The Student Life Social Media project began with an audit of the existing channels based on their performance metrics. The results of this audit led to merging channel content, downsizing from 74 to 11 channels, and renaming accounts based on the results of a student focus group. Previously, accounts had been named to mimic department names and program initiatives they represented. The focus group demonstrated the importance of naming accounts to reflect their content and the interests of the prospective audience.

Once the channels had been running for six months, we launched an analytics project to gather behavioral metrics and develop insights about audience engagement. Simultaneously, we conducted a content analysis of our weekly e-newsletter, which gave further insights about the broader student audience and the content they responded to most. This data revealed themes that were a priority to the student audience, visuals that had the most impact, and the most effective tone and writing style to promote engagement.

After the analytics phase, benchmarking research was conducted through a peer and competitor analysis. We reviewed comparable social media channels for Ohio University’s sister institutions, and familiarized ourselves with other Ohio University channels catering to the student audience. These efforts revealed best practices for communicating to students, as well as gaps in the content available to our students.

This process revealed important insights about the student audience and our competitive landscape. Most notably, we learned:

• Audiences responded most to content about community engagement and social issues, timely campus beauty, student features, humor, university pride, and anything in video form.

• The creative approaches that generated the most engagement were videos, and aesthetically pleasing, photo-heavy feeds with little to no designed graphics.

• Individual campus culture plays a significant role in the themes and content audiences respond to.

• The current audience expects topics related to safety and respect on campus, as well as campus beauty with particular emphasis on color and the current season.

• The channel exists within the context of a campus community with many Instagram channels that are promoting similar content; the Student Life channel needed to identify a niche and clearly communicate it to its current audience and prospective followers.

• The broader student audience desires content with a wider appeal, such as involvement opportunities, well-being, events and programs, and human interest.

• Desire from newsletter readers for viewpoint diversity on Student Life channels.

• Greater engagement when events were clustered together with a single call-to-action, rather than featuring events individually.

The results of these efforts was the development of a clear creative strategy and the development of two style guides for our Instagram channels — OHIO Student Life and Bobcat Well-Being.

The streamlining of accounts addressed two significant issues — an overwhelmed audience and under resourced staff. Not only was it asking a lot for students to follow so many accounts, but it was impossible for the staff to maintain content creation at that volume.

Management of the remaining channels was distributed across the Division, but our team retained responsibility for four accounts:

OHIO Student Life
Platforms: Instagram and Twitter
Instagram Followers: 3,059 (as of Dec. 2021)
Twitter Followers: 6,172 (as of Dec. 2021)
Content: All about what life on campus has to offer
Audience: Current students

Bobcat Well-Being
Platforms: Instagram
Followers: 1,217 (as of Dec. 2021)
Content: Basic needs resources, physical health, mental health, inspiration and encouragement
Audience: Current students

Parent & Family Programs
Platforms: Facebook
Followers: 4,906 (as of Dec. 2021)
Content: Engagement opportunities, updates and helpful resources
Audience: Parents and families of current students

Among the lessons learned in the research phase, as well as the audience research project examining the student journey, we recognized the importance of developing unique content that addresses the student hierarchy of needs — evolving from basic needs to self-discovery to personal growth and finally community engagement. This evolution throughout the student journey guided the development of content for our newsletter and social media channels.

Each week the newsletter captures university news, important student updates, and original content that supports student development and opportunities for involvement and on-campus engagement. From there, the original content is repurposed and distributed through Instagram stories and posts, as well as Twitter.