How we reached over 233,000 people by hosting Virtual Open Days
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began in April 2020, the Strategic Communications and Brand (SC&B) team have supported our colleagues in Global Student Recruitment and Admissions (GSRA) by hosting eight virtual Open Days, Offer Holder Days, and Postgraduate Open Afternoons live on Facebook and YouTube, which have reached 233,000+ people with 39,000+ video views.
As the country went into its first national lockdown, on-campus events were also put on hold. As a result, the University needed to develop a method of inviting prospective students to Keele ‘virtually’, and replicate the experience they would get on-campus during one of our traditional Open Days. The timescales for this were also rather tight, with only a month to plan before the next scheduled Open Day.
The rise of livestreaming
Rather than only providing pre-recorded content, we wanted to experiment with livestreaming on Facebook and YouTube.
Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook have all put a lot of investment in expanding their livestreaming communities, and 2020 was a record-breaking year. The sector grew a full 45 percent between March and April.
Livestreams allow the viewer to engage and become part of the content they are watching. This helps us create two-way conversation with prospective students, which has proven to be invaluable during the pandemic.
Getting to grips with livestreaming
All of our livestreams are hosted by SC&B’s Digital Content Manager, Tom Maurice, from his home ‘studio’ that has evolved throughout the pandemic from a simple iPhone and tripod, to what you see below.
We then use Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) and Microsoft Teams to piece it all together and stream live to Facebook and YouTube. Our Open Days tend to last seven hours, and we give full tours of our campus, accommodation, and facilities.
Reaching a global audience
Our livestreams have enabled us to bring over 150 people from across the Keele community to prospective students allowing them to ask questions to our academics, professional services teams and current students. Our most successful stream received over 2,200 comments and questions and was seen by over 10,000 people.
We’ve also managed to engage with a global audience via our livestreams. Working with the International Team we streamed one of our Virtual Open Days to Chinese social network Weibo which had over 2,500 live viewers.
We’re excited to continue experimenting with live broadcasts on social media with our next Virtual Open Day taking place on the 19th June on Facebook and YouTube.
