Social Media

Social media, like education, is a platform for change. It can and should be used before, during and after your short course to garner engagement and support - of your participants, their parents, your partners and your peers. Powerful communities can be created and maintained by your participants using social media in the weeks and years after they experience your short course.

To support you and promote your work among our global network, we want to share posts on all UWC short courses whilst they're taking place. We can only do this is you provide us with the content, ideally during your course.

So, please use your own social media pages to your advantage, and please share pictures and videos of your short course with us by tagging UWC at:

Instagram: @uwc_io

Facebook: @uwcio

Twitter: @UWC_IO

We look forward to sharing your short course widely!

Below you will find:

• Tips on choosing between social media platforms
• Tips on naming your social media channel
• Social media content ideas
• The comprehensive Social Media Guide
• Sample pictures which Project Impulso in Columbia and 2018 Project Umoja in Tanzania shared on their Facebook pages

Choosing Between Platforms

Naming Your Channel

• Keep the name relevant over time. For example, avoid 'XYZ Short Courses 2020'. This way you can build on your follower base year on year and keep in touch with past participants.
• Include 'UWC Short Course' in the name or username. This will add credibility to your short course.
• Avoid using 'UWC [name of country] as your name or username. For example, UWC Maldives. This is to avoid being mistaken for a national committee.

Content Ideas

• Testimonies/quotes from past participants: It is important to collect these from participants as soon as possible. Either during the short course or by reaching out to them via email in the immediate aftermath.
• Pictures! Remember to take lots of pictures during the short course so that you can share these throughout the next recruitment period.
• 'A typical day' - publish a sample schedule of what participants might get up to.
• Countdowns to the application deadline and start of the short course.
• Facts around your topic - start building awareness among participants, future participants and the wider world.
• Introduce the facilitators - include photos and bios including why they are excited for the upcoming short course.
• Add videos from the short course to your Instagram story, you could even do a 1 second (or 10 second) a day compilation for the whole short course.

Instagram Lives

Instagram Live session are a great way to promote your short course by connecting with an audience of potential applicants and answering their questions directly and in real time. This mode of promotion has proven extremely successful with UWC schools, allowing them to reach out directly to an extremely large audience.

Instagram Lives will take place on the official UWC International Instagram Page, which will allow you to reach a high number of users. To carry out an Instagram Live session, simply follow these four steps:

1. Reach out to past participants (where possible) asking if they would like to take part in an Instagram Live. Remember that Instagram Live only allows you to share the screen with one other device/user - meaning you could have two people in one location (e.g two facilitators) and two people in another location (e.g two past participants). You can not split the screen between more than two users.
2. Sign up to an Instagram Live session using this signup sheet, indicating the date and time when you would like to carry out the session. This will allow us to give you the login details to our Instagram page in advance and will also give us the chance to publicise your Instagram Live session.
3. Publicise and plan! Make sure your own social media audiences know when the Instagram Live will be happening so that they can plan to watch. We recommend publicising it 7 days in advance, then 3 days and then 1 day in advance. UWC International will also promote your Instagram Live session in advance. Make sure to read through the Guide to Instagram Live beforehand and think about what questions are likely to come up.
4. Enjoy and save the video! After the live broadcast, you can save your Instagram Live video to your phone. Press Save in the upper right corner. You’ll only be able to save your video — not the comments, likes, number of viewers or any live interactions. After saving, tap Done and your live video will be saved to your camera roll but will no longer be available in the app. You will then be able to repost this video for promotion purposes and can share it with UWC International to further promote your short course.

For further inspiration, you can view re-cuts of past Instagram Live sessions led by UWC school students here.

Please also read the below guide on facilitating Instagram Live sessions before going ahead with yours as it contains very important information.

Sample Pictures and Accounts

As a reminder, below are links to previous short courses' social media pages which can be used for inspiration surrounding how to use social media platforms to market your short course during the course itself, and beyond.