent across but that others and others may have, you know, no longer be relevant and new ones have emerged. And, you know, we can't ever say like, you know, I had done this for ten years, so I know everything or 70% that since then I've done I'm done learning Like these ideas are always changing and evolving and you're building in user research as a habit.
00;38;58;20 - 00;39;31;15
Georgy Cohen
It's something that I feel is critical to be able to have a live understanding of your audiences and what they need, what their motivations are, what their preferences are, what their concerns are. So you can plan digital experiences that are going to be clear, useful, usable and relevant to them. And the more you account for their needs to answer their questions, you're reducing the friction between them, you know, doing the things that you want them to do, like, you know, filling out a form or, you know, learning about this or going here or whatever.
00;39;31;15 - 00;39;56;22
Georgy Cohen
So you know, user research I think, is really, you know, I feel like it's amazing. It's not like it's like once every five years type of thing was part like it was that redesign or something like that. But, you know, I think there's even in small ways, it's not be like a big six figure enterprise. It gets you in small ways, like little surveys in the waiting room of the, you know, admissions lobby or, you know, tabling in the campus center during lunch hour.
00;39;56;22 - 00;40;24;10
Georgy Cohen
Like there's little ways that you can gain meaningful insights into what people are looking for, what their questions are, what they need. And building that as a habit within your marketing function can really help you keep a live feed of like, here's what they're wondering about here is where their minds or their hearts are at, and then create content and build pathways that respond to that and then evolve as those needs and questions and preferences evolve.
00;40;24;24 - 00;40;45;22
John Azoni
Yeah, that's perfect. I want to talk to our admissions folks here and give an example of, you know, how to structure this type of data on a page. So let's take a example, like a financial aid page. We've talked a bunch of out program pages, but let's take financial aid page. How Do you make that genuinely rich and findable and not just technically correct?
00;40;46;05 - 00;41;09;16
Georgy Cohen
I think, you know, a lot of things that we've talked about in terms of the structure and the organization, that's how you like doing attending to that layer, I think is important. I think we were talking about earlier also about like the balance between clarity and the storytelling of it, where, you know, if you're going to have this process, you want to be thinking about it for the Web user, how can I lay this out really clearly?
00;41;09;16 - 00;41;48;08
Georgy Cohen
How could it like not be like format in a dense way, you know, automatically like, oh God, the text is giant blocks and, you know, there's lots of jargon and acronyms. I don't understand. I'm done before I even really started reading it. I like I look at it and I just when I turn away, how can I sort of couple just the basics of just clear format in plain language, readability, build in that sort of structure layer, and then sort of enhance it like this context around like, hey, like you know, families making less than X dollars don't have to pay tuition and 95% of students get financial aid.
00;41;48;08 - 00;42;16;05
Georgy Cohen
And here's a quote from a student who says, like, the school is so helpful in enabling my dream to come here, like, it's all these kind of pieces together that create a successful experience falls on that sort of visible human end. And in that sort of structured data and creating that balance, it makes you think, I saw this metaphor that's on show like then that I really loved, and thinking about this is like structuring your information as like making it legible.
00;42;16;15 - 00;42;48;06
Georgy Cohen
Like I have the worst handwriting in the world. Like I am. I am just like the creator. Chicken scratch. I write something and I'm communicating. And I could write very meaningful things, but very, very, very small subsection of people can actually read what I'm saying because it's it's illegible. Let's just just put it out there. But when you structure and organize your data, well, it makes it more legible not just to that that human audience, but that sort of the search engines that are sort of looking to find this this information.
00;42;48;06 - 00;43;07;24
Georgy Cohen
So, you know, we have to think about the legibility of the information on both of those ends so that it can be comprehended and pulled in to whether it's me as a human sitting here looking at a page with questions or typing a question into a search engine and wanting to get that rich information fed back to me, that structure makes it legible.
00;43;08;09 - 00;43;29;24
John Azoni
So in a recent LinkedIn post, you said this was the LinkedIn post that I was referencing earlier. You said basically these are just ways to kill time until the widespread emergence of a true semantic web layer for agents to mind complementing the visual web we humans are all used to. So tell me what you mean by that. Because like all of this stuff that we talked about, not going to matter in the news, I.
00;43;29;24 - 00;43;54;08
Georgy Cohen
Think that a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about, like, you know, we talk about these kind of two layers, right? And that's kind of what I'm getting at with that line is like I feel like most of what we are spending time doing is often this visual layer that that humans are looking at. And I really feel a little more time spent creating that semantic layer that's that layer of tags and structure that the search engines can find.
00;43;54;17 - 00;44;18;16
Georgy Cohen
I feel like that there's still a knowledge gap in higher ed a little bit around there so that, you know, we can do things like, you know, create these kind of like fake contextual elements. You know embedded within pages and things like that. But there is, I think, another technical layer to grow and develop in terms of really leaning into the structured data aspect.
00;44;18;16 - 00;44;37;22
Georgy Cohen
So again, deep nerdery, but you know, it's like, you know, I think we're kind of used to looking off the coast of Antarctica and seeing the tip of the iceberg be like, there's the iceberg that's like, well, we just saw looking at part of it, there's a lot below the surface that we can't that we're not accounting for, that we need to start working on.
00;44;37;22 - 00;44;55;10
Georgy Cohen
But to our points from earlier, again, I don't want to cause panic. I think it's like something where you can pick your battles and focus and prioritize and grow into it. Is it a priority to do this? Yes. All the data is pointing to, you know, prospects using these tools more to do their searches and things like that.
00;44;55;23 - 00;45;01;15
Georgy Cohen
But, you know, I think that we can be sensible about it and focused and moving in this direction.
00;45;02;04 - 00;45;29;00
John Azoni
Perfect. Well, in conclusion here, what is the most actionable place for a higher ed marketer to start if they want to move in this direction? So I'm thinking about like a marketing director, CMO or director of admissions to I guess two separate camps. But like someone at that level that has, you know, they have the hands a bit in the pot, but kind of managing the people involved, what would be the most actionable place for them to start?
00;45;29;13 - 00;45;49;07
Georgy Cohen
I mean, I think one answer is to say, you know, hire somebody or, you know, get somebody to do like an audit and take stock of where you're at. I think that's a valuable tactic, right, is to sort of like, what do we need to do? Like, you know, there's all this hubbub, like whatever. But I think, you know, I don't want to just have that be sort of like the pat answer.
00;45;49;16 - 00;46;13;13
Georgy Cohen
Like, I think that there needs to be a fundamental understanding that at that leadership level that we need to have those kind of structure teaching and structural thinkers as part of our team, that that is a critical need. And we need to sort of not just have great writers and great answer brand, you know, brand marketers and design ideas.
00;46;13;13 - 00;46;55;02
Georgy Cohen
Those are all truly important. But we also need the folks who can create a bridge between the expression and the function. It's not me, it's I think those are the right words, but someone to really take that expression and activate it in really meaningful ways across different layers. So I think just recognizing the need as that is a core skill for the team in some fashion and you know, for individuals who are very non leadership roles, I think, you know, just being able to sort of I feel like a product that you hired had a moment like ten years ago and now I feel like it's a little bit less of a moment and there's
00;46;55;02 - 00;47;19;21
Georgy Cohen
a lot more focus. And not that this is like an important stuff, like more focus on the branding and the ACL pieces like that. But I think, you know, getting a fundamental understanding of things like disciplines like information architecture, content strategy is important and there's two really accessible books like the really short and really crisp and well-written everyday Information Architecture by Lisa marie and Marcie and Elements of Content Strategy by Eric Hussain.
00;47;20;03 - 00;47;45;06
Georgy Cohen
You know, finding those books, you read them in a couple of hours, quite frankly, and it just gives you a good way to think about information and content as it lays a good foundational layer to dive into things like schema and SEO and and structured data and all those pieces, but really just, you know, building that discipline domain, understanding a little bit and then be like, okay, that's the way to think about it.
00;47;45;14 - 00;47;47;07
Georgy Cohen
Now let's dive into the nitty gritty.
00;47;47;07 - 00;47;58;28
John Azoni
So yeah, well, that's a perfect place for us to end. George This is a great conversation. I learned a lot. I'm going to go work on my website a little bit after this. Got a lot of work.
00;47;58;28 - 00;48;01;12
Georgy Cohen
This is at a time where you got it all at once.
00;48;02;10 - 00;48;06;01
John Azoni
Yeah. Where can people find you? I assume they can follow you on LinkedIn.
00;48;06;11 - 00;48;23;00
Georgy Cohen
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. Georgie Georgie y Cohen. Georgie Kogan.com My amazing four page website where I got myself. And yeah, I love talking about this stuff. So come find me and not take so much for a chance to nerd out with you for an hour. I really appreciate this. A lot of fun.
