In this noisy digital environment, I’d say that Rice University is meeting the challenge of connecting with our audiences. It’s our goal to not only reach our audience but to create brand advocates. Hits and views are fine, but engagement is what really matters. Sharing our content is more valuable than passively viewing.

Check out a few cool highlights from our year:

• In 2013 we reached more than 200 million through our Web presence – this includes visitors to Rice.edu and estimated impressions through social media.

• We average about 18,000 Web advocates (people who actively share our Web and social media content) every month, and also convert a monthly average of 5 percent of passive viewers to Web advocates.

• Rice News features with accompanying videos, like our robotic arm and spinning nanofibers stories, performed well on Rice.edu and also took off on social media. The Robotic arm video has had almost 810,000+ views, 311 shares and has added 88+ subscribers to the Rice YouTube channel. The Spinning nanofibers video has had 72,000+ views, 137 shares and has also added 91+ subscribers. More than half of these views for both videos were from embedded sites – people are not only watching the videos but actively sharing our content. 

• The superbugs story topped news traffic in 2013 with 42,141 views in just the last few weeks of December. The only other story that comes close to that many views this year was the spinning nanofiber story with 54,898 total views but was published back in January. 

• 1.1 million visits to Rice.edu were international traffic (outside of U.S.), a growth of 62.5 percent in five years. This is a neat fact showing how Rice has become a global university, largely due to our Web presence.

• Mobile traffic to Rice.edu almost doubled since we launched our new responsive design homepage at the end of 2012.