Data reflected covers all of Fiscal Year 2023: July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023.
Marketing and Communications Impact
The Office of Marketing and Communications reaches a diverse audience through a mix of storytelling and distribution across a complex ecosystem of websites and channels. Our goal is to tell the Ohio State story and offer our audiences opportunities to engage with the Ohio State brand.
Share of Conversation
A key measure for Ohio State is the volume of conversation around the brand. We utilize social listening to compare our conversation volume to peer sets to determine the share of voice across social media and select digital platforms such as the web, Reddit and YouTube for FY23. Ohio State was #1 among public peers and #2 among private peers relative to the total volume of conversation for FY23.
News and Storytelling
The team produces hundreds of stories each quarter – delivering the news, covering the strategic initiatives of the institution, supporting our partners, highlighting our accomplishments and featuring our students, faculty and staff. In total, the team produced 468 news stories, generating over 1,966,419 unique pageviews for FY23.
Explore examples of the most popular new stories across our storytelling sites, determined by the total volume of unique pageviews during the fourth quarter of FY23.
The meaning behind the Woodstock character in 'Peanuts'
The character Woodstock in the Peanuts comic strip could be seen as Charles Schulz's attempt to represent the young people of the time in a positive and affirming way.
No need to load up on extracurricular activities, study finds
While some ambitious high school students may load up on extracurricular activities to help them get into college, a new study suggests they may be trying too hard.
Sicker Americans are sticking with Medicare managed care plans
Following decades of criticism for “cherry-picking” the healthiest patients, Medicare managed care plans now appear to be holding onto sicker patients with more complex health needs, new research has found.
More than 20,000 Ohio State students named to dean's list in spring term
Nearly 21,000 students earned top academic honors at The Ohio State University during the spring semester.
Why buses can't get wheelchair users to most areas of cities
A study in Columbus reveals limited accessibility for manual wheelchair users on public buses, restricting them to just 1% of the city. Powered wheelchair users have slightly better access at 25%.
New U.S. News & World Report rankings highlight Ohio State graduate programs
The Ohio State University’s graduate and professional programs remain among the best in their fields in the nation and the state, according to the U.S. News & World Report 2024 edition of America’s Best Graduate Schools.
Media Placements
Staff members within the Office of Marketing and Communications (OMC) utilize a strategic approach to media relations to enhance the reputation and visibility of the university through its work with local, regional, national and international media. The University was mentioned or featured more than 12,641 times in digital and print news publications during the fourth quarter of FY23.
Highlights
1,742
Mentions in national outlets
31
Mentions in the New York Times
10
Mentions in Fox News Channel Online
2,250
Mentions in Ohio outlets
Top Placements
Business First
Ohio State's innovation district research center is built for creative collisions
Fox Business
Ohio State University preparing students to fill shortage in semiconductor workforce
CBS Sunday Morning
Treasures of comic strip art
Research/Experts
Toronto Star
‘Prey-switching’ blamed for death of woman mauled by coyotes
Forbes
When do scientists reach their peak?
WebMD
Study links smoking to memory loss, cognitive decline
Featured Projects
Over the course of the year, professionals in the Office of Marketing and Communication will complete hundreds of projects in support of university initiatives. Explore the projects below to learn about some of our favorites, view our impact and see how we deliver a cohesive brand message throughout our work.
Ohio State’s digital transformation continues
The university is continuing to build digital consistency with the Marion, Newark, Lima and Mansfield campus websites relaunching with new designs.
Now at Ohio State podcast launches
The first enterprise-level podcast at Ohio State shines a spotlight on the university’s top researchers, innovators and bold thinkers.
Enhanced digital ecosystem
Ohio State’s digital ecosystem plays a critical role in helping our audiences deepen their understanding of the university. OMC is improving our own properties while guiding college and unit efforts to create a consistent experience for our web users.
Across the field and across the state
OMC had an opportunity to highlight and reinforce the important work happening at Ohio State with a mini-campaign that was launched in conjunction with two of the Buckeyes biggest football games of the year.
Connecting web behavior to email messaging
Experts in OMC and the Office of Advancement are working together to re-engage potential donors who visit Ohio State’s giving sites but close their browsers before making a contribution.
Zero Waste
Ohio Stadium’s Zero Waste Initiative is a creative example of how the university is pursuing its sustainability goals and its message was appealing for multiple institutional audiences.
Campus Safety
The safety of both the campus and the off-campus area frequented by Ohio State students remains the university’s top priority. Ensuring that students, faculty and staff were aware of existing and new safety enhancements is a top priority for FY23.
Expanding the use of text messaging
Over the last year, the Office of Marketing and Communications has expanded the use of text messaging at Ohio State. We continue to develop governance, while providing consultation and support.
Web Traffic
The Office of Marketing and Communications is responsible for some of the most trafficked pages across the osu.edu domain. We manage the front door, the news, key utilities and hundreds of story pages to support the brand experience in the digital space.
Key metrics
3.8M
Users
4.9M
Unique Pageviews
5,465
Shares of Content
412.7K
Video Plays
Most viewed features from osu.edu
Pursuing his passions, from Cairo to Columbus
Since coming to Ohio State, Larkin Cleland has studied abroad, started a nonprofit, taken on three majors and learned multiple languages.
7 ways our students create a more sustainable world
Students are restoring the Olentangy River bank, building a solar-powered racecar and so much more.
Stepping out of his comfort zone and into his future
This exercise science student chased opportunities by knocking on doors. The ones that opened changed his life.
Social Media
Our teams develop timely, engaging posts with captivating videos and photos to inform, entertain and engage our audiences on a variety of subjects, guided by university initiatives and priorities. Our goal is to deliver the right content to the right audience through the right platform to increase audience affinity, audience growth and engagement. In Q1 and Q2 of FY23, the team published more than 1,000 posts and multiple paid social campaigns that generated 83 million impressions and 6 million engagements this quarter. The Ohio State University social media audience grew by almost 125,000 followers (8.4%) across six platforms. Additionally, Q2 of FY23 was the most successful quarter in the history of Ohio State’s social media presence when measuring engagements, impressions, audience growth and video views.
FY23 Q1 - Q4 total followers: 2,218,286 (12.7% increase compared to FY22)
Social media channels continue to drive a significant volume of impressions to bring awareness to the institution. Last fiscal year, we changed our strategy to a quality > quantity approach and adjusted our posting cadence to ~1x/day on each platform. We’ve also built a new strategy for paid social ads targeting multiple audiences. While this resulted in fewer impressions due to less volume, it positively impacted our audience growth, engagement and engagement rate.
*Includes paid and organic impressions for Facebook and Instagram
FY23 Q1 - Q4 total impressions: 140,610,024 (1.5% decrease compared to FY22)
*Includes paid and organic engagements for Facebook, Instagram and TikTok
FY23 Q1 - Q4 total engagements: 11,201,264 (45.8% increase compared to FY22)
Ohio State is #1 among public peers and #1 against Big 10 peers in total engagements in all public content related to the university generated across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Ohio State is #2 among public peers and #1 against Big 10 peers in total engagements in all public content related to the university generated across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Data Notes
Data for this page is managed by the Marketing Performance Analytics team. Definitions are common across the Marketing and Analytics community. Learn more below about what is collected to create this page or contact adv-marketinganalytics@osu.edu with questions.
Total volume is determined via a detailed listening query in Sprout Social designed to capture a brand’s common name and mentions of key social handles, including the enterprise, research and health center for each school. The volume is then split into athletic and non-athletic volume via a keyword list for athletics. The athletics keyword list is continuously growing and common across all competitors. For details on the query parameters, please contact adv-marketinganalytics@osu.edu. Only accounts with unrestricted permissions can be captured by social listening tools. A user that mentions Ohio State, but limits access to view their content will not be included.
Three primary content vehicles are used by the Office of Marketing and Communication for storytelling and news publishing on the osu.edu domain.
- Ohio State News – Ohio State News delivers timely, trustworthy news to connect you to Ohio State’s impact on your life, your community and your world. Ohio State News offers exclusive coverage of developments on and around campus, scientific discoveries, national and global issues, the arts and Buckeye sports. Includes content published at news.osu.edu.
- Featured Stories – Stories reflect the strengths and vitality of The Ohio State University. This content emphasizes student success, faculty excellence, institutional research prowess and other aspects of the Ohio State experience that appeal to future students and other key audiences. Includes content published at osu.edu/features/.
- Ohio State Alumni Magazine – Published four times a year, Ohio State Alumni Magazine helps you stay up to date on friends and former classmates; happenings around the Oval and beyond; and local, national and international issues with an Ohio State connection. Life and sustaining members of the Alumni Association receive a print version of the magazine. Digital content published at osu.edu/alumni/news/ohio-state-alumni-magazine.
Ohio State uses Cision to track media placements across news sites and blogs. Posts on social networking sites are not included in these values. Media placements include online outlets and offline print outlets.
- Media placement – An article, as defined by the Cision platform: a piece of published content that contains a headline, content and a publish date.
- National distribution outlets – News outlets that have a national, rather than local distribution. For our purposes, national distribution outlets are limited to those based in the United States and do not include international outlets.
Source: https://help.cision.com/help/how-news-monitoring-works
Ohio State uses Google Analytics to track web traffic and behaviors across the osu.edu domain.
- User - An individual person browsing your website (technically, a unique browser cookie). Each user can visit your website multiple times, for example, 1 user could create 3 sessions on your website, with each session containing multiple pageviews.
- Unique Pageviews – Counts a page once even if it was viewed multiple times within a single session. For example, if someone landed on your homepage, then viewed the ‘about us’ page and then navigated back to your homepage, the homepage would have 1 unique pageview (even though the page was viewed twice during the session).
- Shares of Content – The sum social share events captured in Google Analytics during the reporting period. Social share events are triggered when a user clicks on a link to a social source and the text or attribute “share/sharing” on it. This covers most examples of share buttons and functionality. This event is also triggered when sharing via email links often located next to social sharing buttons.
- Video Plays - The sum video play events captured in Google Analytics during the reporting period. Video play events are triggered when a user clicks to play a video that’s been embedded to a page from YouTube or Vimeo.
Ohio State uses Sprout Social to track social media performance and SEMRush to monitor peers in the social space.
- Audience - audience volume depicted in the graph comes from Sprout Social and represents the maximum audience volume at the end of month of the reporting period. These values represent fans or followers of the account.
- Engagement - total engagement depicted in the graph comes from Sprout Social and represents the sum of engagements during the reporting period. Ohio State counts the following actions as engagements: applause (likes, favorites, hearts), conversation (comments, replies), amplification (shares, retweets), link clicks, immersive clicks (photo views, saves) and video plays.
- Competitive - The total engagement volume for competitive positioning is collected via SEMRush and includes reactions, comments and shares from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. For competitive positioning, we use the SEMRush value for Ohio State engagement to ensure comparing data apples to data apples.
Ohio State uses Salesforce Marketing Cloud and PressPages to deliver email newsletters and email communication to external and internal audiences. The primary newsletters distributed include:
- onCampus Today and onCampus Weekly are email newsletters that keep Ohio State faculty, staff and students informed, interested and inspired about what is happening at the university. onCampus Today is sent to nearly 43,000 faculty and staff daily, and onCampus Weekly has both undergraduate and graduate/professional versions sent to almost 75,000 students each weekend.
- Ohio State News is an external newsletter with roughly 2,000 subscribers through which we distribute research and institutional owned news.
- Roughly 240,000 alumni of the institution receive monthly emails featuring content from the latest edition of the Ohio State Alumni magazine. These emails enable alumni to engage with the brand on a consistent basis.