Graduation 2015: a strategic approach to social
People sometimes ask me about our ‘social media strategy’. The truth is that we don’t have one – nor do we need one.
We do have a communications strategy which covers the strategic use of social media to raise profile and manage reputation.
And that’s the right approach. We don’t have a ‘telephone strategy’, or an ’email strategy’. When it comes to social media, we have content strategies, guidelines and a range of different functions that we provide with social media tools.
What we do with social media directly supports our communications strategy. I’ll use the example of our Graduation 2015 campaign to illustrate how.
#Graduation starts today! Tag your photos with #SHUgrad and pick up your free print from the ballroom entrance. pic.twitter.com/p5JP8kscW3
— Sheffield Hallam Uni (@sheffhallamuni) November 9, 2015
For two weeks in November, our students took to the stage in Sheffield’s City Hall, shaking hands with Professor Robert Winston and picking up their certificates.
It’s a key milestone in the student experience, and a real opportunity to demonstrate the sense of belonging – or brand affinity – among our student and alumni communities. And, by involving those communities in our social media campaign, we had the opportunity to show how vibrant the sense of belonging among students and alumni is to a range of external audiences.
We also wanted to use social media to enhance the experience of graduates during the fortnight of celebrations. So, working with graduate Tom Stayte and his innovative SquareShare social printing service, we gave them a reason to engage with it. By posting their photos to Twitter or Instagram, and tagging them ‘#SHUgrad’, they could get free printed copies, with details of our Alumni Connect service on each print.
Are you on our #SHUgrad photo wall?! Come see us at the Ballroom entrance for your FREE print out. pic.twitter.com/1Hz4HJr0T8
— Alumni Connect (@SHU_Alumni) November 16, 2015
On our own channels, we focused on the graduates themselves, ‘doorstepping’ them at the City Hall, and asking them what they loved most about their time at Sheffield Hallam.
Our #engineering students are graduating today! We've been asking them what they loved most about Hallam #SHUgrad pic.twitter.com/XafnoFHFlq
— Sheffield Hallam Uni (@sheffhallamuni) November 10, 2015
As well as promoting engagement with #SHUgrad at the City Hall, we interacted with social media users in real time, offering personalised responses with a view to deepening engagement as conversations developed.
@rndgphotography Thanks Ravinder! We're glad it's been such a blast. Keep in touch with us, and let @SHU_Alumni know it things go. #SHUgrad
— Sheffield Hallam Uni (@sheffhallamuni) November 11, 2015
One of the key themes in our communications strategy is our role in the city region. We hold our graduation ceremonies in Sheffield’s City Hall, right in the heart of the city centre. By focusing on visual, student-led content, in and around the City Hall, we demonstrated our civic pride, and our role in providing education, skills and employability in the region.
Lastly, we communicated the University’s values around equality, diversity, and inclusion, by including a diverse range of students – from a range of backgrounds and academic areas – in the campaign.
The #SHUgrad campaign is a great example of a university using social media for community management. Teams from the university’s marketing, communications and alumni functions worked with students from the start, involving them in the campaign (by getting them to create the graduation video) and interacting with them throughout graduation fortnight.
That approach is fundamental to social media at Hallam: we want to show our audiences that we use social media to talk to, listen to, and get feedback from, student and alumni communities. And, by encouraging social media users to post about graduation from their own accounts (and share our posts) we reached new audiences.
Here are the stats: conversations about#SHUgrad led to 6,871,453 brand impressions, and 11,339 engagements with the @sheffhallamuni Twitter account alone. And the #SHUgrad hashtag trended in Sheffield every day for the whole two weeks.
On a personal level, it was also a really good example of teams from across the University working together, with students, on a key bit of University business. And it’s opened the door to even more collaborative, engaging approaches to social media at Hallam.
Joe Field, social media manager
That's a wrap! Congratulations to all our new graduates & remember you're always a part of @sheffhallamuni https://t.co/BamVkzybaH #SHUgrad
— Alumni Connect (@SHU_Alumni) November 20, 2015