Kyle and Grant, your humble 11W Summer Marketing Interns checking in. Our job this summer is to use #marketing to make a great site even better. We will focus on product and content improvement, community engagement, and increasing readership.

Week two’s task was to evaluate and increase the engagement of current OSU students. Eleven Warriors currently does a pretty good job with the students, but we wanted to brainstorm ways to do an even better job. I (Grant) am pretty far removed from this population, so major credit to Kyle for all of the following.

I asked a variety of my friends at OSU the following four questions about 11W.

1. What do you know about Eleven Warriors?
2. How do you use Eleven Warriors?
3. Why do you use Eleven Warriors?
4. What would make you use Eleven Warriors more?

First off, everyone was aware of 11W which is pretty impressive for the reach of the site. Of the students I asked, some were members of fraternities, some were not, and they represented every grade, so it seems we are reaching several different audiences of OSU students. Everyone I asked knew it was a site/blog that “covered OSU football”. I attribute them thinking that it is only/mainly football because that’s what we put the most effort into. Also the lack of success of the basketball program has made everyone less likely to dig up info on them.

Most of the students I talked to did not use 11W on a consistent basis. Of those that did, they usually use it during football season to get background before the game or after the game to see the write up. For the majority of people, most said that they would click an article they saw on social media. After reading that article, some may click on the home page and find something else interesting, but typically just read that article. Of the 424 people I follow on Twitter, 117 follow 11W. I thought it would be 90% guys that followed the account, but was surprised that girls were probably about 35-40% of the followers from my friends.

Everyone I talked to knew that 11W was very in-depth and high quality. I think that speaks a lot for the #brand, that even the ones that rarely got on the site knew that it was the best place to get good, accurate information on the OSU Football team. Of those that never got on the site, they said that their friends that know OSU sports the most, typically get their knowledge from 11W. Almost no one could name any other OSU sports site.

As for what would make everyone use Eleven Warriors more, I think it mainly comes down to the success of the teams. The awareness of the site is there, but many of the students are not that into Ohio State sports. When there is interest and excitement around the team, everyone is much more likely to retweet articles/stats from 11W. For the huge sports fan OSU student, they love the site and use it religiously. For the typical OSU student, I think the articles are a little too in-depth for what they care to know. Twitter seems to play a huge part in getting people to the site.

All in all, 11W is known as the premier Ohio State sports site amongst OSU students. As far as how much students use it is really tethered to the success of the team. 11W is the best at what it does and it’s difficult to try and see great areas of improvement that would drive significantly more traffic from the students other than riding some of the coattails of other successful Ohio teams/storylines.

11W Dry Goods Survey Results

Thank you to the 67 readers who graciously took time out of their day to take our Dry Goods survey. Some of the highlights are below.

For the question, “Would you consider purchasing any of the following Eleven Warriors branded items if they were available in the Dry Goods store?”, it’s pretty clear you want some long-sleeved items. Shipping glassware can be very tricky, so we will look into the viability of coffee cups and pint glasses. Coozies seem to be a slam dunk as well.

The following free-form question where you could voice your opinion yielded some great results:

• “H-O-O-D-I-E-S”
• “#FreeTheHoodie”
• “Hoodies”
• “Hoodies”
• “The hoodie has long been requested and would sell fast”
• “hoodies”
• “11W staff bobbleheads would be kinda funny. I’d buy one of DJ holding Starcat in a heartbeat.”

If there is a new hoodie, you all appear to want a new design. We’ll continue to work on that.

The one thing that seems to have a consensus is how great the summer interns are, which is really very flattering. However, we surveyed 67 people and 10 of you jive turkeys didn’t answer this lay-up of a question. NO HOODIE FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As always, please let us know how we are doing in the comments. Have a safe and happy Memorial Day!

Grant & Kyle