KEEPING Bolton College's Learners CONNECTED & Engaged IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC

BACKGROUND

Bolton College is a further education institution located in Greater Manchester, England, primarily catering to 16-18-year-olds but also offering adult education courses. When the pandemic hit and the school shifted to virtual learning, they were finding it hard to keep students engaged and transfer their strong on-campus culture to a virtual setting.

As the school’s retained digital marketing agency, they tapped our team to strategize a creative campaign to improve student experiences while stuck at home.

HOW I HELPED

Serving as Bolton College’s social media manager, I took the lead on this project and adapted the tone of all posts to be engaging, casual, and fun while playing into trends and ‘lockdownisms’.

I also implemented the following themed content formats to encourage student engagement and involvement:

• Monday Mood/Monday Mystery
• Good NEWSdays
• Wednesday Wisdom
• Fact Friday/#FridayFunny/Friday Feels
• What’s Hot
• Emoji Pictionary
• Thursday Trivia

Another creative idea introduced was Bolton College’s Holiday at Home, a series of themed posts over the long May Bank Holiday weekend to help students recreate the vacation feeling at home. These posts linked back to Bolton’s available courses and shared advice from students of these subjects. Posts included:

• Tips for making your bedroom feel like an escape (Travel/Tourism, Design)
• Links to recipes for a variety of different cultural cuisines (Culinary Arts)
• Spa Day self-care tips (Beauty Therapy/Hairdressing & Barbering)
• An at-home workout routine (Sports)
• ‘Big Night In’ encouraging students to dress up, Zoom with friends, and dance at home to a corresponding Spotify playlist

Our social media content partnership with Bolton College yielded the following results during the period in which this activity occurred:

• 39% increase in applications from young people aged 16
• An average of 3 million Facebook impressions per month
  
• 3.2 million total video views on Facebook
• Nearly 650,000 total engagements across platforms
• Over 136,000 link clicks