A lesson in live tweeting

For this blog I thought I would talk about my experience of covering the Vice Chancellor’s Student Experience Awards.

This was the first time I had been able to attend these awards and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Luckily I was privy to who the winners were beforehand and was able to prepare in advance (Comms team perk!)

The stage is set for today's ceremony. Now we just need our winners! #VCSEA17 #BedsNews pic.twitter.com/5rPax9BIIq

— UoB Press Office (@uobnews) May 3, 2017

Twitter on a smartphone has a lovely function where you can save draft tweets – this has saved my bacon on a number of occasions when I have been live-tweeting.

Armed with the trusty #VCSEA17 hashtag, I wrote a tweet for each winner and saved it as a draft, ready to slot in a photo and send out when the time came. I also took a bit of time to find out if the winners had Twitter accounts that I could use while tweeting. Working at Bedfordshire has taught me many things, but when it comes to live tweeting, preparation is everything!

The hard work paid off when I got back to the office the next day and realised that the Twitter activity as a result of my tweeting had earned us 14,000 impressions in just one day!

Fantastic afternoon Not to be forgotten! Very kind words from @gurchrandhawa . Thank you to @CJacobi16 @uobnews @Profgailk @divhealthpsych https://t.co/R9JjdLsdZk

— Jolel (@JolelMiah) May 3, 2017

Once the awards got underway, it was fantastic to see the reaction of the winners as they went up to collect their awards. One highlight was Customer Services Advisor Arsalan Sheikh who jumped for joy when his name was called out (no jokes, he actually did!)

Another highlight for me was that I was aware that PhD student Jolel Miah, who I know well, had won the Deputy Lieutenant Community Engagement Award. He of course didn’t know this, and keeping it quiet beforehand was a challenge, but the look on his face when he realised he had won was priceless!

I’d like to say a huge congratulations to all the winners of this year’s awards. You can see the full list of winners here.

.@uniofbeds PhD students @JolelMiah & @Hamdi_Lemamsha honoured at Student Experience Awards: https://t.co/U2NoOB1yHe #VCSEA17 #BedsNews pic.twitter.com/J5TIKYIpDG

— UoB Press Office (@uobnews) May 5, 2017

And the award goes to…

This time of year tends to feel like we’re in an award season frenzy. It’s not only Hollywood that has a busy calendar with A-list celebs oozing glamour on the red carpets of the Oscars, Golden Globes and Baftas to name a few, it’s also pretty busy in Higher Education too - although perhaps with a little less glamour.

The Communications Team have been pretty busy helping to launch a number of internal awards and initiatives of our own, including the Student Experience Awards and the Annual Staff Conference, both of which recognise and celebrate our achievements and remind us of reasons to be proud of the University and its passionate staff and students. 

Although, when you’re so busy and engrossed in the day job, or with your studies, it often seems hard to find the time to enter awards or nominate someone deserving, adding yet another task to the to-do-list. But one of the privileges of working in communications is that we get to learn of so many great things that our staff and students are achieving. Therefore nominating someone for a student experience award really is a great way to highlight impressive projects, students and staff and give them the recognition they deserve.

Even if no award procures, just the exercise of making a nomination, writing an award submission or being shortlisted is a real boost to your motivation and helps you put your efforts into perspective and reflect on what you have achieved, which many of us often don’t often take the time to do.

In fact, here in Internal Communications, we were really chuffed to recently be shortlisted for an Institute of Internal Communications regional awards for our staff newsletter @beds. We very nearly didn’t make the time to do it, but the effort has paid off and we're pleased we did it.

If you needed any more inspiration, below are a few more reasons on why it’s worth nominating someone for an award or submitting one yourself:

•  It helps to bring external recognition for you and your organisation and which positively impacts on reputation
• It’s great for your CV and your linked-in  profile
• It can help with your internal profile and can spark other ideas in other teams
• It can help you gain more prestige with external contacts
• It boosts your morale

So if you know of someone that you feel deserves some recognition, check out our awards and get nominating.

However, even if there aren’t any awards or nominations that you want to make this time around, just a simple celebration of work gone well or showing gratification to staff and students for hard work undertaken can also make a real difference.