Last fall, the office of web and new media was looking for a new way to capture the excitement of commencement, so a social media campaign was launched during finals week. We relied on Storify to pull the user-submitted content together to tell the story of a Bear’s final week at Missouri State through a graduate’s perspective.
What is Storify?
Storify is a social network service that lets you aggregate social media posts into a cohesive unit or story. You can add and organize posts from blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Flickr and more.
Promoting commencement with Storify
We asked graduates to share about their last week at Missouri State on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, requesting that they share their thoughts and photos using #MSUgrad. The hashtag allowed us to easily identify the posts on Twitter and Instagram.
As students shared about their final week, we retweeted and shared their photos on Twitter and Facebook. By Thursday, we had enough content to begin building our story by:
- Using the “Storify this” plugin to add Facebook posts to the Storypad
- Syncing Twitter and Instagram accounts with Storify
- Searching #MSUgrad within the story editor to find posts
- Adding relevant content in sequential order to the story
- Including text to help the story flow
Once the story was initially built, we shared the link on Twitter and Facebook, asking graduates to add their voice. The story was then updated throughout commencement day to keep it fresh.
The story of fall commencement 2012
Read the final story below or on Storify: