In this golden age of Instagram Influencers, online presence is key to growing your student organizations. College students are more likely to pay attention scrolling through the constant flow of new posts on their Instagram feed than walls covered with flyers and posters. Print media retains value, but social media will reach target populations of young adults more quickly and more effectively.
Your Instagram profile serves the same purpose as a table at your college’s activities fair. Social Media has created innovative marketing opportunities to construct an image and voice reflective of the character of your student organization. Your Instagram should have a personality that will attract the sorts of participants you are looking for.
Most student organizations are always welcoming to the idea of more members. Your Instagram can potentially draw in new participants. Incoming students especially will form their first impressions of your organization by the social media posts they see throughout the months leading up to their first semester. The goal should be to promote your organization as fun and inviting and get your followers excited about what your organization is contributing to the campus community!
Advertise events, giveaways, and campus news to your campus community. Using a combination of graphics and text to share relevant information both reinforces the personality you are trying to construct and boosts your online visibility. Don’t forget to follow up afterwards!
Managing social media for an organization requires a different approach than your personal profiles. Instead of selfies, pet photos, and vacation snapshots, semi-professional Instagram accounts use a combination of text, photos, and digital graphics. Take inspiration from how artists, writers, and media organizations go about marketing themselves and their content.
Canva has a wide variety of free features that can be layered to create eye-catching content and tailored to fit your organization’s aesthetic.
The first step to designing on Canva is to pick the type of media you want to produce. While custom dimensions are an option, Canva’s presets will ensure that your design is optimized for your intended purposes. Their canvases include Facebook Banners, Instagram Posts, Posters, Business Cards, and Presentations.
Canva allows you to upload your own images to your account library, giving endless possibilities to how you can incorporate your own photos. You could create a photo collage or use free stickers and frames from Canva’s library to add an artistic flair. Here is a recent post I designed to demonstrate the ways in which you can create visual variety using elements from Canva’s free collections. I added the frame and vector art to draw attention around the subject’s face. I also adjust the transparency for some of the elements I add. The frame I used here set to 85% opacity to avoid overpowering the image.
Most of Canva’s embellishments also allow you to change the colors with a custom selection. Be mindful of the color palettes you use when creating designs for your Instagram feed. Using consistent shades and tones will help your grid to look clean and cohesive. Posting a graphic with neon colors one day and one with cool-toned neutrals the next will cause a visual clash that will distract from the individual appeal of the separate posts. Stick to a color scheme that reinforces the personality of your organization.
With this graphic, I used one of Canva’s background images, the circle vector and added the text. This may look simple but posts like these actually serve a purpose. Similar to using white space in a design, having posts to break up the amount of graphics that have a lot of text will create a balanced appearance. Our chapter’s previous Social Media Director would alternate inspirational quotes with graphics linked to our writer’s article content.
Lastly, here is an example of a poster I designed to recruit new members this semester. The girls at the bottom were individual vectors that I found in Canva’s library, which I layered over each other to give the appearance that they are standing in a group. I hope this shows that you can create a variety of attention-grabbing designs that will grow your followers’ interest in your organization! I focus primarily on Instagram to reach our chapter’s audience, but you can download designs from Canva as PDF, JPEG, and PNG files to print or share wherever you like online – Twitter, Facebook, even Snapchat! Encourage your organization’s members to share the images to their personal accounts (like their Instagram Story) to reach even more screens and build a larger following.