Monthly Archives: June 2012

I was recently hired as the Communications Officer for Algonquin College, and part of my role was to promote our recent convocation ceremonies over social media. I touched on this briefly on Saturday’s show, but I thought a comprehensive list of a few key lessons I learned might be helpful.

Check the equipment: Make sure your accounts are all set up! I was using Hootsuite to send posts (I’ll touch on why later) and while I had linked the @AlgonquinColleg Twitter account, it wasn’t showing up in my dashboard. Furthermore, my phone was sending pictures out upside down on the third day because the gyroscope wasn’t calibrated. Finally, bring along your charger…you just might need it!

Tweet early and often: Get the hashtag(s) firmly established ahead of time. Ask questions to build buzz. Thank everyone individually since, on a special day like a convocation, they all deserve their 10 seconds of fame. If you find you’re getting tweets in batches and are worried about posting 5 times right away and then adding no new content for several minutes, consider scheduling some of your responses using Hootsuite’s tweet scheduler so they fire a few minutes later.

Stick to your hashtags: Set the hashtag(s) you’ll be using, add the search to your Hootsuite columns, and put the tags in every related post. If you’re retweeting someone who isn’t using it, add the hashtag to your response. You want to make them a part of the conversation rather than let people witness a 1 on 1 conversation that they’re not privy to. Also, using one-off hashtags (as part of a joke, for instance) is generally acceptable, but always check the hashtag before doing so to avoid exposing your audience to content they may not want to see. Occasionally, we used #ACGrads but there was another group using that hashtag for something unrelated. Other hashtags that joined the mix: #ACPride, #OverheardAtScotiabankPlace, #forceisstrongwiththisone.

Don’t forget the rest of your audience: Approximately 7,000 people graduated Algonquin College last week. If everyone had shown up and they each had 2 guests on average, that’s 21,000 people. But there’s 55,000 students at Algonquin College and, while many may have been home for the summer or tuned out, we can’t assume they aren’t going to be looking for content and neat events at the College. Consider your target market and don’t forget to serve the customers who may not be with you at that exact moment, but might be looking for your help.

Turn a 3 day event into a week-long event: The event itself may only be a few days (or even a few hours) but if you keep bringing new content to the table you can stretch it out. We began tweeting days in advance and sent out our media advisory to inform local news media of our guest speakers. Once the ceremony was complete, we discussed upcoming changes in the College’s management structure (as they related to convocation) and posted the keynote speeches on Youtube. All these initiatives and others (like sharing graduate success stories) gave us content to keep us talking about convocation for several days.

If there’s any other points you learned, leave a comment below and share your thoughts!

-PG