VCU School of Business Graduation Celebration

In the spring, the School of Business has their graduation at the Siegel Center. We utilize the Jumbotron in a social media campaign every year, where we ask people (students, staff and family members) to use our hashtag #VCUBIZ20XX on Twitter and Instagram in order to have their graduation celebration posted in realtime on the Jumbotron before the ceremony. In preparation for this interactive user generated experience, we promote it on social media in the weeks prior to graduation.

On graduation day, I monitor and approve every tagged post before letting it post on the Jumbotron so nothing inappropriate is shown, and interact with our posts congratulating each student who tags us, and liking family member posts.

I also partner with our graduation photographer who sends me real-time photos of the ceremony and the commencement speaker so I can use those photos on Instagram Stories to create a commencement speech highlight in a timely manner.

On Instagram, we also have a small campaign where we ask graduating students to submit their graduation photos to us for a chance to be featured in our account. This small token of appreciation for our graduate goes a long way to boost engagement on our Instagram, and we always get a good number of submissions in the spring and winter ceremonies. We share incorporate submissions on our feed, and then on our Instagram stories on graduation day! Below are several examples of what we’ve been doing since 2019.

In 2020 we created our own set of GIFs to celebrate our graduates virtually even more! We used the GIF frame around every photo submitted to us by students wanting a graduation shout out. Our other branded GIFs were also successfully used organically within our student population. Overall, the GIFs such a success that we decided to use them again in 2021, but we instead used the University branded ones in our Instagram Stories.

2021 Instagram Stories examples: