OISE launches YouTube channel, reports gains in web and social media traffic

April 4, 2012

By Jennifer O’Reilly and Sabrina Persaud

In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views, or almost 140 views for every person on earth (Google Inc., 2012). On April 4, 2012, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE) launched OISEtube – OISE’s official YouTube channel and video sharing website, a multilingual social media channel featuring OISE faculty, students, staff, alumni and friends sharing ideas about teaching, learning and research in a variety of multimedia contexts.

“The use of social media on Canadian campuses continues to grow rapidly.  There is a consistent public demand for real-time, high-quality content featuring education news, events, teaching, learning, research, and related public interest issues,” said Eileen Thomas, OISE’s News and Social Media Editor.

Since the beginning of April, 2011, OISE’s Office of Strategic Communications has launched four official, integrated social media tools to enhance collaboration and knowledge mobilization, address student needs, and promote OISE around the globe. Concurrently, OISE Strategic Communications added tools to optimize OISE’s search engine results and facilitate the increase in mobile traffic to the OISE website with the goal of expanding OISE’s web presence.

In a year-over-year comparison (comparing April 1, 2010-2011 to April 1, 2011-2012), and following the implementation of key tools since April 1, 2011, OISE’s web traffic increased by 157% (unique visits), search engine traffic was up by 151%, mobile traffic improved by 284% (led by iPhone users), and the top ten international audiences by country averaged a 200% increase in visits to the OISE site, with the greatest gains in visits coming from China (257% increase).

“Integrating our social media channels with the OISE website provides our community with enhanced opportunities to engage in dialogue and expand our audiences at home and abroad.  We implemented a web-based campaign that links stories of OISE research, teaching and learning with international dates of awareness such as World Autism Awareness Day (April 2).  This allows OISE to participate directly in world news and public conversation, to leverage our expertise and international leadership in issues central to these public interest,” said Jennifer Sipos-Smith, OISE’s Strategic Communications Manager.

Since its launch on April 1, 2011, @OISENews on Twitter is the foremost purveyor of education-related news at OISE, sending close to 6,000 tweets, and gaining more than 1,300 followers world-wide, from the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe across a  wide range of fields and professions, with the majority coming from education, government, media, parents and public opinion leaders. Each week, OISENews averages 6,600 new impressions, 34 new followers, 55 retweets, and 41 mentions.

“Social media will continue to be an important part of educational exchange. With the launch of OISEtube to more than 1,200 views, we anticipate benefitting from YouTube’s powerful video-sharing capabilities, which include more than 4 billion video views per day and more than 800 million unique visitors per month localized in 39 countries across 54 languages,” said Jennifer Sipos-Smith. The OISEtube channel was created in partnership with OISE's Education Commons.

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