Perhaps feeling pressure from stagnant user base, a falling stock price, or a new feature release from a certain mobile-only-photo-sharing social network, Twitter has announced that it is releasing its Moments feature to all Twitter users in the next few months. Moments, released roughly one year ago, was previously only available to Twitter and select brands.
Twitter Moments will allow anyone to create a custom curated timeline of tweets by themselves, others, or a combination of the two. Moments’ key benefit is the ability to tell a story using multiple perspectives from a particular event. This is a key differentiator from Instagram’s Stories feature, which only allows users to feature content from a single user account.
For colleges and universities, Twitter Moments is an opportunity to involve your audience in your storytelling. Anyone’s public content can be added to the moment you or your university creates, including members of your audience and target demographic. That could include prospective students, parents, students, faculty, and staff, and alumni. While simultaneously being able to go through a particular Moment, they will also be creators of the content.
So, how can colleges and universities take advantage of Twitter Moments? Below are a few examples of how your university can create Twitter Moments for special events on or around campus.
Orientation
Target incoming students by creating a Moment during orientation by highlighting tweets that are funny, emotional, or exemplify school pride. Imagine a story including students decorating their dorm rooms, cars overloaded with clothes, books, and snacks, and goodbyes from parents. There aren’t many better ways to establish a relationship with your new students on social media.
Finals Week
Current students love to talk about finals week. It plagues social media because most students will refrain from physically socializing in the days during and leading up to finals, so why not connect them digitally when they take study breaks? A Moment for finals week is an easy way for all students to connect because every active and former student never forgets the stressed feeling of finals week.
Homecoming
Whether it is at your school’s football game or an alumni barbecue, homecoming is probably the best way to boost alumni social engagement whilst combining school spirit. The whole weekend is loaded with opportunities for your school to create Moments and engagements with alumni who have returned to campus, while fostering feelings of nostalgia for those who weren’t able to attend. If your alumni weekend features a sporting event, make sure to get your current students involved as well.
Graduation
Usher your students into alum-dom with a Twitter Moment capturing people’s tweets, photos, and videos. This is an opportunity to capture the emotion of the day, both for graduating students and their family and friends who helped them arrive at this moment. It’s also a chance to turn graduating students into brand evangelists, ready and willing to help amplify your social messages as young alumni.
Open House
Open House is an excellent opportunity for admitted students to experience student life at your university. But what about the students unable to attend? Use Twitter Moments to capture the excitement of visiting your campus, both for students and parents, while also showcasing your current students, faculty, and administration welcoming them to campus. Who knows, your early engagement with prospective students could leave a lasting impression of your school and ultimately nudge a student in your direction as they narrow down their choices for a post-secondary education.
While social networks race to create new ways for brands to publish content, don’t forget that the first word in social media is social. Involve your audience in your storytelling, and you’ll foster better, stronger relationships with visiting prospective students, alumni reliving their glory days, and everyone in between.
