When Suzanne and the Strathclyde Alumni team approached Forumm to review their social media interaction with their community we jumped at the opportunity. Strathclyde is one of those universities that we generally use as examples of best practice, but the team there were looking at ways to make content creation more sustainable.
After carefully reviewing their channels we unanimously decided that the focus should be on growing their Instagram channels, primarily Reels, and finding ways to empower the wider alumni team to create videos that hit a chord with their audience. Instagram is also one of those channels that Alumni are now starting to interact with, where in the past it was primarily Linkedin (which Stratchclyde runs very well).
The Forumm team got to work on a benchmarking exercise that found other alumni instagram channels that were already creating engaging videos… and to be honest they were hard to find! Most looked like an afterthought repurposed from videos created for other purposes. However, once we identified the key accounts, and reviewed content that worked. Digging a bit deeper we spend a morning with the core team working on objectives, audience and content themes.
We came up with Seven themes that would work for an alumni audience, here are there to give you a flavour:
And we love a good workshop! Next up we prepared two half day workshops getting buy-in from the wider team.
One workshop revolved around showcasing examples relating to the content themes as well as sharing the objectives of the channel and how people can get involved.
The final workshop was a practical where we sent out groups of people to film, edit, add music and publish Reels.
Outcome:
When KAUST reached out with a big vision – creating a best-in-class reporting template and framework – we were in.
The goal? Build reports that make everyone’s lives easier, from the extremely busy executive team to detail-oriented data geeks, delivering insights that didn’t just sit on a page but inspired real action.
When Cornell first reached out about their annual Alumni Leadership Week, we couldn’t wait to get started! This is the big one for Cornell – a three-day whirlwind of talks, networking, and deep dives into leadership topics held on campus in Ithaca. But this year, they wanted to make it accessible to alumni all over the world. Because not everyone can just hop over to New York, right?
So, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work on making this hybrid vision a reality. The plan was to create a virtual experience that made online attendees feel as close to the action as the folks actually in the room. And we had our work cut out for us: live interactions, online Q&As, breakout sessions, and a whole four-week replay period to boot! Weekly check-ins with Cornell’s alumni team helped us iron out every last detail, and before we knew it, event day was around the corner.
