Content Strategy – University Marketing

Instagram is the most popular with students and prospective students. This is where Oregon State can share campus beauty/ life photos and videos.

The first thing to think of is a goal. Ours was more followers and engagement, so this is how we started to up our game in the Instagram world.

We learned that you need to be consistent in posting. Basically, look at your metrics to see when followers are online and post then. Make sure you have diversity in your posts (this doesn’t just go for people). Don’t just post buildings or event info. Show your students or professors in their environment or go to an event and share photos from it. Put yourself in the shoes of your followers to know what they want to see.

Break up your feeds! Pictures are great, but Instagram is also a video sharing platform. Post videos spotlighting professors, students and your department or a fun lighthearted video (time-lapse of campus). This helps your feed look more pleasing. It’s important to make sure videos are formatted correctly and don’t cut anything off — that leads to less engagement.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8SLJY1DDXH/

IGTV is becoming more popular to use within the Instagram app. It’s a great place to post videos longer than 1:00, and you can share those as posts as well to boost viewership and reach. This is something the institutional account has started to do with event coverage.

Be active. Don’t just leave a post after it’s been posted. Look at comments, give them a like or answer any questions. Look at your feed and engage with other posts from accounts you follow. Also keep up with those DMs. All these are ways for followers to form a connection your account.

Since adapting to these best practices, Oregon State’s account hit 50K in December 2019 and continues to grow. It’s important to be able to adapt to the changes Instagram makes as you continue to grow your own accounts. The only way is up!

Getting out and covering events across campus is a fun way to engage your social media audience. They are always wanting to learn more about the Oregon State experience.

Part of the strategy for Oregon State’s institutional accounts is to attend events to help bring awareness of the culture on campus. Our goal is to reach students and prospective students by posting stories and photos to Instagram.

With this in mind let’s talk about our coverage of the 2020 Women’s Basketball Civil War. Planning is everything! You need to have a game plan and different scenarios.

Our game plan was simple. We designated jobs to certain people. Someone would be on Instagram stories, someone taking photos, and someone ready to push a tweet out if we won. Secondly, we made sure we had a plan if we did win. That was to test out going live from Instagram. The goal of that was to reach a bigger audience and celebrate a big win.

Here’s a breakdown of each job:

Instagram Stories– To get photos/video/boomerangs of the team, fans, cheer and Benny. With the key thing in mind: to show what it’s like to be at a game even if you aren’t there. (Make sure you have a beginning and end)
Photos– capturing game action, cheer, Benny, fans (before, during, and after the game)
Twitter– on call for if we win with great copy and a fun photo

With all of that planned out before the game we all felt prepared. Just to be clear things change all the time and you need to make adjustments. We made sure to go to the game early and feel conformable in a new environment. Sometimes that can be the challenging part but, if the crowds having fun then you will probably feed off of that energy.

Looking back at the game we didn’t win, but we put up a good fight. If you make sure to have a solid game plan heading into an event and people know what they are suppose to do you will have great content. Our Instagram stories and photos turned out fabulous and our followers enjoyed them. Our goal is to continue to share more events on our Instagram feed as time continues.

Cheers to the next events!