The website’s new look
After more than a year of planning, the PIE Center unveiled a new website designed to be more user-friendly and technically compliant.
The responsive design displays more effectively on tablets and smartphones while ensuring quicker page loads. Visitors can more easily find information about current and completed research, register for upcoming webinars and more. Every article, blog post and research summary is tagged with keywords to let visitors get a fuller understanding of everything the PIE Center does pertaining to a particular issue.
Web traffic grew by 44 percent in 2013-14, with nearly 25,000
page views from more than 8,000 unique visitors.
UF Critical Thinking Inventory
PIE Center communicators used the same web template to launch the UF Critical Thinking Inventory, an assessment that measures how people think critically about important issues. The new brand maintains a separate identity while staying consistent with the PIE Center’s web presence.
The UFCTI site features a training course that certifies university faculty, staff, students and private consultants to administer the instrument. The program features three self-paced lessons full of interactive features and animated avatars.
By simply adding a letter, the PIE Center created its own holiday, celebrated it for a week and reached an important social media milestone.
Each year, March 14, or 3/14, is commonly known as Pi Day. Fans of the mathematical constant typically rejoice by eating creatively decorated pizzas and pies. PIE Center faculty and staff did that and then some.
“The PIE Center is unique in that it is one of the only places that identifies and researches public opinion that is critical to agricultural and natural resource interest across the state. It provides the necessary analysis to inform strategic decision making for business, community, governmental and educational leaders. It provides great training in media and communications efforts that are relevant and timely.” — Ruth Borger, UF/IFAS Communications
PIE Center communicators, ever the fans of puns, added a letter and some capitalization to create PIE Day. Within striking distance of a yearlong internal goal to reach 1,000 Facebook fans, the PIE Center announced a weeklong social media celebration that culminated in PIE Day, a Friday. Those same pun-loving communicators dubbed the week “Life of PIE” in homage to the 2012 Oscar-winning movie.
Faculty, staff and graduate students wanted to connect more personally with the PIE Center’s social media followers and used the momentum to launch new products such as The Slice, a video series that aims to educate and motivate viewers on a useful topic in 15 minutes or less, and the UF Critical Thinking Inventory, an online instrument that measures how people think critically about important issues.
Earlier in the week, the PIE Center’s advisory board assembled in Gainesville for a strategic planning session. PIE Center communicators gave social media followers a seat at the table by sharing the discussion and asking for input along the way.
Although the PIE Center also hosted an Easy as PIE webinar and distributed its spring newsletter during Life of PIE, much attention focused on the second-annual PIE Center Photo Contest. Photographers from seven states entered 88 images into the contest, with Facebook fans casting more than 1,500 votes for the 17 finalists.
The PIE Center’s Facebook page gained 362 new fans during the photo contest, which ran for just shy of two months. For the year, the PIE Center nearly doubled its Facebook audience and cracked the 1,000-fan threshold during Life of PIE.
After more than doubling the number of Twitter followers last year, the PIE Center account grew by 40 percent in 2013-14 to 440 followers.
YouTube
The PIE Center produced six videos in 2013-14. Viewers watched more than 50 total PIE Center videos 3,643 times in 2013-14 for an average of one minute and 43 seconds each. Cumulatively, viewers watched for an estimated four-and-a-half days.
Emails
The PIE Center tripled its email listserv by taking a renewed focus at reaching UF/IFAS Extension professionals. The PIE Center now reaches more than 1,800 people with weekly Trends & Topics emails, announcements and newsletters.
