{"id":160,"date":"2016-05-10T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/socialmedia\/?p=160"},"modified":"2016-05-10T12:01:46","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T12:01:46","slug":"when-the-world-cup-came-to-sheffield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/socialmedia\/2016\/05\/10\/when-the-world-cup-came-to-sheffield\/","title":{"rendered":"When the World Cup came to Sheffield"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a week in April this year,\u00a0we used Sheffield Hallam’s main Twitter account \u2013 @sheffhallamuni <\/a>\u2013 to run a daily give-away, utilising\u00a0Twitter’s excellent polls functionality. Every day for a week, users could vote in a poll on our timeline for the chance to win a branded hoodie.<\/p>\n

Of course, we did it for a reason. We didn’t just have piles of burgundy hoodies lying around we wanted to get rid of. We had an objective: fun.<\/p>\n

Okay, that’s over-simplifying it, but it’s essentially right. Organisations do a lot of promoting on social media \u2013 ‘shouting’ about this, ‘making some noise’ about that \u2013 and they forget that social media is about conversations.<\/p>\n

In order to have a conversation with someone, you need to listen to them.<\/p>\n

The impetus for doing a give-away came from that simple premise: we wanted to ask our followers a question, and engage them in a dialogue. Specifically, we were interested in our current students, who are our most engaged audience on Twitter. And it coincided perfectly with Varsity \u2013 the city’s annual celebration of student sport.<\/p>\n

\"Varsity<\/a>

Varsity is a real celebration of student sport in Sheffield, and an opportunity to highlight the sense of belonging among students.<\/p><\/div>\n

In order for it to succeed, we knew it had to be\u00a0something fun and conversational, that our followers would want to take part in. We wanted to run it over a few days, to build up\u00a0a bit of momentum \u2013 and for it to feel like an event.<\/p>\n

Lastly, we wanted to celebrate the great city that we’re proud to be a part of.<\/p>\n

So we came up with the World Cup of Sheffield. For five days, our followers would tell us what they thought was the best thing about Sheffield. And on the last day the final would decide what the best thing in Sheffield was.<\/p>\n

So, once again, here are the component pieces of our give-away:<\/p>\n