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Communicating with your community
1. Planning and posting content
Regular digital communication is important for keeping our UCL alumni communities engaged and informed. We recommend:
- Posting on the channels you run at least twice a month
- Encouraging engagement through planned activity or asking questions
- Highlighting relevant UCL content for the region e.g. case studies, videos, academics from the country
- Promoting your activities, as well as UCL activities where relevant
Keep an eye on the UCL News and UCL Events feeds for stories and activities to share with your community.
2. Channels to use
The right social media platform for your communications depends on what is popular in your location and what platforms your members use. Some channels aren't available in certain locations and different age groups prefer particular platforms.
Bentham Connect is UCL's networking platform and is exclusive to UCL students and alumni. You can use the platform to set up a forum for your group - if you need support with this, get in touch. While we encourage you to use UCL Bentham Connect, other channels you can use include:
- WeChat (China)
- Weibo (China)
3. Branding your communications
As UCL’s logo, portico icon and the letters ‘UCL’ are registered trademarks, they must not be used, recreated or modified without permission.
Our branding guidelines (PDF) apply to all groups and networks globally and show how the UCL logo must be used in a variety of situations, including presentations, materials and merchandise.
4. Our top tips for great communications
Creating and sharing valuable content:
- Set out to educate, inspire or entertain
- Answer genuine questions and fulfil a real need
- Be generous in sharing the content of others too
- Understand what will work for your audience – imagine what they would like to engage with
- When posting from an event, take the time to find out if there are any specific event hashtags
- Exercise caution when using text on images in your posts. Make sure the text is very bold and easily read, and re-state your message in the copy of your post for accessibility
Writing social media posts:
- Be concise and clear
- Use active language
- Address your audience
- Ask questions to create a conversation
- @mention people and companies where relevant and possible
- Consider sharing relevant links to websites, articles, YouTube videos and blogs
- Use #UCLalumni
Using images:
- Make sure images are high-quality and engaging
- You shouldn't use images that are subject to copyright - for free-to-use images, try Unsplash
- If you're posting images from an event on social media, we strongly advise that you inform event attendees that you intend to share images in which they may feature and give attendees the option to not be included
