5 Ways Students Can Tell Your University Story
We all know that it’s the students themselves that can really bring your university story to life – in the most realistic way. So, here’s 5 quick ways you can partner with students to do just that.
One: Duke University (USA) – Students tell the news
Here’s a simple, yet rather brilliant idea. Get two students to tell the weekly story of their university. Include campus news, research impact and anything that made the social feeds that week. And get it all done in under 60 seconds. Change the student storytellers each week. And then serve it all up through a mix of social media. That’s what you get with ‘The Week at Duke.’ Every week. Here’s the latest – watch the video, click into YouTube and get access to the back stories too.
Two: Deakin University (AUS) – Students hashtag their story
Want to show prospective students just how good your Study Abroad experiences are? Well, have a look at what Deakin in Australia do. It’s so simple, yet so effective. At Deakin they ask their students abroad to hashtag some of their very best Instagram moments with #DeakinAbroad. They then feed everything into one page and the result is a scroll of over 3,000 photo stories of just how good study abroad can be. Click here to see for yourself.
Three: Academy of Art University (USA) – Flipboard Stories
Heard of Flipboard? It’s an easily accessible social app that allows you to create your own polished, digital magazine in seconds. At the Academy of Art University in California they are using Clipboard to both innovate learning whilst giving the marketers some brilliant content to share. Fashion Journalism students report their whole course through their very own Flipboard magazines, including the work they do and the inspiration they find. It’s a great way of getting therm to learn the essential digital journalism skills they need. The marketing team can then pull together some of the very best content to create a single Flipboard to share with the world – a perfect window into the course. Have a look by clicking here
Four : University of Dundee (UK) – Test Drive
What better way of getting students to sample university life than giving them a test drive? That’s just what the University of Dundee did with their ‘Test Drive’ competition. Influential social media students won a campus experience at Dundee. They were given brand new iPads too, and the wifi codes, and told to go give them a go. Now put that all together and you have 5 trusted advisors posting, tweeting, snapping, blogging and vlogging the whole campus experience to their own armies of social media followers. And we’re talking hundreds, maybe thousands, of similar students all in the same boat. Now, that’s a great way of sharing a peer-to-peer experience. Click here to learn more.
Five : University of Chester (UK) – #MyChesterStory
The University of Chester have been doing some admirable work to share the student voice. Recently they were seen encouraging students to sit on a mobile sofa whilst they filmed their views on university life. Think Friends and Central Perk (and there really is a Central Perk coffee shop in Chester) meets Big Brother. But you can’t beat the simplicity of this video they edited, aggregating some of the many #mychesterstory social posts out there. It’s well worth a watch – a perfect example of bringing social media conversation to life as part of an engaging, bigger story.
That’s just 5 things out there. But there’s a lot more to dig into. At the Future Index we work with clients to help them see the bigger picture and opportunity. We bring it all to life through our presentations, workshops and consulting. If you want to know more then please contact Jim Tudor at jim.tudor@thefutureindex.com or tweet us @futureindex.
