Most college parent pages were built by someone who ran out of time and dumped every link they didn't know what to do with into a pile. Laura Rudolph has spent a decade trying to fix that.

Laura is the founder of Square One Consulting, where she helps colleges communicate more clearly and — as she puts it — speak more human. She started her career as a journalist with a crime beat, fell into enrollment marketing, and eventually realized that the audience nobody was talking to — parents — was the one she was most drawn to write for. Turns out, skeptical Gen X parents who want honesty and hate marketing fluff are basically the ideal audience for a former investigative journalist.

In this episode, Laura breaks down why most parent pages fail, what good actually looks like, and the three pieces of content she'd build first if she were starting from scratch. We also walk through real examples from University of Washington, UT Austin, Hamilton, and Wake Forest — and Laura shares a free AI-powered tool she just launched that lets you drop in a URL or paste a parent email and get an honest assessment of whether it's actually working.

In this episode:

Why most parent pages are "informationally present but emotionally absent" — and what that costs you
The filing cabinet problem: why organizing your site around your org chart is failing families who don't know what a bursar does
The three content pieces Laura would build first: a "Start Here" guide, a "What Families Worry About" hub, and a "How to Support Without Taking Over" section
Why telling parents why you want their contact info resulted in a dramatic increase in opt-ins at Laura's former institution
What University of Washington, UT Austin, Hamilton, and Wake Forest are doing right — and what makes each of them a model worth studying
The parent-to-parent trust play most schools are completely ignoring
Why there's a middle ground between helicopter parenting and institutional silence — and how your content can actually help create it

The free tool: Laura's AI-powered Parent & Family Communication Analyst is live at squareoneky.com. Drop in a URL or paste an email and get a scored, tiered review of how well your communication is actually working for a parent audience. It's free.

Good parent page examples mentioned:

University of Washington: https://www.washington.edu/parents/
University of Texas at Austin: https://parents.utexas.edu/
Hamilton College: https://www.hamilton.edu/parents
Wake Forest University: https://parents.wfu.edu/
Providence College (honorable mention for parent blog): https://parents.providence.edu/

Connect with Laura:

Website: squareoneky.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/laurakrudolph

Connect with John: