{"id":85058,"date":"2023-04-20T16:04:56","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T20:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=85058"},"modified":"2023-04-20T16:04:56","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T20:04:56","slug":"social-media-students-support-united-ways-period-promise-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2023\/04\/social-media-students-support-united-ways-period-promise-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media students support United Way\u2019s Period Promise campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

As bright pink donation boxes for Brock\u2019s United Way Period Promise campaign<\/a> appeared across campus last month, students in the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film used carefully crafted social media posts to encourage donors to fill them.<\/p>\n

For three weeks in March, Assistant Professor Michelle Chen\u2019s COMM 4P65 students channelled their learning and creativity into producing content, analyzing data and pulling out all the stops to engage the Brock community on the issue of period poverty.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the second year in a row that Chen’s social media students have worked with United Way Niagara. While last year\u2019s cohort focused on pitching campaigns, this class took the project a step further.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very different to pitch something than it is to actually do it,\u201d Chen says.<\/p>\n

\"Square

Social media content reached out to students to promote awareness about the collection boxes.<\/p><\/div>\n

Students worked in groups focusing on one social media platform each \u2014 TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n

Fourth-year Business Communication major Leanne MacAskill says the project stood out to her because it gave her a chance to both be creative and learn about a social issue that hadn\u2019t previously been on her radar \u2014 one that became a \u201cdriving factor\u201d as she and her group members tackled the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeriod poverty affects individuals in many ways that I did not think of, such as missing events or learning opportunities due to not having menstrual products,\u201d she says. \u201cBeing able to provide support for those in need really influenced the amount of effort that we put into promoting the Period Promise Campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fourth-year Media and Communication Studies student Rani Hansalia wasn\u2019t new to the field of social media marketing, having worked in social media strategy for companies with big budgets. But learning to rely on creativity and experimentation instead of paid advertising taught her some valuable lessons.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I learned through this experience promoting a social cause on social media was to use my resources wisely and really find ways to connect and resonate with the audience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Hansalia was also interested to see how small shifts in timing and targeting based on audience response could yield big results.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the details that we focused on ended up working towards the overall audience reach of the posts, and that helped us narrow our target audience reach to the users who would be able to donate to the campaign cause,\u201d she says. \u201cI was always under the impression that if something is working, there\u2019s no need for change, but this project helped me understand how the world around us is always changing and while consistency is good and essential, newness within that consistency is what the audience seeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project included several phases and steps to ensure that content was on brand and representative of the campaign\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll posts were pre-approved by me and two members of Brock\u2019s United Way Committee, and during the last week of the campaign, the communications manager of United Way Niagara came to our meeting and gave feedback that was very helpful,\u201d says Chen. \u201cStudents said the approval process made it very real to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another big lesson surrounded potential controversy and being ready for online backlash.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of the planning process, students created a social media contingency plan, thinking about issues or comments that might come up in this campaign and how they would respond to negative comments,\u201d says Chen. \u201cIt was an important part of developing hands-on skills in direct application. It\u2019s one thing to learn about social media theories and strategies, but it\u2019s another to play around with them and see how they work in the real world, and that\u2019s what I encourage the students to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Associate Professor Colleen Whyte (BRLS \u201997), Faculty Co-Chair of Brock\u2019s United Way Campaign, describes the partnership with Chen\u2019s class as a \u201cwonderful experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents were engaged and committed to this very important campaign,\u201d says Whyte. \u201cIt was exciting to see how students were able to spread the message via various social media platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

For MacAskill, learning the ins and outs of social media on behalf of a not-for-profit organization and seeing results in real time has made a lasting impression.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were many lessons learned,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was a great feeling to see the analytics and metrics of our group\u2019s posts and the number of impressions we had, and it was great to get feedback from United Way Niagara.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As bright pink donation boxes for Brock\u2019s United Way Period Promise campaign appeared across campus last month, students in the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film used carefully crafted social media posts to encourage donors to fill them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":85069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9794,1,38],"tags":[3797,153,703,4811,522,12606,12203,8744,9502,56],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85058"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85070,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85058\/revisions\/85070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}