This November, we were tasked by Georgetown University’s Office of Advancement to conceive of a short video that would be sent to alumni at the end of the year to thank donors for their support and encourage others to consider Georgetown in their end-of-year giving. As alumni of the University ourselves, we look back and remember our experience at Georgetown as a series of moments, big and small. The crunch of a “Chicken Madness” sandwich from the deli near campus, getting a beer at the long-lived college pub The Tombs, or the tradition of walking around the University’s mosaic seal. All these moments were highly sensory and created what we felt was a larger tapestry of the Georgetown experience.
While we worked closely with the client to think of great Georgetown moments to include in a 90 second collection of auditory and visual moments, we thought it might be useful to call on the large community of alumni present on facebook and twitter. So the @georgetownalumni twitter feed posted a cell phone snap we took during our filming and asked alumni to share their #gumoments to be included in the video. The response was phenomenal and highly informative. Click HERE for a glimpse at just some of the responses we received, collected by Georgetown through Storify. Not only was this informative for the production, but we were able to involve our audience early on in the process, helping to build anticipation for the video in the hopes that it would encourage those same people to share widely with their networks. And they did. The video received over 14,000 views in just over a week, tracking higher and faster than any previous video. And in retrospect, we could have incorporated social media even more to help build interest in the production and source ideas. But below are a few tips for crowd-sourcing the production that we learned along the way:
1. Create a compelling hashtag built around your campaign.
2. Take behind-the-scenes photos and instagrams of your production to tweet and facebook throughout the campaign.
3. Reach out directly to those followers and constituents that have large followings to share and RT.
4. Keep your campaign short and close to the release of your video.
5. Let your followers know when you’ll be releasing the video.
6. Encourage those followers who get excited about the project, to help you share it widely!
You can view the final video below:
