University social media team win two Digital Impact awards
23 Oct 2024
The social media team, based in the Directorate of Communications, Marketing and Student Recruitment are celebrating after winning two prestigious cross-sector awards.
The Digital Impact Awards sets the industry-wide benchmark in digital stakeholder engagement and honours the best corporate digital communications work.
The team won Gold for best use of digital from the education sector, beating off competition from Cambridge University Press and Silver for best community development.
The Gold award highlighted how the team’s creativity and strategy stands out from peers and other organisations in the sector. The entry highlighted a change in strategy to improve communication and engagement with students since the pandemic. Research gathered student perspectives and highlighted key content topics, while student content creators were recruited to pitch ideas and develop content for University channels. Our TikTok channel has grown by more than 850% and videos were viewed 13 million times in the 2022-23 academic year.
One judge praised the “brilliant execution with a strong reach and value for money across multiple channels.”
The Silver award for Best Community Development demonstrated the University’s engaged digital community of over 1.1 million followers on social media. It recognises digital community management, creativity and share ability of content as well as the community’s relevance to overall comms objectives. The award also highlighted collaborative work across the University on social media activities, including partnerships with the Students’ Union and Student Marketing teams.
Alistair Beech, Interim Head of Communications, said: “The award wins are thoroughly deserved. The team does an outstanding job managing platforms and online reputation, creating engaging content for a range of audience and growing our digital community. Their hard work and dedication mean the University is a leader in digital engagement; from highlighting the Manchester student voice through content creators, disseminating academic research or supporting senior leaders like our President and Vice-Chancellor with digital engagement activity.”
About the team
Our social media teams can help colleagues reach new audiences through organic and paid social media campaigns related to research, student experience and marketing and key events to boost the University's brand and reputation.
The teams manage social media enquiries from prospective and current students and provide best practice support and training to practitioners across the University using social media channels. Access training for staff here (UoM sign-in required).
Key University channels can be viewed via the social media directory. In 2024, the Official UoM TikTok was named in the Top 5 university accounts in the UK by an independent agency.