Telling the story the U State way: Leveraging owned media

The office of University Marketing and Communication at Utah State University is committed to telling the USU story, elevating our reputation and highlighting our impact through a unified voice.

USU faces the same set challenges as many higher ed institutions — fewer traditional media resources, inaccurate or incomplete coverage and the ongoing competition for engagement in a landscape flooded by content. To address that, our Strategic Communications and Digital Strategy teams partnered to develop a plan for using social media and Google Ads to distribute digital video stories to key audiences, including media, alumni, custom communities and governing board members.

This joint team of communicators have created a technique of telling "our story, our way" by leveraging digital storytelling and paid advertising. Through affinity audience targeting, geo-targeting and topical placement of videos, the team regularly distributes informational news to key stakeholders. This strategy helps in our overall goal of establishing Utah State University as an impactful research institution, reinforces our land-grant mission and allows us to tell our stories, our way, without a complete reliance on external media.

In this session, you'll hear how Strategic Communications and Digital Strategy works together to tell our stories THE U STATE WAY. We'll share how we identify videos that best exemplify the university's mission and impact, how videos are used in the overall vision for telling the university's story, and how analytics and metrics are used to evaluate success and guide future campaigns.