Social media platforms have taken the world by storm the last couple of years, with apps such as Instagram dominating online spaces across the globe, rapidly growing in numbers. At Peter Symonds College a group of budding journalists are utilizing this space to help promote their school, also helping prospective students transition into the school.

The idea is to help promote the College’s enrichment program, students have to participate in an extracurricular activities but many don’t know all there is on offer, by setting up the group and collaborating with different departments they hope to help students find a place where they can enjoy themselves. The students partaking get to expand their writing, digital media and photography skills, build a portfolio and are given a platform to share their work on and promote themselves. 

Hoping to widen their audience in terms of current and prospective students through social medias, they allow students to connect to the college and many of the groups’ students are looking to go on to do digital media/ communications, marketing or a creative degree. The interviews students do are able to be used to build a portfolio and to get work experience, having something unique to show sets them apart from other candidates.

The group was formed a couple of years ago by Holly McWilliam who wished to use online content to promote the college, but she couldn’t do it alone so built up a team of eager and skilled students /budding journalists. When she began the college had 230 followers and a messy, unstructured feed with no particular branding. They looked into branding and templates, content, consistency and into expanding the team in order to produce more content, quicker, and as a result have gained over 600 followers in only 2 years. Having students actively involved helps create relatable content that is encouraging from prospective students and current viewers alike.

The project Holly is most proud of is “the group as a whole, setting it up, it is so interesting working with committed and enthusiastic students and talents, they’re really good at what do.” She also enjoys seeing what works and what doesn’t, and working on big projects including the college’s pride event, “it’s very rewarding”.

Since the group has been formed there has been a surge of individual enrichments creating their own profiles which have reached prospective students already, helping them find a group they relate to, so they know they have something they can get into before they start, helping with the transition.

The college has introduced a new generation of people to the wonders of their school, promoting individual enrichments and helping students build a portfolio for their career, as well as creating an active space where students can interact and with the college and each other.