As the end of the school year approaches, the focus of students and faculty is on commencement and the surrounding activities. Use the reach and influence of your institution’s commencement speaker as a highly visible opportunity to engage with alumni and donors. Here are three ways to leverage this year’s speaker to connect with your audience.
In-Person Event
If the schedule of this year’s commencement speaker allows, set up an in-person event with the speaker specifically for alumni and donors. In addition to a traditional brunch or cocktail hour, even less formal settings can be as valuable for building engagement and goodwill. Setting aside special time with the speaker will signal to those invited that they are valued members of the community.
Question and Answer Session
Scheduling a question and answer session with the commencement speaker can also be beneficial for alumni and donors who might be unable to travel to commencement activities. One way to host a question and answer session is with a Phonecast. A Phonecast provides a radio-quality telephone call to thousands of valuable alumni and donors at once. Listeners can ask live, pre-screened questions of the speaker and also fill out poll questions while listening and participating from their phone.
Online Video
Beyond a livestream of your commencement ceremony, use recorded video of the commencement speaker’s speech to make all alumni and donors feel like VIPs. Post the full speech to YouTube or Vimeo, then post snippets of the video on social media sites with inspirational quotes as inviting copy.
Commencement speakers can be a big draw for alumni and donors to make sure that they are at the graduation ceremony in-person. Leverage that desire to engage with your audience in new ways as the school year comes to a close. Sign up now for a Phonecast demo.