Update on communications for June 2021

Commencement Stories

The University of Denver Newsroom marked this year’s Commencement season with robust coverage from across the University. The team will produce 18 stories, which coincides with the number of celebrations this year. Each story features at least one student from each of our academic units, the 2020 Commencement ceremonies, the Sturm College of Law Commencement ceremonies, and this week’s ceremonies celebrating the class of 2021. The first student profile ran on March 1 and featured the first graduating cohort of grand challenge scholars from the Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science. To date, the most popular student profile had 1,077 unique pageviews and featured Lynnzee Brown, a media studies major from the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and a DU gymnast.

In addition to posting on the DU Newsroom website, the stories have been shared with the campus community through The Bridge and on social media. The video team has also been hard at work, covering commencement through a series of videos. The first two videos, a recap of May’s commencement ceremonies and a student featurette featuring music student Christina Ebersohl, are available on our YouTube channel. A similar recap video honoring the 2021 graduates will be available next week.

Issues Management and Crisis Planning

One of our largest issues management lifts of 2021 so far, the healthcare change information campaign, is ending. The Cigna transition was a rapidly moving initiative that called for significant collaboration, time investment, and resources. Nearly everyone from MarComm became involved at some point, making it a tremendous overall lift for the division. While we are thankful to have this major project behind us, we will miss our tight collaboration with our HRIC partners!

In partnership with Campus Safety, after launching its new web presence, we evaluated communication templates used during the onset of a crisis and pared them down to five main categories: Lockdown, Lock Out, Shelter in Place, Evacuate, and Weather. As we complete this work, we will ensure that each category has an initial notification template (sent by Campus Safety Dispatch to all campus stakeholders) and an accompanying website landing page. The landing pages will provide stakeholders with additional information, resources, and updates throughout various crises. While we hope we never have to use the tools we are building, it’s critical for our community’s safety and DU’s reputation that they stand ready to support us in a crisis, should we need them.

Social Media at DU

Student intern initiates #TBT campaign

MarComm is making strides with social media. And the past few weeks have seen some excitement for the team. We have been working with DU senior Will Belford, who is majoring in Strategic Communications with minors in Marketing and Psychology. Serving as our social media intern, Will will complete his internship by launching the first student-created campaign to hit our social media accounts. It has been incredibly rewarding to hand the reins over and incorporate more of DU’s student perspective and voice in our channels. The Instagram campaign he created centers around the Throwback Thursday hashtag (#TBT) that is popular around the globe. The campaign calls on the DU community to share their TBT pictures using #TBTDU. One submitted photo will be selected by a group of students who will assess the submissions, and the accompanying community member will receive swag from DU’s campus bookstore. In addition, the winning photo will be shared across DU’s social media accounts. If you want to participate for a chance to have your photo featured, today’s the last day to post to DU’s Instagram channel! Will plans to analyze the success of the campaign and make recommendations for adjustments if the campaign is repeated. We are so thankful for his contributions to our team and look forward to offering a variety of student positions in the future!

Hiring news

We’re moving into the first round of interviews for the Social Media Specialist position. As you might imagine, we’re eager to fill this position as we continue working in collaboration with several other DU team members to enhance and improve our overall social media presence and engagement.

Noticeable month over month improvement

Overall, our social media efforts are continuing to be successful. Impressions across all official DU accounts rose 11.9 percent from April to May, engagements are up 2 percent, and link clicks are up 0.9 percent at the same time. The channels continue to gain followers, and we have greatly enjoyed the engagement we see when sharing photos and videos. Not surprisingly, our top social media posts last month were in support of Commencement.