Alumni Office, University of Oxford: social media follower analysis

In Spring 2021, the Alumni Office at the University of Oxford commissioned Pickle Jar Communications to analyse its social media followers. The Alumni Office wished for valuable insights about their audiences to ensure future content and communications would resonate with their alumni community.

The Alumni Office has a clear goal: to increase intellectual and emotional ties between alumni and the University of Oxford, building an engaged, informed community of advocates and supporters throughout the UK and overseas.

Since the advent of COVID, the Alumni Office has seen an unprecedented surge in digital engagement from alumni members. In particular, there has been a sharp increase in growth and activity across alumni social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, and particularly Instagram.

However, despite the increase in attention, engagement, and follower count, the Alumni Office realised that they didn’t necessarily have a clear idea of the identity of their social media audiences, or their motives, behaviours, or needs.

As such, the Alumni Office sought the help of Pickle Jar Communications.

Our research team carried out the following activity:

• Analytics review - we conducted a review of Alumni Office social media analytics. Firstly, we gathered demographic information about their followers, so they could get a feel for their age, location, gender, browsing habits, and more. Secondly, we sought insights into how followers interacted with alumni content. We captured which posts resulted in the most engagement, as an indication of the interests of their followers, and what they valued seeing from the Alumni Office.

• Audience survey – we created, and later analysed, an online survey to capture further quantitative and qualitative information about their social media followers. The survey gathered personal information, such as their relationship to the University of Oxford, occupation, motivations, and interests. It also explored how they use social media: who they follow, why they follow them, why they follow alumni channels, and what content (topic, medium, tone of voice) they would like to see the University post.

• Insights report – at the conclusion of the above activity, we produced an insights report to offer a series of findings about alumni social media followers. This was supported by visuals and evidence, which the Alumni Office could use to inform social media activity moving forwards.

• Personas - as an extension of the insights report, we brought together our findings to create 6 personas that captured the broad themes of their social media followers. These personas offered demographic, behavioural, and socio-technographic information about each audience type, but also observations about what they wanted from the Alumni Office specifically. We included a variety of categories, including relationship to Oxford, information needs, preferred channels, barriers and distractions, content preferences, and user stories.

The Alumni Office now has a greater understanding of their followers. They are using our insights and personas to guide the creation of useful, usable, relevant, and relatable social media content that will add value to the lives of their alumni. 

“It was great to work with Simon and Louise at Pickle Jar Communications on this important and timely project for the Oxford Alumni Office. Pickle Jar came highly recommended to us from the sector, and they brought a highly professional approach to this study. They were also great to work with, and very flexible on the timings too. Thank you again!”

- Steven Buchanan, Senior Manager for Strategic Marketing, Communications and Data, Alumni Office