Preparing for the Big Day

I've been working with the Digital Media Unit within Curtin University, in order to organise a social media plan for the Open Day. As our Open Day targets a wide variety of people, mainly future students, who can be high school graduates, current high school students, current tertiary education students, or prospective mature age students, our communication channels for the event need to vary also. We have an Open Day website, that includes an online program for the day, as well as information on what will be available on the day. We also have radio advertising, and print advertising being run on Western Australian radio stations and newspapers, that is raising awareness for when the Open Day will be held, and what time. I however, will be focusing on social media. Many of the people who attend an event such as Open Day are 21 and under, and it's no secret that social media is the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to reach this target audience. Curtin twitter accounts, facebook pages, and instagram accounts are all up and running, and are focused on open Day throughout the end of July and beginning of August, in order to raise awareness for Open Day. The social media plan for Open Day includes objectives, before, during and after the event. These are:

Before

• To propagate event awareness outside of the assigned media channels and schedule.
• To encourage attendance and remind attendees of the date on their preferred channels.
• To extend the reach and value of individual activities which might not otherwise be seen.

During

• To support and respond to users of Twitter and Facebook.
• To remind, promote and propagate activities on the day through Twitter/Facebook.
• To alert staff and pass queries or conversations of interest.
• To monitor conversation and comments and feedback for future event use.
• To identify and intercept any potential issues/alerts raised in social exchanges.

After

• Collection of statistics from social media on the day.

Other aspects of the social media plan included examples, 20 core messages, and 100 extra messages to raise awareness of specific activities on the day, to be spread over the Curtin Facebook and Twitter accounts. 

I believe that social media is a really important and easy way to communicate with a large audience of people. Curtin has used social media in previous years on their Open Day and had a lot of success with it. Goals for this year's event was to trend on Twitter, and respond to every question and comment posted to the Curtin Facebook page and Twitter account. I met with the Digital Media Unit (DMU) in order to discuss these points, and how the social media plan would work on the day of the event, so that every one knew which role they would be undertaking on the day. As Curtin is such a massive institution, there are so many people involved in the planning of the Open Day. I've found this really different to other work I've done within smaller organisations, such as the MS Society of WA, but also really exciting. There are always so many people working with you on particular projects, which makes for more innovative and exciting ideas. This has shown to me how important clear and regular communication is. Asha and I meet with people in different areas of Public Relations and Marketing approximately three times a day, in order to keep on top of any new information or projects.