Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe it’s another year of andcarrieon.com. As I was reflecting, I’m approaching four years of sharing insights on this blog. While I have several exciting things in the works for 2026, I wanted to pause and share a brief recap of the top content during 2025.
In all, there were 42 posts last year, and you all viewed the content more than 33,000 times. I don’t focus heavily on analytics throughout the year. Instead, I try to put together meaningful content. It felt like the content resonated this year, and when I compared the numbers the engagement score was higher by thousands!
Thank you for being here and for coming back. This started out as a project to help me find my identity, but it’s become something I’m really proud of for our profession. That only happens because of you!
Top Ten Posts
1. Essential Data for Higher Ed Marketing – Part 1 – This post talks about the types of marketing data that MarComm leaders should be looking at for data-driven decisions. This particular post focuses on background data that can guide inputs.
Why I wrote it: I’d heard all my life that MarComm leaders need to make data-driven decisions. However, there’s so much data out there I struggled as a young leader to figure out what data was important.
2. Let’s Talk: Crucial Conversations – This post was from 2024, but it is still a top post. It covers how to have tough, crucial conversations as a leader in a way that supports growth and positive outcomes.
Why I wrote it: I struggle with these conversations, but I believe they are important for leaders to have them. Not having them is a disservice to their team, so I wanted to put together a guide for these conversations.
3. Best Reading List for Marketing and Leadership Growth – This post offered a list of must-read books on topics such as higher education, marketing, and leadership that should be on the 2025 reading list for leaders.
Why I wrote it: After my dissertation, I’m trying to read more. I’m still burned out from all the reading, so I am working hard to make reading a priority. Putting together lists of books I’ve read/want to read helps me be better at reading.
4. Key Strategies to Help Advance Your Career – This post offers strategies that can help you begin conversations about career advancement. Too often, employees want to advance but are unsure how to start that process, and this post gives some suggestions on where to begin.
Why I wrote it: My father-in-law suggested this one. He reads every post, and he suggested this topic because companies lose great talent because there isn’t a good way to advance. He encouraged me to write about how to have those conversations internally about advancement.
5. Top Sessions to Attend at the AMA Higher Ed Marketing Conference – This post shares my session picks for the 2025 AMA conference and insight into why I selected those particular sessions as ones to attend.
Why I wrote it: The AMA conference is always a highlight, but it can be overwhelming. There are hundreds of sessions. I wanted to help people sort through the program, so I put together a few standout sessions.
6. Essential Tips for Effective Team Retreats – This post offers guidance on how to put together a retreat for a team. It provides insights on group involvement, overall structure, and best practices to consider.
Why I wrote it: As a new MarComm leader, I wanted to host a retreat but had never done so before. A friend graciously shared retreat agendas to help me get started. After several years, I’d gotten comfortable with retreats and wanted to share my learnings with those who might be hosting a retreat for the first time.
7. The Lasting Impact of Higher Education on My Career – The post was part of a series about the importance of higher education. In it, I shared broadly how higher education had helped me over the years.
Why I wrote it: With so much being said about higher education, I wanted to share some of the real benefits from it. I broke this into several posts throughout the year to share how it had helped me professionally and why I felt it was important.
8. Seven AI Prompts That Make Me A Better Leader – This post discusses a few ways leaders can use AI in their work and offers several types of prompts to help leaders with their tasks.
Why I wrote it: AI is an important conversation, but it is usually pretty tactical. As a leader, our work is focused on leading and vision setting, so I wanted to provide a few use cases where AI could support that work.
9. Essential Data for Higher Ed Marketing – Part 2 – This was a continuation of part one. Part one focused on background data and inputs. Part two focused on performance metrics and outputs.
Why I wrote it: I struggled as a new leader to effectively use data to make decisions, so I wanted to provide other leaders with a primer of what data can help make decisions.
10. How to Create Norms for Successful Teams – This post talked about the norming process to help teams build alignment. It shared both the benefits of norms and detailed steps to create norms within an organization.
Why I wrote it: Going through an organizational change several years ago, I saw firsthand how important norms were in changing culture. I’ve referenced them in several presentations and am always asked more about creating them. I wanted to provide the steps to help put norms into action.
Thank You
Thank you again for joining me on this journey, and I look forward to continuing to share more content with you. See you next week!
And Carrie On 