In this presentation, Polly Barnfield, OBE, explains how the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) leverages the celebration of student achievements to increase trust and engagement on social media. She walks through a concrete case study where two RVC students won prestigious International Canine Health Awards, describing how the college amplified the news by tagging the Kennel Club UK, quoting the students, and highlighting the award’s credibility. The celebration generated a surge of comments, shares, and positive sentiment, reinforcing the college’s reputation as a supportive community and motivating other students. Barnfield then outlines a repeatable strategy using an "Engage" platform: create topic‑based groups (e.g., vets, local businesses, other colleges, schools), add relevant organisations as content sources, and actively like, comment, share, or recreate valuable posts from those groups. This reciprocal interaction builds relationships, expands reach, and surfaces content that is useful for alumni and current students. The talk concludes with a brief call‑to‑action, inviting viewers to use the help button for any questions.
Chapters
Today we're looking at how celebrating wins can get you more engagement on social media. Now, this is the Royal Vet College and as you can see, what they do here is they talk a lot about what their amazing students are doing and they show a lot about the pets etc, which of course gets them some engagement. Now, this got them a lot more engagement than normal. And this is because what they've done is they've celebrated the wins of two students. So here it says two are RVC students are awarded prizes at the prestigious International Canine Health Awards. And that's a news release. So it's something that's come from, I guess, a wider release and then they have promoted it on theirs. So it's just explaining in the detail here. When awarded prizes in the student inspiration category in recognition for their contributions to the welfare of dogs, it goes into what the awards are and how prestigious it is. It goes into how it's administered by the Kennel Club Charitable Trust and it goes into, you know, the who's behind it. And then it goes into the events and celebrating those working in vet science who go the extra mile. And then it's seen about the four categories and then the great thing about it is, so, you know, you really understand from reading this, wow, this is really prestigious and a really big deal. If you didn't already know, then it says, you know, that. I guess it's straight from. Straight from the student. So here Michelle talks about how she was humbled and honoured to be the first vet nurse to win this postgrad inspiration Award. She goes into lots of detail about why she does what she does. And then Sierra's done exactly the same thing, so she's overjoyed and humbled. So it really just really connects you with their story and what they do and why they've done it. And then, of course, the other great thing is they've tagged in the Kennel Club UK as well. And Pete, people have loved it. People have actually tagged in, you know, the students themselves, people are saying, you know, there's such an inspiration, people have got really behind it. Other doctors and vets have gotten behind it as well. So what I love, it's just a great way to show that the university, or, sorry, the Royal Vet College is actually, sorry, it is part of the University of London. The Royal Vet College is actually, you know, super proud of their students and they celebrate their success and that in turns gives other students motivation. It encourages people to comment and congratulate because people love celebrating wins on social media. It gives the impression that the university is very much a team player and they encourage their best in their students. And that being part of, I guess this group means that you're much more likely to succeed and, you know, you could win awards just like these guys have. So it's inspirational. Now, if I was the Royal Vet College, what I would want to do is make sure that I'm. I'm sort of looking at different groups that I can be engaging with. So it might be vets, for example. What I might do want to do is be engaging with vets so that, you know that the vets are promoting what we do. They're. We're promoting what they do. So what I would do is go into the Engage section of maybe going to Engage and I would create a group. So in here where it says add business, you can add in a whole load of, say, vet. Or it might be local businesses, it might be other colleges, or it might be schools that, you know, that you want to try and attract students from to get into the college. Whichever group you choose, you would then add it in. And then here you would just take. So say it was mvet, you would just take it here instead of bookshops. And then what comes up here is a whole load of content. So it's all the content that comes from all of the vets or all of the colleges or anyone else that you've added in, and it's all their existing content that's come up right now. You can then go in and like, you can comment. And basically what that does is it shows that you're coming up in their conversation, it shows that you're supporting their business and they're much more likely to support yours back. And it also means that there might be really good content that you could share. So if it was vets, it might be, you know, I don't know, that they're advertising a job vacancy, or it might be that they're, you know, that they're talking about some pioneering new treatment or something like that, which again, your, your alumni and indeed your students might want to know about. And so you can go in and you can recreate a post as well. If you've got any questions whatsoever, click on the little blue button. We love to.
