Manchester Migration Month campaign - #UoMmigration

06 Dec 2017

How an integrated communications campaign reinforced our Manchester Migration Month message

Communication is always at its most effective when messages are cascaded up, down and sideways. Another key approach is to reinforce content many times and in various ways so that messages become embedded in the mind of the audience.

This is exactly what the Faculty of Humanities sought to achieve when working on Manchester Migration Month in October – an integrated communications campaign spanning social media, research communications, public engagement and student recruitment activity.

So why October? Why Migration?

Manchester Migration Lab launched in January 2017 and its first key external activity – a conference attracting international delegates entitled ‘World on The Move’ – was scheduled for October 2017. In addition to this academic event, our Global Inequalities Campaign Manager promoted the launch of the new Lab and its work to address inequalities by commissioning Takeback Theatre Collective, a political performance group, to turn research into creative, bitesized content to engage the local community. This was also scheduled to for October.

With other migration-related talks, events and activities also happening that same month, we decided to create a coherent, integrated campaign plan to ensure all content and targeted messages could be fed across a range of channels and audiences to achieve maximum impact.

Objectives

To maximise external awareness of the University’s commitment and expertise around the field of migration and related inequalities
To find ways of tailoring details of all events and content across Faculty, University-wide and third-party social media channels for different purposes, spanning research impact, student recruitment and more
To gather benchmark statistics for social engagement and web conversions for future campaigns

Approach

The Global Inequalities Campaign Manager and Humanities Web Officer jointly reviewed existing ‘Our story’ student recruitment content which had links to migration and fitted each School in the Faculty. They slotted this content – along with events and talks – across four weekly themes for the month: Inequalities, Social Justice, Belonging, and Brexit.

A social media pack was created to suggest dates for assets and links to be used across a range of Institute, School and central social media accounts. Colleagues were encouraged to include particular bitly links to aid social conversation tracking and incorporate the #UoMmigration hashtag.

Key indicators of success

Manchester Migration Month saw…

The #UoMmigration hashtag used 856 times across the month
The campaign achieve a 7% increase in visits to the Faculty of Humanities web page
1,568 campaign page views from external users only across the month
41% of all visitors engaged enough to scroll to the bottom of the page
Three of our 16 Migration Month events achieve media coverage – TakeBack Theatre’s Be//Longing appeared in The Stage and The Guardian
Be//Longing sell out five performances encompassing 300 attendees, including a BBC drama producer and a special advisor to the Labour Party and European Parliament in cultural affairs
53% of those attending Be//Longing had not heard of Migration Lab before
47% of attendees say they would now read more about the University’s migration research and 68% said they felt more informed about migration and the challenges people face – a key social responsibility achievement
A feature in The University of Manchester Magazine

Find out more

To find out more about Manchester Migration Month, contact: