Communication and Marketing - Our Work

Our Work

The Office of Communication and Marketing drives high-quality, targeted communications in consultation with campus partners. We craft campaigns and deliver strategies, products and solutions that meet the evolving needs of SUNY Oneonta’s external audiences.

Our work includes:

Web and Digital Communications

Communication and Marketing oversees content development and design for the home page, top-level web pages and special landing pages for advertising and communication initiatives. We are responsible for setting digital communication standards and best practices for SUNY Oneonta.

Our web team provides support and training on best practices for web usability, accessibility and effective content to unit-level web editors across campus who use the Drupal content management system to update their department and office pages.

We work with hosting and support partners and use tools to keep our website running smoothly and provide a positive user experience. We see the website as a living document that can constantly be improved based on what we learn about how visitors are interacting with it, and we make data-driven, incremental changes on a regular basis.

Media Relations

We work closely with local, regional and national media to identify newsworthy campus initiatives and stories about faculty, staff and students. We help our faculty, staff and students prepare for interviews and manage issues that may be of interest to the media.

Our news and media relations team distributes news releases and pitches stories to local, regional and national media outlets, resulting in placements in media outlets across the country. Faculty experts who have been interviewed by major media outlets are highlighted on our Faculty News Features web page.

We are passionate about celebrating and promoting our students’ stories, and we develop and distribute hundreds of personalized news releases about our students' academic awards, experiential learning, graduation and other accomplishments every year. These achievements are published on SUNY Oneonta’s Merit Pages, where students develop profiles highlighting their achievements, activities and work experience at SUNY Oneonta.

Social Media

Our social media team produces written and multimedia content for SUNY Oneonta's institutional social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. Our content strategy is data-driven, and we are constantly trying out new tools and ideas, evaluating their success and refining our approach. We frequently collaborate with other units and advise other campus communicators on social media best practices, tools and trends through SUNY Oneonta's Social Media Users Group, which meets monthly.

SUNY Oneonta's social media channels reach a wide and growing audience of current and prospective students, parents, alumni, faculty, staff and community members. Through social media marketing, we aim to:

  • build and maintain relationships;
  • leverage organic, real-time feedback (social listening);
  • offer an instant and positive customer experience; and
  • build a strong brand story and identity for SUNY Oneonta.

Advertising

We use print and digital advertising to advance the institution’s brand strength and market position while supporting SUNY Oneonta’s mission and goals.

In April 2021, we launched the university’s first-ever comprehensive, general advertising campaign. Its objective was to raise awareness of SUNY Oneonta as a good college choice by engaging strategically valuable audiences through one or more channels, each of which linked to a web landing page reinforcing the three themes of our mission: Grow, Thrive and Live.

With a Google mobile ad click-through rate of 2.4% – five times better than the average for higher education – the campaign generated nearly 2.1 million impressions and more than 40,000 clicks or phone swipe-ups to the SUNY Oneonta website.

Enrollment Marketing

Communication and Marketing collaborates with the Office of Admissions to develop content for recruitment-focused print pieces, emails, web pages, videos, social media and the virtual campus tour.

Our work includes writing, editing, proofreading, print and digital design, HTML coding, photography, video production and assessment. We look at data such as email open rates, QR code scans, advertising click-through rates and web user behaviors to understand how prospective students and families are interacting with our content and develop tactics to make it more effective.

Printing Services

Communication and Marketing oversees SUNY Oneonta’s Print Shop, which provides a full range of printing and finishing services to the campus community and external clients.

With an average turnaround time of 1.1 days, the campus Print Shop provides fast, professional service to the campus community.

Identity and Brand Management

Communication and Marketing provides guidance and oversees efforts to maintain a consistent identity and brand, as we work collaboratively with external-facing campus units to tell SUNY Oneonta’s story to the world.

Our office led the development of the SUNY Oneonta Style Guide, which aims to ensure consistency across media by answering the most common questions about logos, typefaces, university colors and other things that contribute to institutional identity. Our Assistant Director of Marketing and Digital Media represents the office on the university's Institutional Identity Group, which reviews the style guide each year and makes recommendations for updates.

Urgent Communications

In the event of an emergency, whether it's an incident on campus or severe weather that affects SUNY Oneonta operations, our team works with the Director of Internal Communications, Chief of Staff, University Police Chief and other campus officials to provide timely, pertinent information to the campus community.

Urgent communication updates are issued to the campus community via email, voice and text through the O-Alert system, and posted on the SUNY Oneonta home page.

Content Development

Our team produces high-quality copy, design, photography, videography and printed products that tell the SUNY Oneonta story.

Our staff takes hundreds of photos each year that capture the essence of SUNY Oneonta. We share these with the campus community through the SUNY Oneonta Photo Library, which features more than 200 galleries of campus life, events, people and places.

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