From April 2021 to May 2022 I managed the College of Science’s public facing Instagram page, @osuscience. In the time I was running the page, I increased impressions from 180K in 2020-21 to over 400K in 2021-22. This meant that traffic increased 137% as a result of posts and stories I designed that were attention grabbing enough to lead new followers to our page.
I designed images for the page and occasionally took photographs. I learned a lot about the OSU brand guidelines and how to use their fonts, color palettes, photography, and graphic icons. It was important to keep in mind having high contrast and easy accessibility for mobile users, and to include alternate text on every post. Managing the Instagram page meant a lot of routine checking notifications, replying to comments and messages, interacting with other OSU accounts, and making posts at the ideal traffic time, which we found to be 1:17 p.m.
The Marketing and Communications team came together on major marketing events. One of these is Dam Proud Day, an annual fundraiser for the university in which the colleges “compete” to receive donations, and donors participate by matching the amounts donated. The College of Science is proud to feature our beautiful campus, and direct all donations into scientific research that is done by faculty as well as undergraduate and graduate students. This is incorporated into the photography and messaging we use during the promotion of the event, which features folks working in the lab and visuals of the campus they work at. I learned a lot about how to plan and schedule a coherent series of posts during an event and understanding the coordination leading up to it. It took a lot of communication between writers, the comms manager, and graphic designers to organize posts that were made throughout the day on various platforms, each with a unique image and caption.
While I was managing the Instagram page, I curated content for the story that was visually appealing and educational. I put together a series that was posted once a week called “Scientist Spotlights”, which was a four panel story with (1) an intro slide, (2) name and image of the scientist, (3) short bio of the scientist, and (4) an external link to read more. The scientist selection was made by physics department members Fred DeAngelis and Emily Eagen. The main goal was to feature scientists that fell into a marginalized category based on their race or gender. The majority of our followers are current or prospective students, and I wanted to find a way to make students with marginalized identities to feel inspired that they could excel in a science career despite the oppression they face. I designed the stories using brand colors, fonts and graphics. It was important to keep the biographies short and digestible for mobile viewers, and find trusted educational sources.
Overall, I enjoyed my time creating graphics and taking photos for the College of Science Instagram. I was given a lot of opportunities to explore my own ideas, while also keeping my work within the branding guidelines of OSU. I enjoyed having a structure to guide me as I was inspired to create graphics for events, holidays, fundraisers, and education.